Michigan head basketball coach Dusty May is a basketball guy through and through. When you hear him speak at press conferences or watch him on the sidelines, you start to understand. It's an obsession for him and he leaves no stone unturned. That's why when he says they are still figuring a lot of things out, it's believable. It doesn't sound like a generic, coach-speak answer.

May was pretty forthcoming on Monday morning about a lot of things. He addressed the turnovers, he openly criticized specific players but in a very constructive way and he also said that he's not quite sure about his lineups just yet. Don't confuse that to mean that May isn't prepared or in over his head. He simply has an extremely versatile roster that he's trying to fit still. It's going to be really scary when May finds it, but for now he's happy at 3-0 as things are still a work in progress. 

"We’re still figuring out what are going to be our ways of scoring when the game slows down," May explained.  "We call them cheat codes in-house. What are our cheat codes going to be? We knew what they were going to be because we coached Vlad [Goldin]. We didn’t know that Danny [Wolf] was going to be as proficient as he was late game. Right now, we’re still trying to figure out what our cheat codes are going to be.

"No matter what type of game, we can go to this to calm us down or get a basket or whatever the case. Right now, we’re still searching for the right combinations. We’ll probably tinker with the lineup again to find those. We have three games of that now with our roster. Even the first exhibition game, we’re missing Adai [Mara] and Morez [Johnson]. We don’t really have data from those games as far as lineup combinations."

One major piece that May is trying to to fit into the rotation is super transfer Yaxel Lendeborg. The former UAB star is playing just fine at Michigan, but May sees his 6-10, do-it-all forward going to even higher heights as things get ironed out.

"With Yaxel playing on the court with Morez and Adai, Yaxel and Roddy [Gayle] have to be different Yaxels and Roddys than they do when, say, Adai is out of the game and they’re playing just with Morez. Or when we played Will and Yax together at the four-five a few minutes.

"Those transitions, we haven’t done a good enough job of, in real time, getting them to understand that. We have to figure out a way to get Yaxel in space better. And he has to trust his jump shot more. He’s a good shooter, but he’s not trusting his three-point shot. When he’s open, he needs to shoot it. But when you look at our big possessions, our dunks and layups and wide-open shots, he played a big role in most of those possessions. You look at Adai’s seal dunk late, that’s a Yaxel post feed.

"He just wants to play good basketball. So he’s a unique one where he’s not going to grab the rebound and push if the point guard’s asking for the outlet because he’s such a good teammate. In reality, we have to do a better job as a group when he has the ball, and getting out in space and letting him use his creative abilities to make plays happen, and whatnot."