Michigan’s championship glow faded fast for Dusty May in the transfer portal era

ST. LOUIS — The visions and feelings are still so clear in Dusty May’s mind. Confetti on his shoulders, joy on his players’ faces, the jubilation of a dream finally fulfilled. There were nets to cut, pictures to be taken and a celebration to bask in. And he took full advantage of just about every moment.

“Two hours after the game, our rat-pack entourage walking through the streets,” May recalled to CBS Sports earlier this week. “Went up to my room with my boys, cracked a beer, had a pizza and even watched the highlights of the game. We’d see something and go, ‘I missed that!’ or “Do you remember that play?!'”

After all the years of sacrifice, thankless grunt work and yeomanly determination, he’d finally achieved the inconceivable.

He made the Final Four … with Florida Atlantic.

May’s quote above isn’t about Michigan’s freshly minted national championship. It’s about 2023, when he led those lovable Owls to the national semifinals in one of the all-time storybook March Madness runs.

Last week’s NCAA title? May is still waiting for the euphoria and triumph to hit. He’s hoping to soon feel something close to the high of 2023. There is something amiss. 

“When I did the interview with (Dan) Hurley before the game and (Adam Zucker) asked what it’s like to hoist that trophy, he said, ‘You’ve been to the Final Four, it’s a thousand times better than that,'” May told CBS Sports. “And I don’t know if it’s just me, but I’d heard where you climb the ladder and you say, ‘Is this really it?’ And it was worse. It was less than ‘it.’ The journey was so much better than the destination. The finality of it all is almost disappointing because you have one of the most special groups of humans you’ll ever be around, and at that moment, it all ends.”

As he cut the net and did interview after interview and made his way about the confetti-covered court at Lucas Oil Stadium, I noticed how … casual May looked amid it all. He looked happy, but there was no exultation. He didn’t show as someone who’d just clinched a lifelong dream. It made sense, then, that the 49-year-old took three minutes to himself to soak in as much as possible when the press gave him his space as he stood alone, tilted his head up, hat on backward and watched “One Shining Moment” on the big screen.

As that was happening, midnight struck on the East Coast: The transfer portal was officially open. And every single member of the coaching staff knew it.

This is the unseen side of what it’s like to win a national championship in the portal era.

As the cheers, hugs and media crunch continued in the bowels of Lucas Oil Stadium after midnight, agents wasted little time texting Michigan’s staff, trying to set up negotiations for players entering the portal. It’s a problem quite literally every coaching staff in the country would have opted into. At the same time, how absurd is it that Michigan had a planned 2 a.m. Zoom call with a high-end transfer the night it won the NCAA title?

The staff thought seriously about taking the Zoom, surrounded by all the hoopla, but opted to push it back for the next day in an attempt to at least try to soak in the moment. (Also: Portal Zooms at 2 a.m. is sicko stuff. Should never be a thing.)

May and his assistants did their customary walk back to the team hotel after beating UConn, only unlike in 2023 when it was mostly a friends-and-family affair deep into the evening, the downtown Indy Marriott had thousands of maniacs in maize and blue waiting to get their chance to congratulate the players and staff in person. 

One drunk donor after another was wide-eyed and ready to selfie, and so for the better part of two hours, May and his guys celebrated a title with strangers united by a single bond: love for the Wolverines. The go-go-go of it was so persistent, May got less than an hour’s worth of sleep and did a “Good Morning America” interview before 7 a.m. 

The team landed in Detroit early on Tuesday afternoon. May’s wife asked if he was going to come home and enjoy the afterglow, even for one night.

“I looked at her … and said no,” May said.

The portal beckoned. This is the job in 2026. She went left, he went right, and for the next four days May and his staff took calls, scheduled Zooms and worked the portal on approximately a dozen players and at least twice as many agents — and this is after being picky. 

“Literally, it’s such a blur because there’s no time to celebrate,” May said. “You meet with your seniors, you do exit meetings, you’re meeting with your players and trying to figure out what your vision with them will be for the following year. Plugging holes in your roster, trying to make sure you’re generating NIL opportunities and attracting businesses and things of that nature.”

