He and three other Indiana men’s basketball student officials spent several days stationed in the lobby of the downtown Indianapolis Marriott that was hosting the National Basketball Coaches Association’s annual convention. His goal was to introduce himself to as many top coaches as possible and leave Final Four weekend with an offer to join one of their staff as a graduate assistant.
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“All of us managers who wanted to find a way to be a coach in any position would get in a car and just go out and hopefully run into any coach and find a way to make a good impression,” May said. “So it’s just a full circle moment to go from chasing coaches trying to beg for a spot in the GA to being back here with this team.”
More than a quarter-century after May, Joe Pasternack, Dan Block and Matthew Babrick arrived at the 2000 Final Four eager to find an entry point into coaching, at least three of those four former Indiana student managers plan to return to Indianapolis. Babrick said he and his two sons will fly from Los Angeles to watch May try to win her first national title when Michigan faces UConn on Monday night. Block is also expected to attend, according to May.
The lessons May learned working as a student manager under Bob Knight have helped shape the way he approaches the game to this day. No, May, perpetually calm and collected, does not emulate Knight’s fiery temper or drill sergeant demeanor. Instead, he has taken Knight’s work ethic, attention to detail, and teaching ability and combined them with new-school ideas about how to create a supportive environment and turn mistakes into learning opportunities.
“Those are the things I learned the most from Coach Knight: preparation, anticipation of whatever comes next,” May said. “There’s obviously an element of fear and fear of disappointing him, so you wanted to think ahead, you wanted to be alert, you were always anticipating what was going to happen next. Looking back, I think that’s probably one of the most important components of problem-solving.”
(Aaron J. Thornton via Getty Images)
May didn’t always grow up dreaming of filling Gatorade jugs and sweeping floors while in college. It was only after the 5-foot-10 point guard realized that all-out hustle and basketball IQ would only get him so far that he decided to pursue coaching.
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That realization came early in his freshman season in May, playing for NAIA Oakland City University. May transferred to Indiana with hopes of becoming Knight’s coach, an opportunity that has served as a launching pad for the likes of former NBA head coach Lawrence Frank, Duke special assistant Mike Schrage and Pasternack, now the head coach at UC Santa Barbara.
Landing a coveted student director position under Knight was not as easy as simply showing up at Assembly Hall on the first day of practice. Indiana men’s basketball had 16 seniors: four freshmen, four sophomores, four juniors and four seniors. Each year, 120 freshmen applied for four spots, Babrick said.
Surprisingly, May owes its successful application to a lawnmower. When May was in high school, he worked in the yard for Indiana team doctor Dr. Larry Rink, according to a 2023 story in the Indianapolis Star. When May moved to Indiana, the doctor spoke well of him to Knight.
The rookie managers, according to Babrick, did “all the hard work.” They filmed the practice. They washed the clothes. They prepared the water jugs. They placed cards for Knight to write on. They carved white lines on the field.
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Then, as managers gained more responsibility, they inherited more responsibility. They worked long hours watching VHS tapes of future opponents and manually recording their offensive and defensive plays, their out-of-bounds plays, the locations of their hits and misses. They would then provide that data to the coaching staff to help inform their scouting reports.
“It was horse and buggy stuff,” Babrick said, laughing at how far technology has come in a quarter-century.
Dan Block, Dusty May, Joe Pasternak and Matthew Babrick on the day The photo is from the day they went to the 2000 Final Four to try to chat with the coaches and get jobs. (Photo credit: Matthew Babrick)
Where May stood out was her willingness to go further. He and Babrick delivered donuts to Knight in his hotel room the morning of a road game. He and Babrick drove to and from Indianapolis to pick up basketball luminaries who came to visit Knight at the airport. He and Babrick put players through voluntary workouts and worked at Knight’s summer camp. When the basketball secretaries were out of town during the offseason, he and Babrick would volunteer to answer the phones all day.
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The purpose of all those extras was the possibility that Knight would one day pick up the phone on behalf of May or Babrick and advocate for them to secure a spot on another coach’s staff.
“That’s what all the blood, sweat and tears you put into the Indiana men’s basketball program was for,” Babrick said. “You wanted a two-minute phone call from Bob Knight to your best college coach. And to get those two minutes, you had to work your ass off for four years.”
For May, Babrick and the others, the purpose of the trip to Indianapolis during the 2000 Final Four was to make connections with prominent coaches. As Babrick explained, “When you work for Coach Knight, nothing intimidates you. You’ve been through it all.”
Babrick already had a pre-existing relationship with Stanford coach Mike Montgomery, sending him videotapes of his upcoming opponents. He landed a position on Montgomery’s staff by following the Stanford coach to a urinal in the men’s bathroom inside the lobby of the downtown Indianapolis Marriott.
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“Well, I’ll finally give you a job,” Babrick recalled Montgomery saying. “Whatever I have to do to make you leave me alone.”
May’s first job offer didn’t come until late that spring. When former USC coach Henry Bibby was at an AAU event, he mentioned to Indiana assistants Mike Davis and John Treloar that he had just fired his director of basketball operations because he didn’t work hard enough.
“Coach Treloar and Coach Davis looked at him and said, ‘We’ve got a guy for you,’” May said. “That’s how I was able to get a coaching job. For some reason, the stars were aligned and I fell into that spot.”
That was the beginning of a long coaching journey for May, much of it through the backwaters of college basketball. He served as an assistant coach at Eastern Michigan, Murray State, UAB, Louisiana Tech and Florida before finally landing his first head coaching job at FAU at age 41. May then gradually built that program over four years before breaking through in year five, leading the Owls to an improbable Final Four.
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Since then, May has gone from a rising star at FAU to a proven winner at Michigan, but he’s not the only one of his former Indiana student managers who has found success. Pasternack has led UC Santa Barbara to a pair of NCAA tournaments. Since leaving coaching in 2003, Babrick has thrived in the financial industry, while Block works in pharmaceutical sales.
Where Babrick sees Knight’s influence the most is in May’s preparation. He wasn’t surprised when television cameras caught May sitting courtside scouting UConn-Illinois on Saturday, even though Michigan’s semifinal against Arizona began later.
Most head coaches might leave that responsibility to the assistant in charge of preparing the scouting report, but May is not structured that way.
“That’s Coach Knight’s influence,” Babrick said. “What Coach Knight used to say is, ‘It’s not the will to win, it’s the will to prepare to win.’ That’s what Coach Knight taught us all.”