New ideas are always welcome in college basketball, even after coming off a national championship.
In addition to Dusty May departing for the Dallas Mavericks, the Michigan men’s basketball coaching staff lost Justin Joyner to Oregon State and Drew Williamson to the Mavs. Replacing them are Mike Martin, who was the head coach at his alma mater Brown the past 14 seasons, and Dylan Murphy, who was the head coach of the Osceola Magic (Orlando’s G League affiliate) the past four seasons.
These two hires
could make or break Mike Boynton Jr.’s first season leading the program, but the new head coach has faith in his two newest confidants.
“It’s been a true blessing for me that Dylan Murphy and Mike Martin, both sitting head coaches, would come to do this with me,” Boynton recently told the media. “I don’t hide anything, the contract sitaution probably isn’t the most ideal to leave their jobs for, but I think it shows the gravity of where our basketball program is and the brand of Michigan and what it means for people to want to be here. Those guys coming in, with the knowledge they have and their backgrounds, have really helped our staff grow as a group.
“I wish everybody on our staff would have stayed, but the truth is, I think it has helped everybody on our staff to have some fresh perspective, so there wasn’t a sense of complacency coming off of last year. Some fresh ideas, some guys who can look at some of the things that we were doing and maybe have blind spots on. We felt pretty good about most of the things we were doing, but we were able to tweak some things on this years team.“
Different coaches bring different experiences, and Michigan will lean on those experiences with Martin and Murphy, the latter of whom recently praised the versatility of the program’s blended staff.
“I don’t know that we have any weaknesses on this staff, I think more so we all have a different set of experiences, coaching at different levels,” Murphy told Maize n Brew at the program’s media day. “I think we got a bunch of different skillsets based on where we’ve been and I think that kind of makes it a nice mix for us, being able to attack problems with that.”
Murphy has already made his presence felt for this group, with Boynton confirming he drew up the alley-oop play between Elliot Cadeau and Moustapha Thiam to open up the Eastern Michigan exhibition win earlier this month.
When we asked him about this play, Murphy shyed away from taking credit himself, instead preaching the importance of Michigan’s talented roster working hard this season.
“We’re going to be as good as the work we put in,” Murphy said. “We got a lot of talented players, but there’s a lot of talented players in college basketball. For us it’s just about the work we put in and our commitment to our process and see where that goes.”
Murphy coached many former Michigan players in his time in the G League, including Franz Wagner, Mo Wagner, Jett Howard, Caleb Houstan, Iggy Brazdeikis and DJ Wilson. He’s had plenty of time molding NBA players, which makes him fit into the program considering its NBA influence.
He told Michigan play-by-play radio maestro Brian Boesch in an offseason podcast that G League basketball looks a lot like the basketball Michigan fans will see this season.
“I think stylistically the games are a lot more similar than people give credit for in terms of the actions that are run on both ends of the floor,” Murphy said. “The style of defense, obviously the lack of defensive three seconds closer, three-point line creates some different spacing issues versus the NBA. But principles of play, I think are very similar here at Michigan and what coach May did and what coach Boynton is doing, very similar to the NBA stylistically. So I think in that sense, it’s made the transition a lot more comfortable for me and just excited to bring whatever I can to everybody.”
As for Martin, you learn a lot of things running a college basketball program for 14 seasons, even if the competition isn’t as tough as it is in the Big Ten. Martin plans to lean on that experience here in Ann Arbor.
“I believe in Mike, in our staff and I’m thrilled for the opportunity to work with everyone here and with the roster that they’ve done an amazing job keeping in place,” Martin told Boesch. “I’ve had 14 years where I was, albeit at a much different level. I was running my own program. So I’ve had to make a lot of decisions as an assistant coach. Now, having had that experience, I can hopefully anticipate some things and kind of be someone that has some ideas for Mike along with all the other guys on staff. And yeah, I’m a competitor, and I’m fired up to help these guys get better every day and prepare them for the season that we have in front of us.”
I can guarantee Michigan fans are as fired up as Martin for this season to finally get started after an offseason that has felt two years long. Michigan tips off against Oakland at 6 p.m. tonight on the Big Ten Network.