There was one night when the staff met at May’s house to break bread and celebrate for a bit, but even that involved recruiting scuttlebutt and planning for the rest of the week, the rest of the month, the rest of the spring, the rest of the offseason.

May said it’s as if the title game was just another result — with one exception. On Saturday, the team got its customary championship parade in Ann Arbor. May rode on an old-timey fire truck with his wife and tossed beads, mini basketballs and other giveaways to the fans.

“Now that was pretty cool,” he told me while firing off another round of texts. “The streets, I couldn’t believe how many people were there. That felt like we won the title.”

The parade route ended back at Michigan’s arena, the Crisler Center, and included an uncommon thing that may well become the norm in the years ahead: Rather than waiting for the first home game of the ensuing season to hang a banner, Michigan raised its national championship cloth five days after winning it all. The reason? There is no telling when everyone who made this astonishing accomplishment a reality would all be in the same room again. Outgoing senior Will Tschetter is already on the other side of the planet, in Australia, and has begun his professional journey. Aday Mara and Morez Johnson have been in Los Angeles preparing for pre-draft evaluations. 

“We raised last year’s Big Ten championship banner with this team earlier this season, and it felt a little awkward,” Michigan assistant Akeem Miskdeen said. “With the portal stuff, it takes away from it, and with everyone leaving, you don’t get to see the guys. You’re not going to be around the team. That’s the last time our team was together.”

Miskdeen took a trip this week to Portsmouth, Virginia, to support outgoing Wolverine Nimari Burnett, who’s playing at the annual Portsmouth Invitational, a longstanding scouting opportunity for NBA hopefuls. There are also batches of agents to engage on-site.

“We made the Sweet 16 last year, and it was boom, boom, boom: Morez, Elliott Cadeau, Aday, we all got those three right away,” Miskdeen said. “I think that’s what’s messing up our staff. Now we won the national championship and we’re like, gosh, we can’t get any traction.” 

No one is breaking out the violins for May or his program, nor should they: Michigan has already landed a commitment from Tennessee transfer JP Estrella, who was shockingly low-maintenance in his negotiations. But admissions over a depressing lack of release of joy — at not being able to step back and revel in a championship — at the very least prompts an earnest conversation about What This Is All About.

Consider: May grew up in basketball-crazed Indiana. He fell in love with the game while living in Greene County, in a place so small and sparse, his address read like a drop point in a detective movie: Rural Route 2, Box 141A. There was no town. It was a single-stoplight spot on flat farmland sitting 80 minutes from downtown Indianapolis. 

His big dream was to hopefully, if he was lucky enough, one day get to coach a high school basketball team. To go to Indiana and be a manager for Bob Knight felt like winning the lottery. If you’d told 17-year-old Dusty May that he’d one day be the head coach of an NCAA title team and that he’d win it in the Hoosier State, he couldn’t have dared to dream something so insane. 

And on April 6, 2026, he not only won a national title, but he did it in his home state and with one of the best teams of this century. Yet, in the days since, it’s business as usual? If Dusty May, who never even got a chance to play college basketball, doesn’t feel like he just won the world, then what is all this for? 

The college basketball industrial complex, the ever-changing calendar, the ever-chaotic portal, the constantly evolving way of doing business … what has been the trade-off in all of this? The journey should be a reward in and of itself, but actually achieving a championship should be accompanied by the spoils of victory and some time to soak in the achievement. 

“It doesn’t feel any different,” May said. “There’s been a couple of times where it comes up and I’ve been like, ‘Oh, shit, that’s us. He’s talking about us.'”

May’s words are as honest as they are alarming. As great a coach as he is, there is no guarantee he ever gets to another Final Four, let alone wins a second national title. This could be it, and given the environment of the sport he’s dedicated his life to, May and his staff have been somewhat robbed of the spoils that should come with a championship. 

Blame the portal as much as anything else. It’s trite but true and there may not be an answer for the predicament. 

