Dusty May’s Monday press conference

We want to compete for a championship. And so whatever's busted, busted. If it's hypothetical, I don't know, one of those bubble machines that pop in the air or, well, it's busted. No, we're going to go on our journey.

We're going to do the absolute best we can. And we've said from day one that, you know, when we early on, when we felt the weight of expectations on our backs, we said, fellas, we're not playing for other people's expectations. We're not playing for that. Now, because of our ceiling is so high, if we stay healthy, yes, we can beat anyone in the country on a given night.

And we're going to try to do that. But if we fall short at some point, then the only regret would be is we didn't give our best.

It's case by case. We've been working on different zones and different defenses and other contingencies in case it happened, but we just felt like tonight if we can just make sure the game is manageable, then we could get to the second half with Aday. And then we just felt like sometimes with that halftime, it's just, you know, it's not as if playing with 30 seconds left to go in the half versus 30 seconds after the half is any difference as far as the analytics.

But it's just that mental barrier that we're in the second half, we can play with aggression. But yeah, and Elliot Cadeau's another one. We challenged Elliot Cadeau repeatedly. Like, he has to make his fouls count.

And it's the same thing with Aday. He can't get a foul trying to post up at 18 feet. Which then the second one, I don't know what happened on the second one, but then that one becomes so much more impactful because of the first one. And so those are the ones we have to let— if we're going vertical on a shot and they feel like he came down to block it, we can live with those.

We just can't live with the mental air fouls. And it's going to be even more important moving forward.

If they ask me, I'll tell them. But no, I don't. I defer to all those guys. You know, when we talk about 18 teams or 14 teams in the Big Ten tournament, I defer because I hadn't put much thought or research behind those things.

So— Dusty, what was the exchange like with the coaches after the game? Were any words exchanged or anything? Just normal stuff. Congrats on a Big Ten championship.

That was it. Yeah, you guys, you're like, I'm worried about our team and our program, period. So look, the 30 years or whatever they've been going to the tournament every year and the way those guys play every single year, and look, a lot was made of Jeremy Fears. Jeremy Fears Jr. is a heck of a basketball player.

He's a winner. He's an elite thinker. He's an elite processor. He's a, he's a All-American quarterback on the court for those guys.

And so it's great to compete against the best. He's made us better as well. So, you know, hats off for them to do what they did in the Big Ten. Second place, 18 teams.

Are they in second? Somebody help. Second place out of 18 teams. I felt pretty good in year one that we got second in the Big Ten with the respect I have for these coaches and teams.

But trust me, they're not going to— they're going to be coming after us next year. We're going to be coming after them.