Everything Michigan assistant Mike Boynton said on the latest episode of Defend the Block

On whether his mindset on life has changed now that he’s a champion

Not really. As I kind of think about it in real time as we’re having this conversation, I think the way we talk about what we believe has a little bit more conviction to it. But in terms of how we do our jobs, the way we live, the way we interact with each other and the people in our program, it’s pretty much the same. And that starts with Dusty. He sets a tremendous tone for us. We talk about the temperature around our program never changing. And that’s obviously, certainly, you want to think about that when things aren’t as good, or things aren’t going the way you want them to. I hope they would. But I think it’s equally important that you have that perspective when things are going as well as you expect them to. I hope they would, because it gives you an opportunity to replicate it. And I think sometimes if you get too excited or too celebratory, you can lose sight of what it took to get there. All the sweat equity that went into it, all the sacrifice that went into it, because you start to feel a sense of, I’ve made it. And letting your guard down is one of the easiest ways to get knocked out.

On where the biggest strides that the program has made from when he first arrived to now

One of the things that I believe, especially from having a perspective that I’ve had as being a head coach before, is I’ve watched Dusty basically draw this masterpiece. And I mean that not in the sense of the national championship, but the structure and the functionality, day to day, of our program. Like I said, he sets a tremendous toll.

He creates the vision for us. And then he’s hired an elite staff, me notwithstanding, of elite workers, guys who are committed to having an ego-less approach to what we do. Having a servant mentality because we all believe that our job is to try to help our players as much as we can. In every aspect of their life, but certainly in basketball. And I think the way we’ve worked together, Justin Joyner, who’s no longer with us, in a good way. Coach Keem, Coach Church, Coach Drew, KT, B’s. I mean, all through our program, there’s a bunch of selfless winners. And Dusty being able to identify a group of people who could come together and put their own individual agendas. Because we all have personal aspirations.

Every single person has personal aspirations, but we’re willing to make sure that those are secondary to what we’re doing as a team. And I think because we’ve been successful, we’ve been even more committed to that selflessness, to the servant mentality, to guys being willing to maybe get out of their comfort zone and try things that maybe we haven’t tried before. Our defense has evolved. Our offense has evolved. And many people think that there’s just this magic dust that we’re sprinkling around here in Ann Arbor. And that’s far from the case. In fact, we’re as critical of ourselves as anything because we know that we have more that we could be doing. And I think because Dusty says that, that growth mindset tone with us, that our staff is able to go out and execute on a day-to-day basis.

On Dusty May’s trust in his staff and his delegation

I think it’s one of the truest measures of confidence, and that you believe in what you do and you believe in empowering people to execute the things that you’ve set out as goals. And it goes to show a very high level of self-security. Like he’s not concerned about whether someone else may do something well and get credit for it.

You know, we don’t talk about Dusty really as it relates to our defense, but he is the head coach. Like our defensive philosophy comes from him. Now we are tasked with implementing and communicating to our players from game to game with the specific plans from a game-to-game standpoint. But he sets the tone, and we do nothing without his blessing and his encouragement. And so, you know, a lot of talk about me as a defense coordinator and Justin and Church and I working specifically on that. It’s really executing his plan and his vision for how he wants things done. And a lot of that obviously starts with having the right players, because if you don’t have that, then the play is probably not going to work.

On what allowed the team to grow as a team and individuals

Well, these guys all come from tremendous families. And I think that sometimes goes, flies under the radar, is that we have super high-quality humans, first and foremost. They all have tremendous parents. They come from great coaches. They’ve been coached by some of the best coaches, you know, that has been in our game. And so they had a great foundation coming in. And then we talk about what we expect in the recruiting process, and our ultimate goal is to be the best team. But at the same time, we’re going to try to help them be the best versions of themselves as players. But there’s a sacrifice.

