'We want to pinch ourselves': Dusty May's full-circle return to the Final Four - ESPN

CHICAGO — After Florida Atlantic punched its ticket to the Final Four in 2023, then-Owls coach Dusty May gathered his team. He needed to apologize for a sign that hung in the locker room.

«We were playing for March habits,» May said with a smile, «and we should have been playing for April.»

«March habits» had resonated as an ideal for FAU to build its regimen toward — until, well, April 1 came with a national semifinal showdown against San Diego State. Now just three years later, in his second season at Michigan, May has done what any high-level coach does: He adjusted. The sign in the Wolverines' locker room fits the new paradigm: «April Habits.»

May has guided the program to its first Final Four since 2018, advancing on a 33-point evisceration of Tennessee in the Elite Eight — a two-hour tour de force of what Michigan basketball has become under his leadership. Considering the quick work he has done in returning the Wolverines to the top tier of teams nationally, it wouldn't be a surprise if they make a habit of April NCAA tournament games.

May's return to the Final Four recasts his role as a plucky underdog coach, which he held when taking 9-seed FAU from Conference USA to this stage three years ago. In just two years at Michigan, he has flashed the early promise of tackling a task arguably taller than a Cinderella run: maximizing an elite program.

«I felt like I was dreaming the entire time that FAU was playing in the game in the Elite Eight in Madison Square Garden,» said senior walk-on Charlie May, Dusty's son. «It just felt like a dream. And here, it just felt like something we expected to happen.»

A career that began as an Indiana basketball manager with the hopes of being a high school coach has taken a