Dusty May press conference after win over Penn State

Yeah, Oscar's a good player. You know, it's the trade-off of being on a really talented, deep team that you don't get the minutes that you would in a normal year in another program. But he continues to improve. His consistency in practice has probably made the biggest jump.

From last year. He would have a couple of good days, then he'd have a down day. And sometimes we forget that he was 17. He was supposed to be— he could have been a junior.

He could be a senior in high school this year. And this is a year and a half into college. So he has a bright future. He's awesome to be around every day.

He's a great teammate and he's just so conscientious and intentional with everything that we do. And so you want as many guys like that in your program that have the talent that he has. So very proud of him. Like I said, he deserves to play.

You know, we're an injury away from him getting that very valuable minutes. And because of his versatility, we can plug him in a number of different ways in different spots. So this was nice to get him extended game minutes. And Winters and Roddy Gayle, are they sick?

Roddy Gayle's been battling a little bit of the illness bug that's been going around. We thought he was playing and then just to be honest, we were like, you know what, unless we really, really need you, we're just going to hold you and get you healthy for that Ohio State game. And then Winters has been battling some illness and a lower leg injury and some other things.

So, yeah, those two guys, they obviously gave us an opportunity to play Malick and Oscar and L.J., and it was nice to see L.J. and Trey and those guys get even more minutes than usual as well.

Yeah, I didn't know that. I mean, I've seen on social media that this is the best start since this team and that team, but I don't, I don't pay that much attention to it. And then right before I went in to talk to the guys, uh, 12 minutes before the game, someone said, if we win this game, this is the best start in Michigan basketball history.

And I start thinking about all the great teams and players that have played here and coaches that have coached here and thought, wow, that's, that's a heck of an honor. Um, obviously it's not our ultimate goal, but for February, whatever today is, it's pretty cool to be setting new, new standards and new bars. Um, and so we told our guys that, and they seem to be excited because they respect the program and and, and those that, that laid the foundation before us.

That, I mean, there's a reason that they're making NIL money and us coaches are making the money we make because of the, the foundation that was laid over the last 100 years. So a lot to be grateful for.

You know, we talk about stuff like that, but, you know, me personally, and then as we talk as a group, you know, we judge it by our reaction, our actions in practice. If we come in and we don't feel like working and why are we doing this and why are we whispering about the stuff that marginal teams do, then we would be very concerned. But we had such a workmanlike approach.

There was, A lot of discussion on what we needed to do better. You know, every game we take a couple of things that these things have to improve. And no, I don't think we were distracted. Once again, I said this before, we didn't make that game bigger than what it was.

Obviously, it's tied with 5 minutes left. If they beat us, then we know our road would be more difficult. But at the end of the day, it was a road game in the Big Ten. If we lost, we still have 9 more that we have to make it up and figure out a way.

So we take a lot of pride in our temperature not really changing that much. Coach, that's going to do it.