There’s a give and take with that. But then when you have the right kind of players who don’t really care as much about their own individual accolades, Yax is probably the best example of that. Then you have something really special, because your best players set the tone for you.

Yaxel Lendeborg being a selfless star, you know, I’ve been around a few of them now in my career. But being a selfless star gives you a chance for everyone else to fall in line. It’s probably the easiest way to say it. There’s probably a better way to say it, but that’s the easiest way that comes to my mind, because then it allows other guys who maybe want a little bit more for themselves individually to take a step back and have a little bit more of a reflective mindset and say, well, if that guy who’s our best player doesn’t mind taking three shots in a specific game because someone else has it going or because he needs to focus on defending a rebound in this game, then the next game when he’s got it going, the other guys are willing to sacrifice. So he set a great tone for us. Him, Adai, and Elliot as transfers coming in here, not wanting their own personal aspirations to be the most important thing.

They’ll allow a young guy like Trey McKenney, who didn’t have any idea what this was like, to kind of be willing to sacrifice coming off the bench, taking a role that he kind of had to grow into later in the season. Those guys set a great tone for him. The maturity of guys like Nimari Burnett and Roddy Gayle and Will Tschetter in their senior seasons to take a lesser role, set a great tone for L.J. Cason, who probably expected to step up in a role this year. And so I think this collection of that group and those guys all being comfortable in their own skin, blocking out the noise, which I’m sure came to them, that they should be getting more shots. Maybe they should be making more money, even, if we want to talk about that part of it, because they all could have gotten more of everything somewhere else. But to see them kind of in the way they did kind of validates that it was worth it. But I think they would have felt that way even if we didn’t cut down on that on April 6th.

On players taking lesser roles for the betterment of the team

Sure. I mean, Will Tschetter could have started probably on 15 or 16 of the teams in the conference. Roddy Gayle could have probably started on 67 teams that were in the NCAA tournament. Trey McKenney could have started for pretty much, you know, like, and it didn’t matter. Like, coaches talk about this stuff all the time. Who starts is very, very trivial, man. Like, it doesn’t really matter. And oftentimes it was a matter of what we needed at the end of the game because they were all capable of getting the job done. I do think there needs to be a little bit of a shift in mindset.

Like, we’re in a different age of college athletics. We don’t own these kids. Like, it’s OK that, you know, they make choices that they think is best for them. As Michigan people, we should be very thankful and happy that they decided that this was the place they wanted to be this year and that they accomplished the goal that we all want to accomplish. But if, you know, next year there’s a kid that transfers to a different school, we should support them. You know, we’re going to play one in Columbus next year who was here for a year. And that’s OK. It was his choice. We’re happy for him.

We want him to succeed. We want to beat the crap out of him when we play him. And that’s just the way things are now. We’ve got to kind of let go of the old mentality that everybody has to stay one place. We’re all, you know, pretty driven to do the thing that we feel like is best for us at the end of the day. But when we’re in it with our team, how we approach that part of it. And these guys did a tremendous job of sacrificing for one another and sacrificing so this program could achieve the ultimate goal this year.

On immediately flipping the switch to the transfer portal after winning the title

Yeah, I mean, the reality is it happens immediately. But you also, we kind of built up to it, right? As the season goes along, you start hearing about it die, improving its profile, and the rest improving its profile. Obviously, we thought Yax came here to do that, partly. And so you kind of have some contingencies in mind. It’s just that when the floodgates open, it’s like drinking out of two ends of a fire hose at the same time, right?

And so there’s a little bit of distractedness to the celebration because you’re trying to make sure that you’re on top of the things that you know you have to do. You’re at a little bit of a disadvantage because most of the other programs have been able to prepare for, all right, what’s April 7th look like for us when we wake up? And it was actually before we go to sleep.

