Michigan basketball's Dusty May gets homecoming moment in return to Indiana

Michigan basketball’s Dusty May gets homecoming moment in return to Indiana

Posted by author February 7, 2025 Basketball

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It’s almost difficult to describe just how small Eastern Greene High School is.

So allow Mark Barnhizer, formerly the school’s head basketball coach for nearly a decade, to do the honors.

“Yeah, that’s about as backwoods as you can get,” Barnhizer, the father of Northwestern basketball star Brooks Barnhizer, said with a laugh in a recent phone call with the Free Press. “I mean, it’s a consolidation of towns and names — some that that aren’t even real towns. It’s just country kids.”

Eastern Greene sits along E. State Rd. 45, almost smack in the middle between Bloomfield and Bloomington, Indiana. The school is in Greene County, just east of the Monroe County line, and Barnhizer remembers, back in 1991, counting down the days until an undersized point guard would reach the high school ranks.

His name?

Dusty May.

Of course, May is 48 now and better known as the Michigan basketball head coach.

Though May stood not much more than 5 feet and change at the time, Barnhizer had watched enough of his game to feel certain he could be exactly what his program needed; he had that type of demeanor.

“When he was in eighth grade, we couldn’t get him to ninth grade quick enough,” Barnhizer recalled. “We needed leadership and he was the answer.

“There’s not many 13- or 14-year-olds you’re banking your program on for leadership, and as soon as he got there, we got better.”

Had somebody asked Barnhizer then if he saw May — a few decades and a handful of coaching stops later — running a Big Ten basketball program and walking the sidelines of Assembly Hall, what would he have said?

He can’t guarantee the answer would have been yes, but he knows it certainly wouldn’t have been no.

“We saw it, first day he was there,” Barnhizer said. “Now, you got to have breaks to get where he’s gotten, but thing is, I feel like he’s the kid who made his own breaks.

“He was willing to take jobs where he didn’t get paid much, move up the ladder and he’s done it the right way.”

Much of that is because of the attitude he adapted, growing up in the backwoods, before he sat on the sidelines at Indiana’s Assembly Hall alongside the winningest coach in Big Ten history. For the first time, May will lead his own team on that court, when U-M faces Indiana, his alma mater, on Saturday (1 p.m., CBS).

‘Intertwined even back then’

Anna May can’t perfectly place her first memory of her now-husband but, she said, it came when they were little.

The two attended a school district which combined kids from all the nearby fields, er, towns — Newark, Solesberry, Ridgeport, Hendricksville, Tanner, Cincinnati and so on — yet still had fewer than 100 kids in their grade.

“Our lives were very intertwined even back then,” Anna said. “He was always very into sports, just a rowdy little boy. We were at the same birthday parties … just together all the time.”

As elementary and middle-school children do, May and the then-Anna Nonte “dated” a few times, only to break up. The two officially got together as freshmen in high school and remained together for the next four years.

Anna remembers the feeling of being too close to home. Although she grew up a Hoosiers fan, she couldn’t stomach the idea of going to school just 20 minutes up the road, in the same town where she worked at Wendy’s. So, instead, she ventured 100 miles north — to West Lafayette, Indiana, and Purdue.

May, however, was still pursuing his hoop dreams.

Known as a fantastic high school facilitator, May made the Eastern Greene Thunderbirds the No. 1 2A team in the state two years in a row. In both of those seasons, they went 19-2 before getting beat in the sectional by much larger Bedford North Lawrence (a perennial power), just before the “Hoosiers” state finally sliced its hoops tournament in sized-determined classes in 1998.

He didn’t have the requisite size to play at the upper college levels, so May begin his hoops career 100 miles south of Eastern Greene, at Division II Oakland City College (where he also ran cross country) While at OCC, May had an “ah-ha” moment — he happened to mow the lawn for an assistant at IU, and through that connection, combined with a solid reputation, was able to become one of approximately 12-15 managers under legendary IU coach Bob Knight.

‘He’s a firecracker’

May spent four seasons (1996-2000) learning directly from the Hall of Fame coach in Bloomington.

Along with his multiple national championships, Knight was known for his brash personality and firecracker nature, captured almost perfectly in the controversial 1985 chair toss against Purdue that resulted in one of his multiple ejections.

May, on the other hand, is known as one of the softer-spoken coaches in the Big Ten; he has one technical foul in seven years as a head coach.

Don’t let that fool you.

“Oh, Dusty is a firecracker,” Anna said, pushing back when asked about the difference of he and his mentor. “People don’t realize that about him — ask his friends from college and people he grew up with. He was competitive and hard-nosed. Just because he’s such a nice guy doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.”

On the contrary, she said: May poured everything into the Hoosiers during his undergraduate days, with the intention of becoming a high school teacher and varsity basketball coach somewhere in the state.

