The game is still more than 48 hours away, but the build up to the epic Final Four matchup between Arizona and Michigan has been going since it was set last weekend.
Both the Wildcats and Wolverines arrived in Indianapolis on Wednesday, and Thursday was the first of many interviews players and coaches will be doing in and around Lucas Oil Stadium ahead of Saturday’s clash.
Below is what UA coach Tommy Lloyd, who is making his first appearance at the Final Four as a head coach, and Michigan’s Dusty
May, who was also there in 2023 with Florida Atlantic, had to say at their first press conference:
Lloyd on being at the Final Four: “Feels like a few of us have been on like a 5-week tour together, so let’s see if we can keep it going. Obviously t’s an incredible honor to be here in Indianapolis at the Final Four. The state of Indiana and Indianapolis in particular is the center of the basketball universe a lot of times, with the history and tradition of the game and what it means to the state. It’s an incredible honor to be representing the University of Arizona, and ready to play on Saturday.”
On how NIL has changed international recruiting: “To be honest with you, I think it’s maybe opened a few more doors. One of the detriments to international recruiting back in the day was if a kid wanted to get paid, the European clubs could pay them legally, and obviously we couldn’t. Now that that hurdle has been taken away, you’re seeing more and more good players from Europe that are willing to come over. I think it’s going to settle down here in a little bit. With everyone trying to figure out this convoluted notion of who’s eligible, who’s not eligible, kids coming over at 21, I think that’ll settle down. All our international guys came over at 18, 19, so normally just had graduated from high school type of thing. I think we will see in the next year or two we’ll get back to that deal, and I hope it stays part of the game. It’s a global game, and there’s a lot of good players over there, and I think it’ll help make the college basketball product stronger than ever.”
On Ivan Kharchenkov: “ Ivan has been great from day one but I think what’s been cool is his role has expanded over the course of the season to where he’s become one of our better playmakers and has a knock in these game-critical moments. He’s been great defensively all year. He has a winning mentality and a winning approach to the game. Yeah, it’s been really cool to watch him have consistent success but then even be able to take it to another level as we got down the stretch of the season.”
On Arizona winning the national title in Indianapolis in 1997 wearing the same uniforms: “I must have a blind spot when it comes to fashion or uniforms or head bands or shoes. I just never really notice that stuff. I couldn’t even tell you what uniforms our guys have been wearing. I just usually know if we’re the team in the dark jerseys or the lighter jerseys.”
On waiting long to become a head coach and for the school to get back to the Final Four: “Guys, I’m a team guy. Like, I have really a difficult time individualizing things for myself especially. When we were at Gonzaga making those runs, I’m sure I wanted to win as much as I did now for the team. For me, I say this often, my strongest motivating factor is our community and our fans. I know how much this run has meant for them, to kind of get over the hump after 25 years, to get back to a Final Four. If there’s a way we could win a couple games here, I think it would be really special for our community, and that would make me more excited than anything.”
On the difference between this Final Four in Indy and in 2021: “Well, it’s very different. I can’t remember my room number, but it was on the third floor of the Marriott and we were there for about a month. Yeah, you didn’t leave the hotel. It was actually really interesting at first, all the teams in the tournament were in basically in this run of hotels right here. We were kind of all connected, so we were kind of all, I guess, whatever, quarantined or whatever you want to call it together. It was really cool to be in close proximity.
“There may or may not have been a lounge that was created by the coaches that they all hung out at night together, which was really cool, just you went in there and you built some relationships with coaches. It was almost like being on one of these reality shows. The next day Coach X would have been gone. He would have been sent off the island. You’re like, man, I’m sad they lost, we don’t get to hang out tonight. Definitely a different experience, and now it’s just kind of the monster of the Arizona fan base and our traveling crew that are hanging out together. Definitely a different experience, but I look back at that 2021 experience with fond memories, and the NCAA and the city of Indianapolis did an amazing job pulling off the NCAA Tournament at a time when we needed that type of thing and the game of basketball, but for our entire country just to be able to celebrate together.”
