Dusty May previews Saint Louis

Yeah, we go way back. Um, when I was at FAU, early on we signed one of his graduate transfer players. He helped us through the process. Um, as I was studying that player, I noticed a really well-coached basketball team, um, on both sides of the ball and just thought this would be a guy that would be good to know.

We start talking and he ended up being from Boca Raton. So when he would come back, he would come to practice, we'd have lunch, we'd sit and talk ball in the office, in the gym. Jim, and then he ended up coaching at Indiana State. I'm from Terre Haute, Indiana.

I'm coaching at FAU in Boca Raton where he grew up. So there were a lot of similarities, and we just, uh, two lifelong learners that enjoy, um, just trying to pick up anything we could, we could find. And you literally share playbooks and practice video? Yes.

How's that working out tonight? Uh, I think we both have it, and so I think we both studied it. And even this year, because both of us won a lot of games that we would joke when we talk, I couldn't watch you guys were up 30 in the first half. You're boring to watch is what I would tell him so many times.

But the beauty of it is, is we both play conceptual style basketball. We're not running a set play most of the time. We know each other well, but at the end of the day, it's 5 guys competing against their 5 guys. This game wouldn't be quite as appealing if he and I were actually playing.

And he said he has cut off the talking until after the game. That's fair, as am I.

You wouldn't necessarily know he was a Big Ten Player of the Year watching him, but I don't know, that's not a bad thing. I thought he had some really good looks in the first half. They didn't drop. We don't evaluate them if they went in or not.

But he had, what, 4 or 5 threes in the first half. I thought they were all great shots. Shots. Second half, he put his head down.

But I think when you have a guy cooking like that, I don't think we want to just say, hey, this guy's Big Ten Player of the Year, let's not go to this. Like, we're big believers in let's take what the game is giving us. And I don't think Yaxel Lendeborg's ever been a 30-point-per-game guy. He's always been a stat stuffer.

He's a good passer, he's a good rebounder, he's a good defender. He's— and that's kind of who he is. So we don't really want these guys to try to recreate who they are, especially in March. Have you seen L.J.

Incredibly engaged. And this is impressive as anything that I've seen. We were actually joking that we felt like because we were all a little disappointed in our play in the first half, that our energy and enthusiasm across the board wasn't at our normal standards. And the coaching staff told me, they said L.J. was the one that, he was the ringleader to get that part of it fixed.

And what a way to contribute. Whenever you can flip the emotions of multiple people, you're showing great leadership.