Dusty May and players preview UConn

Look, I know this is going to set off a Twitter firestorm, but I think we all are better in certain situations than others. There's an environment that's right for me. There's an environment that's right for you. And sometimes you don't choose that the right environment from the beginning, or sometimes as people we change and we need something different for a number of reasons.

So the way we choose to look at it, we're going to bring in really, really good guys that are high achievers that want to do it the way we want to do it. And when the Oklahoma City Thunder won the championship last year— and I'm friends with Coach Dagnault and a lot of people in that organization— I wasn't judging them because Shea Alexander was drafted by the Clippers or because they signed Isaiah Hartenstein as a free agent.

I thought, wow, those guys play beautiful basketball. That is a great team. That's a real— that's a real model for young players to watch. A group that obviously cared about each other, that played the game the right way, that represented their organization, their city, their families, their last name.

And so whatever the rules are, we're going to— we're going to go at it. But our job is to put a competitive roster team on the floor that represents Michigan the way we think they deserve to be represented.

Well, we just try to create an environment that will prepare our players to play well in the games. I mean, player development is helping your guys perform better on game nights while also always looking towards their future and their individual careers. Our practices are designed to challenge them, to make them think, to figure out solutions on their own, to lean on their teammates when things aren't going well.

So we feel like if we don't play well in the games, it's because of our poor planning in the weight room, conditioning, individual workouts, team workouts, whatever the case. I think that's one of the reasons we play with a level of looseness at the biggest moments because we feel like we've either won or lost these games a long time ago.

Hey, Dusty. Lindsey Schnell from The Athletic. What can you tell us about Yaxel Lendeborg? I believe he did get an MRI this morning.

Yeah, all imaging has come back clean and he's getting treatment and doing rehab all day today, and I'm sure he'll give it a go tomorrow, but that'll be entirely up to him and the medical staff. They'll tell me if he can go, and if he can, we were laughing that he played the second half like a 38-year-old at the YMCA, and a really good 38-year-old at the YMCA.

So whatever version of Yaxel Lendeborg we get, it's going to be somebody that helps us play better basketball.