On roster construction and relying on freshmen: “I think the best answer I can give you, I think it all comes down to just really good players. Obviously when you talk about freshmen, I think there’s an assumption that they’re inexperienced and youthful. But some of these freshmen are maybe more experienced than we give them credit for. Some of these guys, they played in state championship games, they played in gold medal games. They’ve done these AAU circuits that I know that you frequent a little bit around, and these kids are maybe a little bit more worldly than people give them credit for. It depends on how they’ve been raised and their maturity level.”
On getting Tobe Awaka and Anthony Dell’Orso to come off the bench: “Well, it was critical for the makeup of our team that those guys were maybe able to accept a role that I had kind of envisioned for them, and I thought what would be best for the team. Tobe, he actually volunteered. It was his idea to come off the bench. He’s such a mature guy and such a good player, I think he came in and he said, Big Mo had an injury last year, and he’s a developing player, and he’s really worked hard to come back at full strength. I think it would be a boost for his confidence if he started. Koa, here’s this elite highly recruited freshman. He’s never not started. And Tobe said I have experience not starting so I think it would be better for Koa to keep him in a role that he’s comfortable with. That was his idea.
“Delly, when I talked to him Delly would have liked to start, and I kind of told him my vision. I just felt like we needed kind of a sniper off the bench, and I think having that—somebody that can fulfill that role was going to be really important. Another reason, probably the most important reason I came up with that, not only is Brayden a good player but I knew Brayden was going to spend some time at the point. Our schedule was so tough early, I didn’t want Brayden coming off the bench to sub for Bradley, say Bradley picks up an early foul and now you have this freshman who’s youthful and trying to gain experience running the point his first minutes in the game. So I wanted his first minutes of the game at the point guard to come after he’d been on the court for a couple minutes as a 2 or a combo. That was the reasoning, and I’m thankful for Delly and Tobe for accepting that role because without them doing that, we would not be here right now.”
On the North Carolina opening: “Listen, I’ve got my full focus on this team. Nothing is distracting me. That’s just how I’ve decided to approach it. I’m excited. I thought we had a really good practice today. I’m excited to play for our practice tomorrow. I’m not a multitasker. You can ask my wife. I’m 100 percent locked in on Arizona basketball right now, and I’m excited to see what this team can do. I have a real strong belief in this team, and this team deserves my full attention, so that’s what I’m giving them.”
On the potential for another big Dell’Orso moment and his value overall: “Incredibly important. I think you’re right, there’s always an X-factor. There’s always somebody that steps up for the winning team that maybe you didn’t expect. Everyone on our team has had moments this year where they’ve been that guy. So I just tell our guys, you never know when that moment is going to come. So of course you want to be prepared for it, but also, don’t be scared of it. When you get a chance to make that shot or make that play or get that rebound, do it with conviction. So that’s what I talk about, because there’s no shame in the ball not going in. That’s it. But it’s a great question because it’ll be interesting to see who from maybe the role players on each team is able to kind of step out and have a game because that could be a difference maker.”
On having the athletic director’s son on the team: “Yeah, that’s interesting. He’s a great kid, and he has a ton of energy and a ton of spirit. It’s been an interesting journey because to be honest with you, he’s maybe not at the level of player as most walk-ons. But watching him navigate that has been impressive because it’s not easy to show up in a room every day and — if you see him standing next to Tobe Awaka, you’re like, okay, how is he going to function in practice. To see his personality grow over the last few years and him gain confidence and comfort and finding other ways to contribute has been impressive. Jackson is a really smart kid with amazing energy, and I’ve enjoyed watching him navigate this process because what I’m going to tell you is it’s not easy.
“Being a walk-on is not easy. Being a manager is not easy. It’s a massive amount of sacrifice you have to make. Especially when you put on that jersey, that jersey means something. To be able to keep your confidence as a person when maybe you’re not up to the level as a player is something that I’ve been really impressed that Jaxson has been able to do the last couple of years.”
