Here’s how May Madness started: Dusty May didn’t even plan to take the Florida Atlantic University coaching job. He chuckles from his desk as he says this five seasons later, with the FAU men’s basketball team being ranked No. 19, riding a 20-game win streak and having sold out their arena for the rest of the season.
Back then, May was happy as a University of Florida assistant coach. He had two children in high school and didn’t want to uproot his family, yet again, for a coach’s wandering life. That’s not even getting in the reason why the job was open: FAU had seven consecutive losing seasons before he arrived.
“Then, when I drove down here, the GPS took me down U.S. 1 in Boca Raton,’’ May said. “I said to my wife, ‘This is beautiful.’ We began talking and …'’
Now he’s created the surprise team of college basketball as January turns to February. Sure, college basketball is defined by March Madness. Being the team people are talking about right now wouldn’t mean much to a blue-blood program like Kentucky or Duke or North Carolina — all of which are below FAU in the rankings, by the way.
But May Madness means something at FAU. It means everything, actually. This is a program that has made just one NCAA Tournament, and that was two decades ago. It had never been ranked until two weeks ago when it weighed in at No. 24. There was such a thunderclap of attention it sold out the arena for the first time anyone can remember last Saturday against Western Kentucky and May felt it necessary to address his team.
“We wondered how we would handle success at a place that hasn’t had a lot of success,’’ he said. “We said, ‘Hey, this is awesome, it’s great to be appreciated and respected. Part of our goal is to grow the university’s name. But we also talked about how it didn’t mean anything yet.”
FAU beat Western Kentucky 70-63 for its 20th straight win. That’s the longest streak going in college basketball. It’s so long it effected how May coached this team. Some starters were hurt, for example, as the team won the first game of the streak in Gainesville against Florida 76-74. As the season went on, May planned to reinsert the now-healthy starters back in the lineup whenever the team stumbled.
Except it never stumbled.
“Are you OK with coming off the bench?” he said to sophomore guard Alijah Martin.
“That’s fine,’’ Martin said.
It was the same with sophomore guard Johnell Davis when he became healthy. That’s led to an unusual team where the bench produces more than the starters. But it’s working. Why change?
“We’ve got closers, not starters,’’ May said. “Their attitude explains what’s going on around here.”
It explains why FAU sits atop Conference USA heading into Saturday’s game at Alabama-Birmingham. So does this: For years, FAU hired coaches people heard of with NBA or prominent coaching backgrounds like Sidney Green, Matt Doherty, Mike Jarvis and Michael Curry. None worked out.
May was a small-name assistant when FAU hired him. The only prominent name in the Indiana native’s past was he quit playing Division II basketball to become a student manager for Bob Knight at Indiana University.
“I wanted to get into coaching was told the best thing you can do is work at a student manager and study Coach Knight,’’ he said. “There’s so many things I learned. Just in passing stats off in his office, several times he’d show an article and say, ‘Hey, Dusty, you ever heard of this guy?’
“If I hadn’t, he’d say, ‘That’s the problem with you young guys. You don’t read enough.’ I developed that curiosity for always reading, always watching film, trying to learn. That’s the imprint he left on me.”
May is breaking an unwritten rule as he talks. The rule is to hold phone conversations outside the coaches’ office. The rooms are too small, the walls too thin, the noise too loud not to bother others.
Some mornings, May walks six, seven, eight miles outside the building as he does his phone work. The national media is calling now. Talk-show host Jim Rome. ESPN and Yahoo.
So here’s some advice to May: Keep the walking shoes on. If FAU remains the surprise of college basketball, May Madness will go bonkers colliding with March Madness.