I’ll take them again next year happily. So, you know, every situation is specific to the individual that’s involved. And so we have those conversations very candidly with them. We support each and every one of these kids’ decision to do whatever they feel like is best for their careers. Elliot Cadeau, for example, this is good for him to be going through this process. A year from now, we’re hopeful, and we feel confident he’s going to be back with us next year, even after he goes through this process. But it’ll be good for him to experience what this looks like. No different than what Yax did last year.

Same for Morez. Regardless of what decision he makes for himself individually, this is going to be a good process. And if it results in him playing for the Chicago Bulls next year, well, we’ll go to watch the Chicago Bulls play the Pistons when they come to Detroit next season. If it results in him playing for Michigan next year, then certainly we’ll do everything we can to help him be in a better position a year from now, because our goal, our job is to help them achieve their goals also while trying to accomplish the goals that the program has in mind. But at the same time, you have to be prepared for the reality that a few of them may not come back and how do you then put together a roster that can still be very competitive and give you a chance to compete at the highest level of college basketball. And so obviously we’ve done that in a few different positions with the signees that we have.

And I think we’re going to have a chance to have a team that looks a little bit different because we’re going to be younger than we’ve been next year, but still very, very talented. And we’ll look forward to seeing how we can put the team together to be the best version of itself.

On gauging the current roster and whether to add anything to it

Yeah, I mean, it’s a fluid situation always. And until you get the guys here, you’re about ready to play. You’re still kind of uneasy about how it looks.

And the reality is even once the season starts, it takes some time. I save random pictures on my phone, and I’ve shown it to probably about 10 people. There’s a picture of the, I think it was posted by Cincinnati, but the final score of our exhibition game against Cincinnati. And this isn’t about Cincinnati, it’s about us, right? We became one of the most dominant college basketball teams in the history of college basketball, right? 37-3, 19-1, 10 on conference play.

But we gave up 100 points on our home court to Cincinnati in October. You know, now there are some factors in there. It gives you an opportunity to say this thing, yes, to your question, we will evolve depending on the roster completion, how that looks, whether we add somebody or not, because we don’t know how this team is going to need to play to be successful. I mean, coming out of the exhibition game, but then we played three real games. The Oakland game was a blowout, right, from the beginning to the end.

And then we played two games against high major competition where it’s like, hmm, we’ve got some things to figure out. We won them both, but there were some questions coming out of those games that needed to be kind of massaged and figured out whether it was the lineup construction, whether it was the style of play. Yax got benched in the game against Wake Forest for a significant part of the second half.

So hindsight, right, this is why we try to have the same temperature, because if you get too low on that moment and you bury Yaxle, we don’t do what we did. Sure. If we panic and we don’t think we can play the three bigs because it’s clunky for two or three games to start the season, maybe we figure out a different way to win, but I don’t know if we dominate the way we did throughout the season.

And so, again, like, there’s a small chance we add a piece, yeah. But there’s also a chance that this is the roster. And either way, I think our staff’s showing that we can figure out how to massage it throughout the year to get really positive and not always excellent, but really good results at the end.

On what sticks out to him winning the championship and what he thinks about looking back

You know, there was about a two-minute segment that my family, my wife and my two kids, we got just the four of us together on the court. And my wife, who’s usually not very emotional, was overcome with emotion. And my son, who may be the least emotional person in the history of humankind, was emotional, and that one felt really fulfilling.

When you think about as a coach, like, the sacrifice your family makes as you do this, like, they don’t really always get to be a part of that. And it’s very rare that you won a national championship, right? I’ve been doing this 22 years now. It’s the first time I’ve ever even played in the game. So that was pretty awesome on a personal note. But the same thing for our staff.

Like, the number of hours we spend, not just together, but even just doing the job, people think that, you know, we just show up at 7 o’clock on a Wednesday night and we’re going to throw the ball up, or we’re going to show up at 2 o’clock for practice and we’re going to practice for two hours. I mean, that’s probably closer to 15-hour days consistently than there are eight, right? And to obviously achieve what we did. So for that to happen for everybody was just truly amazing.