On Motiejus Krivas’ development: “Man, when I first saw Mo, I thought, this is going to be the next great big man from Lithuania after Sabonis. I’m sure there’s a few others in between there. But that was my first thought. It’s been really cool to watch him kind of grow into that. He had a solid freshman year for us, but I think like a lot of international kids, he came over and maybe thought it was going to be a little bit easier than it really was. Then the second year I thought he was prepared to make the jump we’ve kind of seen now, but he had that injury. So for him to hang with it, and this is his third year … it all kind of happened. It’s really cool to see because the patience and perseverance and endurance it takes to be a good player is really hard, so I’m happy that he’s having some success.”
On Jaden Bradley: “JB has been awesome. I don’t know if I’ve seen a guy be as consistently high -level in clutch moments as he’s been for an entire season. He’s been great. What’s really cool about him is he’s not afraid of those moments, but he’s definitely not, like, trying to make this team about him. He’s about winning, 100 percent. He would be fine — if you told him right now, JB, you’re going to go 0 for 27 if you get to play two games here and have 12 turnovers but you’re going to win both games but you’re going to play really bad, but you’re going to win, he would 100 percent take it because that’s the kind of guy he is.”
On Awaka’s value to the team: “Well, we’d played against Tobe when he was a freshman at Tennessee at our place. I never had heard of him. Here’s this guy, maybe a little bit undersized, he’s playing with guys like Oumar Ballo and Azuolas Tubelis and Tennessee had a bunch of big guys, that Serbian guy that was in wrestling matches all the time.
“I just remember there was kind of a loose ball rebound situation, and like two of our big guys went for it and two of Tennessee’s big guys went for it. Everyone fell to the floor and there’s Tobe standing with the ball. I’m like, oh, my God, who’s that guy. That summer I got to kind of watch him play for USA Basketball up close and just then you start hearing what a great kid he is. So when his name went in the portal, we were all in. For us, he’s been an incredibly important piece to our identity. If you want to be effort and physicality and toughness, let’s just put a picture of Tobe Awaka in the dictionary because he’s been that for us.”
On who would win in a pickleball match with Dusty May: “That’s a good question. Does Dusty have the glasses on or off? I’m joking there. Dusty looks like the guy to me. He’s probably got a solid little pickleball game. I know he definitely would dissect the game and he would become a student of it, because that’s what he is as a coach, and I’m sure he would have great touch and play lots of angles. I’m a little bit more as you can imagine of a banger they call it. I’m coming right for your chest. I like body bags, those types of things when I play. Maybe that’s a little different approach.”
On being considered a finesse team in the past: “Who labeled us that? Listen, if we’ve been a finesse program the last few years, I think people are being a little bit lazy. Finesse basketball has never been in my DNA. If you go back a lot of those years, those teams we had at Gonzaga were incredibly physical. To me, that physicality is the price of admission. If you’re not physical and you’re not willing to go toe to toe and fight, eventually, I don’t care what type of tricks you’ve got up your sleeve as a coach you’re probably going to come up short. For me it’s a baseline requirement to be a championship level program if you want to be competing at this level year in and year out, and that’s what we hope to do.”
May on being in a Final Four close to his hometown of Terre Haute, Ind.: “It’s special simply being here. It’s a little bit overwhelming with friends and families and old teachers and whatnot, but it’s a full circle moment. I still remember as a junior, senior manager (at Indiana) when the Final Four was here in Indianapolis myself, and all of us managers wanted to find a way in coaching in any capacity would pile in a car and just get out and hopefully bump into any coach and find a way to make an impression, obviously using the Coach (Bobby) Knight badge to get in any conversation. Just a full circle moment from chasing around coaches trying to beg for a GA spot, to be back here with this team, it’s surreal.”
On the matchup with Arizona: “We feel like we’re built in a similar fashion to Arizona and I’ll begin with the veterans on both teams and how they’ve taken this off-the-bench role and they’ve impacted winning almost every game. I see so many similarities with the intangibles and the team character of both of us, and then obviously when you factor in the size and both teams get a lot of credit for how good our front lines are, but there’s some great guards and very intelligent basketball being played by both teams. When we watch them, we see ourselves other than a few stylistic differences. We see a lot of ourselves in them, and it’s going to be a battle. We believe it’s going to be won in the 39th or 40th minute of this game.”
