Dusty May knows how he prefers to build programs up—it comes with the territory of building teams from scratch in Boca Raton. He’s all about fit, he’s all about relationships. He’s all about building things up sustainably over time, forging bonds and trust with players, and selling high schoolers on long-term visions that’ll see them improve year over year and stay for the long run.
He also knows that things move a little faster in the modern game. He’s ready to play the short and long game to fill a Michigan roster with plenty of space.
“Recruiting now in the portal is more like speed dating than the traditional recruiting,” May said at his introductory press conference Tuesday. “And I think it’s very very valuable to have a network of people that you trust and they trust you, and hopefully between former players and former coaches, our program’s gonna have thousands of agents working for us — when I say agents, people that are gonna say great things about us and want players to play for us.”
The portal is wide open, so May’s “speed dating” will have to start soon, if it hasn’t already. It’s why Michigan worked so quickly to get their next head coach, athletics director Warde Manuel likening the process to speed dating as well when describing how he landed what he calls his top option as head coach.
It’s also why May doesn’t have many specifics when it comes to how he’ll construct the roster for year one — everything’s still moving so fast, he just got to cloudy Ann Arbor from FAU after all.
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