Dusty May reveals Michigan basketball's X-factor in NCAA Tournament vs. Texas A&M
03/23/2025 09:59 AM
For the fourth occasion of its current five-game win streak, Michigan pulled off another upset win over Texas A&M to advance to the NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen. Head coach Dusty May recognized that, while his starters still came up big in the win, it was L.J. Cason and Roddy Gayle Jr. off the bench who ignited the victory.
In the 91-79 win, Michigan scored its most points since Jan. 12. Thirty-nine of those points came from the bench, led by Gayle’s game-high 26. Ironically, May credited Texas A&M coach Buzz Williams for giving more minutes to Cason and Gayle by pointing out the teams’ rough stretch of five games in nine days.
“L.J. [Cason], I thought, ignited this run,” May said. “We were flat. I didn’t realize until I listened to Coach Williams’ press conference we played five games in nine days. So I started thinking, man, do we have enough in the tank? So we wanted to get to our bench. We trust those guys; we know how good they are… [Cason’s] decision-making was great, and that started the run [before] the starters came back in.”
May also called Gayle, who has 25 starts on the year, a “starter who happens to not get his name called.” Gayle started most of the regular season before May supplanted him with defensive-minded guard Rubin Jones late in the year.
Gayle added four rebounds and a season-high four three-pointers to his career-high 26 points. Cason ended the game with 11 points, two rebounds and three assists in 20 minutes. Cason’s 11 points were his most since he scored the same amount against Miami, Ohio in Michigan’s fourth game of the year.
Roddy Gayle, Dusty May power Michigan to Sweet Sixteen
Michigan’s win over Texas A&M advances them to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 2022. It will also be May’s second trip of the last three years after taking Florida Atlantic to the Final Four in 2023. The Wolverines will face No. 1 seed Auburn in their next game, inarguably the team’s toughest game all season.
Auburn, who ended the year ranked No. 4 in the final AP poll, is coming off an 82-70 win over Creighton in the Round of 32. The Tigers have won their first two NCAA Tournament games by an average of 16 points.
Against Auburn, Michigan will need to turn back to its traditional dynamic duo of Danny Wolf and Vlad Goldin. The Wolverines will face unanimous first-team All-American center Johni Broome, who is also considered by some to be the frontrunner for the 2025 Wooden Award. Though he has just 22 total points in the tournament thus far, Broome averaged 18.4 points per game in the regular season, the fifth-most of any big man in the country.
Michigan and Auburn will face each other on Friday, March 28, at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. The southern location will give the Tigers a significant de facto home-court advantage.
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