It's only natural for everybody to have their eye on the prettiest belle at the ball.
Right now, in a number of ways, that's Michigan basketball. The Wolverines just missed out on the top spot in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll - they're No. 2 only behind No. 1 Purdue - however there are a ton of metrics that say coach Dusty May's team is the best in the nation.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementKenPom has Michigan as the No. 1 overall team, led by the nation's No. 1 defense.
And Michigan also came in at No. 1 in the nation Monday, Dec. 1, in the first NET rankings of the year − a college basketball ranking system that measures per-possession efficiency which replaced the old RPI metric.
Michigan Wolverines forward Yaxel Lendeborg (23) reacts during the first half in a 2025 Players Era Festival group play game against the Auburn Tigers at Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025.It's a key component into where NCAA Tournament teams are seeded. May knows it's his job to keep his team focused and not buy into being great one month into the season.
"On December 1, we're good enough to compete with anyone and everyone in the country on any given night," May said Monday at his weekly press conference inside Crisler Center. "On April 6, I think is that last (national championship) Monday, are we going to going to be good enough to compete with anyone in the country that night?
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"If we get stagnant, static or whatever, we're not going to be in position to do what we want to do ... we have to put our earmuffs on, get better every day and keep appreciating each other."
May nearly used a line that's often been coined up the road by the other Big Ten men's basketball coach in this state: Tom Izzo loves to call his team 'fat and sassy' after it has an off day. May said Monday success can make a team 'fat and happy,' or 'complacent'.
But he hasn't seen an ounce of that since U-M returned to Ann Arbor from its three-day dismantling of San Diego State (94-54), Auburn (102-72) and Gonzaga (101-61). Speaking of which, even May was blown away with how his team performed in the desert.
It's not that it was a total surprise. May said his staff had been using the bamboo analogy - comparing team growth to that of a bamboo tree that it takes patient, invisible work for a long period of time before seemingly all of a sudden, there's a period of explosive growth.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement"We felt like we were on the cusp," May said. "We had planted the right seeds, we were harvesting the right way and there as going to be a breakthrough...we started to see some signs or glimpses in practice that it was coming."
Michigan head coach Dusty May reacts to a play against Middle Tennessee during the second half at Crisler Center in Ann Arbor on Wednesday, November 19, 2025.He saw his group truly establish its "cheat code" which has recently been identified as selflessness. It doesn't hurt to be ranked top 10 in 2-point shooting offense and defense, too. The Wolverines are in the midst of a nine-day stretch with no games before opening league play against Rutgers on Saturday, Dec. 6 (4:00 p.m., Big Ten Network) but perhaps what has May most pleased is the practices have only intensified since their return.
May said this stretch of practice is a test to see "how we're going to respond" before he said Sunday was the team's most "spirited practice of the year" as well as the most productive. May wants his team to get "lost in the fight" of improving and make sure the group continues to block the outside noise.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementU-M's head man pointed out it was just a few weeks back when the "sky was falling" around the program because the Wolverines didn't beat TCU by enough points (a TCU group that, by the way, just beat a top 10 Florida team) on the road.
The world was not falling in U-M's locker room, he said. However, it's their job to make sure the opposite remains true. Just because the Wolverines are now near the apex of the college basketball world, there's no time to be powdering their nose in the mirror and admiring how pretty they are. It's time to continue to dig in to the work.
"Obviously cool for the attention of your program, we're always recruiting, selling, messaging," May said of the lofty rankings. "But internally ... whatever analogy you want to use, build a fort around our locker room, build a moat around our fort...we have to continue to take it all in stride and understand all glory is fleeting.
"This could all be gone Saturday. So we never get too high or too low ... we're not screaming from the mountain top."
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Tony Garcia is the Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan basketball's next task is handling success
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