{"id":75582,"date":"2025-06-04T05:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T05:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/75582\/"},"modified":"2025-06-04T05:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T05:28:14","slug":"morez-johnson-aday-mara-will-have-big-roles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/75582\/","title":{"rendered":"Morez Johnson, Aday Mara will have big roles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michigan Wolverines basketball<\/a> head coach Dusty May<\/a> had a front-row seat to a second-half barrage of buckets from Auburn guards Tahaad Pettiford and Denver Jones that helped the Tigers come back from nine points down to hold a double-digit lead the final five minutes of a 78-65 win to advance to the Elite Eight.<\/p>\n

Michigan\u2019s season ended there in Atlanta, in front of a sea of Tiger fans that either are from the host city or had to drive less than two hours to cheer on the No. 1 seed.<\/p>\n

Those moments as Auburn \u2014\u00a0which made an appearance in the Final Four \u2014 took over are what May remembers the most from what was, in a lot of ways, a magical postseason run. The Wolverines won the Big Ten Tournament by beating Purdue, Maryland and Wisconsin in less than 48 hours, then advanced to the Sweet 16 with victories over UC San Diego and Texas A&M.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s not just one memory from the run in March,\u201d May said on the \u2018Defend The Block\u2019 podcast with host Brian Boesch<\/a>. \u201cIt happened so quickly. And as optimistic as I am, looking toward the future and being around people, I just remember nine minutes to go and we\u2019re playing really good ball against Auburn.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just didn\u2019t make the plays, we didn\u2019t control the game like we needed to, and then obviously Auburn\u2019s guys, their guards were on the verge, they were teetering. Pettiford and Jones and those guys just got hot and made some unbelievable individual plays, and we just didn\u2019t counter that run well enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of those being the lasting memories could be chalked up to being a coach. It\u2019s the way they\u2019re wired. But beyond that, May seemed to take everything in during his first season at Michigan, evaluate it and act upon it once the campaign was over.<\/p>\n

\u201cUntil we\u2019re cutting down the nets on the very last day, I\u2019m probably gonna remember most vividly the reasons we didn\u2019t continue playing,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n

Throughout the course of last season, Michigan\u2019s head coach said publicly that he wanted the team to be more physical, have better playmaking and dominate the glass at a higher level.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a coincidence that those three things were addressed in the NCAA transfer portal<\/a> this offseason. Michigan had to replace star big men Danny Wolf and Vladislav Goldin anyway, but May did so with the addition of two players with Big Ten experience who are elite rebounders in Illinois\u2019 Morez Johnson Jr.<\/a> (6-9, 255) and UCLA\u2019s Aday Mara <\/a>(7-3, 240).<\/p>\n

UAB transfer Yaxel Lendeborg<\/a> \u2014\u00a0the top-ranked player in the portal this offseason \u2014\u00a0was the cherry on top on the front line. Meanwhile, point guard Elliot Cadeau<\/a>, who spent the last two seasons at North Carolina, has great quickness that will allow Michigan to play with more pace, and he\u2019s an elite passer. He checks the boxes May was looking for at the lead guard spot.<\/p>\n

One day after Michigan\u2019s season ended, assistant coach Akeem Miskdeen traveled to Chicago to meet with Johnson. He committed soon thereafter. Mara pledged shortly after Johnson and Lendeborg joined the list of pledges. May has coached against all three \u2014\u00a0Lendeborg when he was at FAU and Johnson and Mara in Ann Arbor (though Michigan scouted Johnson, he was held out of the U-M vs. Illinois game due to injury).<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the beauty of the portal \u2014\u00a0you have to make quick, decisive decisions,\u201d May said. \u201cAnd by playing these teams and watching as much ball as we do, it doesn\u2019t take us long to decide who we want once they go into the portal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson brought as much physicality as anyone in the league last season, and his 17.2-percent offensive rebounding rate would\u2019ve led the Big Ten had he played 40 percent of his team\u2019s minutes. The Big Ten\u2019s best offensive rebounder that met that minutes threshold was Michigan State forward\u00a0Jaxon Kohler<\/a>\u00a0at 14.5 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cMorez was an extremely expedited recruiting process, where he knew what he was looking for,\u201d May said. \u2018I think we fit a lot of the criteria of who he is, and he had a good experience at Illinois. He played well. He was in the rotation. So, sometimes these guys are just looking for a change.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we were extremely excited about both of those guys, because we were familiar with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mara, meanwhile, thrived toward the end of last season and flashed his high upside<\/a>. UCLA was 10-1 when Mara played 15-plus minutes, with the only loss coming in the NCAA Tournament second-round loss to Tennessee. He\u2019s a strong passer out of the high and low post and an elite rim protector.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you watched Aday play the last half of the year, he really took his game to another level and had some really, really bright moments,\u201d May explained. \u201cHis learning curve, his developmental curve going into his third year of college, where he\u2019s added weight, he was well-coached \u2026 both of those guys played for really good coaches, so they have a really solid foundation of how to play winning basketball at a high level, and now we\u2019ve gotta get them acclimated into our system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michigan will use both a lot \u2014\u00a0they could split minutes at the \u20185\u2019 \u2014\u00a0alongside Lendeborg, making for an exciting outlook down low.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, each year you\u2019re in college basketball, you\u2019re role\u2019s probably going to grow, so we\u2019re gonna lean on both of those guys to play big roles on both sides of the basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Dusty May had a front-row seat to a second-half barrage of buckets from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3723],"tags":[17430,7,217,17431,231,772,1544],"class_list":{"0":"post-75582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-aday-mara-23-casademont-zaragoza","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-morez-johnson-24-thornton-township","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-basketball","14":"tag-ncaab"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114623447358635914","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}