Dusty May and players preview Saint Louis

I think my colleague CJ Moore wrote about a meeting happened in Boca Raton where you guys spent about 10 hours in your office.

Yeah, I think it was immediately after one of the seasons, and he said, "I'm going to come through. We'll sit and we'll talk ball for a couple hours, then we'll have lunch." I think we were going to meet Jim Crutchfield to play pickleball, and I think we ended up sitting in my office for 10 straight hours. We hadn't eaten anything.

I think we'd had a cup of coffee, and I'd had probably a couple cups of coffee and some water. And we missed lunch. We missed everything. We missed Crutch's pickleball, and we just got caught up.

I mean, I had notebooks full. I mean, I had a notebook full of notes and about a million ideas running through my head. So usually when we are out on the— when we're on the road recruiting, his assistants are mad at him and mine are angry with me because we're not watching and evaluating recruits as much as we're talking basketball and strategy and culture and the things that we feel like really impact winning.

So yeah, I think our recruiting coordinators work together to make sure we're in different cities as much as possible.

His level of unselfishness and caring and giving is off the court, on the court. It's how he lives his life. We've tried to encourage him to be a little bit more guarded with his answers. He's just so— pure and genuine, authentic.

He doesn't know how to— he doesn't know how to use coach speak. He doesn't know how to use player speak. He just speaks from the heart at all times. And when you meet his mother and his sisters, they just— they have a— just like him, they have a warmth to them that when you— and I saw them last night when I was going up to put on my sweats to watch film, and they're in the hallway bringing their bags up, and they're just so happy and warm and proud of Yaxel Lendeborg.

And it's a heck of a story. That's the best part of the Religion of Sports group that's doing the documentary on our team and Kansas' team. Not trying to shameless plug, but I'm excited just to watch our guys and the stories on the side where they're in their apartments and they're doing the things that they do outside the basketball court because those are going to be great memories for me because we have some really, really unique guys that are special people.

And so I'm excited to see more about his story because when you recruit these guys out of the portal, you don't go sit in their living rooms and you don't go cafe— you don't have lunch with them at the cafeteria like we do with high school seniors. You know, you don't sit in at 6:00 a.m. workouts and 8:00 p.m. workouts and whatnot.

So, you know, these older guys, we've gotten to know them better and better as the seasons went on. And man, we're lucky to have these guys. Michigan's lucky to have them representing our institution.

Yeah, Roddy Gayle was awesome. Um, you know, we don't advance to the Sweet Sixteen last year without Roddy Gayle. Um, our locker room is not what it is without Roddy Gayle. Our practices aren't the same.

He's probably as beloved as any player in our program universally. You can't find anyone that doesn't respect— when he speaks, they respect what's coming out. Um, if we need a message, usually I'll just go whisper to Roddy Gayle and he'll say we've got it. So for him to, to have that that level of success on the court in his hometown area in front of all of his friends and family, that's what it's about.

For him to elevate his play in that moment is going to be a great memory for him and hopefully memories after tomorrow.