On Yaxel Lendeborg developing into a great player: “It took him a while, and I think our guys have constantly reminded him. He’s so unselfish. He’s so — I don’t know how to say it. He wants to be one of the guys. They’ve encouraged him to be more aggressive, to shoot more, to hunt some more individual accolades all year, and he simply refused because he didn’t care about any of those things. It’s allowed us to have a real selfless group, and it’s improved our environment because he’s been so unselfish but he still has no idea how good he is.”
On the competitive nature of practices: “Well, all season when we went starters versus reserves, the reserves have held their own, and then we start mixing in the lineups where you have a couple of our all-league guys going against a couple of the all-league guys on another team. It’s just been a really healthy competitive environment all year, and it’s part — I think it’s a big part of our success and our improvement throughout the season because if you’re not — if you don’t have 10 guys out there battling, pushing each other to get better, then you can get a little bit stagnant and whatnot. The depth of our roster certainly helped our practice habits.”
On going back to campus after winning Elite Eight: “To be honest, we’ve tried to keep it as business as possible and limit all of those outside distractions and stay busy. We gave our guys a day and a half off essentially. We had two days off of organized practice, but on day two we lifted. We had an Arizona overview and we did individual workouts and did some things that we thought might prepare us to play in the dome and things like that. To be honest, it felt a lot different than it did at FAU. This felt like something our guys expected, and even our fan base, it felt like they expected it a little bit, as well, and so did I because of the guys we have wearing a Michigan jersey. All along, it’s just kind of felt like mission has not been accomplished yet.
On Aday Mara and his ‘Big Goof’ nickname: “In our building we take pride in psychological safety, and we want all these guys to be who they are now when other people are counting on us to do a job, then we have to do it in a certain way with a level of intensity and professionalism and whatnot, but when we’re not doing that job, we want these guys to enjoy each other’s company, to have fun and be who they are.
“He’s always goofing around and his personality — I say that, Elliot and Morez are psychos and Yax is laughing and cutting up and he’s silly, and Aday is silly and Roddy is serious and Nimari is serious. So you have all these unique personalities. We want them to be themselves, and I date myself with my staff. I’m older than all those guys, but Reno 911, I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Lieutenant Dangle.
“So yes, I hear some laughter. So there was one day Aday made a play and he was just being silly on the court, and it was the same day that I had sent the staff a Lieutenant Dangle goofing in his new boots. I think it was Coach Church said he’s just goofing, so he immediately became the Big Goof. “
On building off this run for future success: “I want to give our team last year a lot of credit for the way those guys played, and a couple of them left, a couple of them stayed, a couple of them went to the NBA. But those guys, when you move up, there’s a lot of questions when you go from low major to high major, whatever. There are a lot of questions.
“When you’re recruiting, you’re recruiting against that every day. When you haven’t had a guy drafted in the first round you’re recruiting against that every day. There’s certain things you’re always recruiting again. Last year’s team gave us an identity that this is the way we’re going to play.
“I think when you turned on the TV, our guys, the way they shared the ball, the way they cared for each other, how connected they were as a group on the court, showed that the guys we’re recruiting now, and you look at the way Vlad and Danny as two seven-footers play, if you’re a big guy that wants to play a certain way, then seeing what those guys did made us a very attractive option for them.
“Recruiting wasn’t near as difficult last year as it was the first year, and hopefully each year recruiting becomes more niche and we have an identity and a brand that people choose us. We talk about the transfer portal and all this other stuff. I think more than ever we used to choose players and we used to convince them to come play for us, whether it’s because we were showering them with attention, showing them more love, or we’d simply been recruiting them longer. In our opinion we always thought those were pretty shallow reasons to choose a university because a coach came to more 6:00 a.m. workouts, things like that.
“Now the players — and each coach may have a different opinion, but the players are choosing us. When we make contact with the player the first thing they do is slide into the DMs and messages of all of our players that we’ve coached in the past and they do more homework and intel on us than we do on them.
“So I know that’s spinning in a number of different directions, but recruiting has changed so much, and I’m going to echo Coach Barnes from Tennessee last week, it’s not that bad. We used to recruit guys for three years and spend 80, 100, 200 manhours away from our families begging these 15 to 18 year olds to come play at our university and then they decide to go another direction, and you just think of all the time and resources you’ve wasted. Recruiting has been streamlined and it’s much more efficient than it’s ever been.”