That is, until an assistant in Bloomington told May he had a knack for coaching. Next thing he knew, Knight was on the phone with then-USC coacch Henry Bibby, setting May up with a video coordinator position.

May and Anna, who’d been separated for much of college but always kept in contact, had found their way back to one another and were now headed west. It remains one of her favorite memories: Just a couple of 20-somethings, packing up their belongings in a moving truck and heading more than 2,000 miles west to sunny Southern California.

“Living in our small little one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica that we really couldn’t afford,” Anna said. “That was kind of the start of our lives.”

Bouncing around

After serving in video and administrative roles for a few years at USC, May got his first true assistant gig back in the Midwest, at Eastern Michigan.

He spent one year in Ypsilanti, the next year at Murray State (2006-07) in Kentucky, two years at UAB (2007-09), six at Louisiana Tech (2009-15) and three at Florida (2015-18) before his first head-coaching job: Florida Atlantic in Boca Raton.

During the assistant years, Dusty and Anna’s sons — Jack, Charlie, and Eli — were born. All three learned one universal truth.

“Whenever we had a family meeting,” Anna said. “It probably meant we were moving again.”

Charlie, for example — now a walk-on playing for his father in Ann Arbor — has lived in nearly half a dozen cities. He feels his hometown is Boca Raton. That’s the same for his brothers, Anna said. Mom and Dad, though will always feel that way about southwest Indiana.

His time under Knight still feels like a dream come true, May said, but other coaches on staff at the time say they too saw something special in the then-student.

Mike Davis — who led Indiana to a national title game in 2002 and also had stops at UAB (where he hired May as an assistant), Texas Southern and Detroit Mercy — was one of the first.

“I remember, him being willing to drive his coach around, go on recruiting trips,” Davis said after May was hired by U-M last March. “Just the energy, he was like a sponge. … To have him on (recruiting) trips with us (at his age) tells you what I thought about him.”

Coming full circle

His return to the Big Ten couldn’t be going much better: A year after setting a program record for losses, Michigan (17-5, 9-2 Big Ten) is ranked No. 22 and just half a game back of the league lead.

Still, May and the Wolverines aren’t entirely fond of their Hoosier State run so far: The last time Michigan visited the state of Indiana, it suffered a 27-point thumping at Purdue.

As for IU, May has coached once in the building as a visitor, losing as an assistant for EMU in 2005 (though the Eagles were were within five points of the Hoosiers with less than 15 minutes to play).

But what does he think about a return to his old stomping grounds for the first time as a Big Ten head coach?

“I’m sure it will be cool to walk in Assembly Hall where you spent a lot of time,” he said Wednesday after U-M’s 80-76 win over Oregon. “But, I mean, I’m going there to try and win a freaking basketball game and that’s it.”

There’s also the human side of May, the one he said he doesn’t really tap into when he’s coaching

But his wife was willing peel back the curtain on that, including the reason May said he ran out of his group ticket allotment (though he did acknowledge Anna is the one handling it) almost immediately.

“It’s definitely a special place for us,” Anna said. “We grew up Indiana fans; friends and family were Indiana fans, he went to IU, then he went back and worked there. … Our middle son, Charlie, was born in Bloomington, so we have ties there.”

Beyond that, May said he has more than 20 texts from friends who want to grab dinner — “which shows they just have no idea” — so he hasn’t responded. That’s because he’s so dialed into his craft, not for lack of love for his fellow Hoosiers.

Even though the Mays are connected, don’t be surprised if the 17,222-seat arena has a touch less crimson and cream than usual. The May section, lifelong Indiana fans, for the first time will be wearing the opposing gear.

“Well, they better be,” Anna joked.

‘Going to be mind-blowing’

Few people who leave Indiana and go back are welcomed with warm receptions. Davis, who came back with Texas Southern a bit more than a decade after his run to the tile game at IU, still remembers the feeling he got when he stood in the opposing coaches box while getting an ovation from the fans.

“Coming back, they showed appreciation when I was introduced,” Davis said Wednesday. “Dusty, being a manager and GA there, and from there, it’s going to be mind-blowing for him to be standing on the other side of the court.”

That echoed an unprompted statement from Barnhizer just 24 hours earlier. That’s just how people talk about May though. From SoCal to Ypsi, from the bayou to the Sunshine State, his reputation runs strong.

“Usually anybody who comes back they’re not treated that graciously,” Barnhizer began. “I think when they announce dusty this weekend, there will be a big round of applause. A lot of people at IU, well, they wish that was their basketball coach right now.”

That may be especially true on Saturday, with current (and embattled) IU head coach Mike Woodson reportedly in talks to retire at season’s end.

And though May never forgets, Saturday will be a reminder that it all started in the backwoods.

“He’s developed the right reputation not only in the Big Ten and college basketball, but he’s thought of very highly in the state.”

Tony Garcia is the Michigan Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.