The portal’s opening date has shifted in three successive years, from the day after Selection Sunday to the day after the first weekend of the tournament to the day after the title game. (But really: It’s midnight, so it’s the night of the title game.) Pushing back that opening even 24 more hours might be prudent; it would allow the team that won it all to not have to debate whether to conduct a Zoom call from the winning locker room or hotel ballroom after 2 a.m. 

I’m only writing this story because I got to see the rhythms and realities of May’s life up close and for the better part of five hours earlier this week. He took a trip to St. Louis to receive the Henry Iba Coach of the Year Award, presented on behalf of the United States Basketball Writers Association. After guiding 37-3 Michigan to a dominant title run, May made the time to fly in (on a commercial flight) to receive, ironically, his only national coach of the year honor. He did so while trying to pilot through portal mayhem. 

The man had another reason to come to St. Louis: It gave him a chance to see his good friend Josh Schertz. The two last saw each other while shaking hands in the second round of the NCAAs: May’s Wolverines beat Schertz’s Billikens 95-72 in Buffalo on March 21.

They met on SLU’s campus and then drove to the outskirts of the city for lunch at Mi Ranchito, only for May to dip out after he housed a massive burrito in less than 15 minutes in order to take an hour-long portal Zoom recruiting pitch with a prominent transfer. May took the recruiting call from his phone and sat in the passenger seat of Schertz’s car by himself for 20 minutes. Eventually, Schertz needed to get back to campus, so he drove back with May in the passenger seat. May had a few questions and comments for the high-profile transfer — who was considering just a few schools and should commit to one of them by the end of this week — but the presentation was mostly handled by a member of May’s staff. 

Back at Saint Louis’ offices, Schertz’s assistants were texting with agents and trading in portal gossip (including a few rumors on numbers that were outrageous). May and Schertz swapped anecdotes in Schertz’s office while constantly being interrupted by phone calls and texts. It’s kind of an art form to see coaches carry on a conversation while seamlessly being bombarded by the realities of roster-building in 2026. At one point, Michigan AD Warde Manuel called May to check in.

“Just rippin’ and runnin’,” May told his boss as he dipped into a side room to tell him about one major transfer he’s trying to land. 

There was hardly any talk of winning the title a week prior.

The scene was as interesting as it was disheartening. A naked view of the harsh and hasty realities of roster-building in this new era. Michigan just completed a 37-3 gauntlet that has a viable claim as one of the five best seasons of any team this century. May mastered the portal and quite possibly laid out a blueprint for what it will take to win national titles in the years to come.

But instead of getting a moment to actually enjoy the achievement, the portal and the demands of the job have forced that staff to immediately continue as if they were a team that got dropped in the second round instead of being the last one standing.

“We coaches created the calendar, the timeline, and so I’m not going to complain about it,” May said. “There is no perfect system. Why complain about the NCAA when we’re all members, the rules are what they are. We created them.”

I guess this is what the sport is about now. On to the next one. Yay?

The same feeling hit Dan Hurley after his first championship in 2023 and the Florida staff as well in the days that ensued after their title romp in 2025. Teams are not experiencing the thrills of winning it all the way so many once did.

May accepted his national coach of the year award on Monday night at the Missouri Athletic Club. As he took to the stage to speak for six or seven minutes, he left his phone on the table. The texts landed like raindrops. It just doesn’t stop.

At the end of the night, he shook a few more hands and took a few more photos with people he’d never met, then dipped out to his room before 10 p.m. There were more calls and texts to make, many of them about players who will never suit up at Michigan. He was determined to at least, finally, get six uninterrupted hours of sleep.

Next? A 6 a.m. flight to Los Angeles.

The coach who stands at the sport’s mountaintop is, right now, just like everyone else in college basketball: doing whatever it takes to get the next player. Celebrations will have to wait. His assistant, Miskdeen, summed it up beautifully/terribly: “Everyone’s like, ‘What up, champ?’ And it’s like, maybe I’ll feel like a champion once we finish this roster.”

There is no more damning quote on the state of the game than that.