On building an almost entirely new team for this season: “If you’re retaining the right guys, yes. You have to retain the right guys, and I think that’s a big part of our success. The guys that we retained earned the trust of our new guys immediately because they wanted to win. There was no hidden agendas. They were all about the team. They taught all of our unwritten rules, they expressed how much Michigan meant to them and what this place can do for all of us after we’re done playing, so there is my stance on retention.
“We brought back our entire team after the Final Four run at FAU, and it was the hardest coaching job, the most difficult year of my life as an assistant, as a video coordinator, as a head coach. That was the most difficult year for a number of reasons. So that year it would have been much healthier for the group if we didn’t retain everyone. Because when you look at college basketball, Tre Carroll was an All Big East player that didn’t get to play. Brandon Lorient was a big time player at West Virginia that didn’t get to play. Nick Boyd was, B.J. Greenlee. So we had these guys that were Power Five starters that weren’t able to play in games.
“So it was difficult on everyone, so that was a nice segue into this high major Power Five stuff because we had all of the high major problems in a minor scale, but they were all there, and so we were forced to deal with that stuff before. When you talk about retention, retention is not always good. It’s retaining the right guys and making sure they still have the same agenda and objectives, which is to win and to do it together.”
On Elliot Cadeau’s allergic reaction and hospital visit: “Very unfortunate for him to have to go through that. If it’s the worst thing that happens to us, then we’re very blessed. It also just shows him how much he means to his teammates. They were very concerned, obviously, like we all would be for a reaction like that. But just grateful that he’s fine. We have great medical care, and he’s back with us. Dude is a warrior. He’ll be fine.”
On Arizona’s 3 freshman starters: “Well, first of all, if you’ve played in the Euroleague you are not a freshman, so let’s cut Kharchenkov off that list. When we were at Florida we used to talk about how there are certain prerequisites to be able to play as a freshman at a Power Five level and one of those prerequisites was playing USA Basketball because of the amount of intensity that it takes to compete during the trials, during the practices and also the games and also the sacrifice it takes because you’re playing with 11 of the best players in our country and you have to sacrifice so much just to play.
“So you know what it means to play team ball and put something above yourself. When you look at Burries and Koa Peat, I think both of those guys have multiyear national team experience, Team USA experience like Morez Johnson. Trey McKenney has one year for us. But I think that experience allows those guys to be much more advanced than the typical high school player. Now some guys are older, some guys are younger, but those guys — I guess DNA factors into it. Those guys don’t look like freshmen.”
On the differences between this Final Four trip and with FAU: “Well, the Monday (that) year, I think we advanced on Sunday, so the Monday last year I spent the entire day talking to coaching — other coaches that had played in the Final Four about what to do and what not to do and how to prepare. So the first day is simply learning because we obviously didn’t anticipate going to the Final Four. So you’re learning that, and this year it was more of our staff getting together and going through our notes and checklist about what we didn’t do well and what we did and try to recreate what we did well and try to figure out a better way for what we didn’t.
“So I think we’re a step ahead there. As far as it feeling different, I’d challenge you to walk into our offices arena at FAU and everything about what that group did and even just to look at a picture of that group and their journeys to get there and this one, it’s two different situations. This is just — we felt like we expected to be here. Last year we were on the innocent fight for about three or four months where we were just lost in the fight, battling every single day, scrapping for everything and not knowing if you’re even going to be in the tournament, let alone make it to the Final Four. I think here we probably clinched an NCAA Tournament bid after Players Era in November, so just the entire thing has felt different.”
On the Final Four alt cast featuring the Fab Five: “Well, first of all, other than Michael Jordan, since I’ve been alive, I don’t think there’s ever been a group change the culture for the better of our sport than the Fab Five. Just number one. We’re proud to represent those guys and carry the flag for the former players at the University of Michigan. People have no idea all of the great players because there’s been several different coaches and there’s been different umbrellas, how many great players, how many great coaches have walked those sidelines and played on that court. Obviously the more attention on the Fab Five, the better for us as a brand as a basketball program.”
