Tennessee fans learned a lot about Rick Barnes with Dusty May’s decision to leave Michigan for the Dallas Mavericks

Tennessee Volunteers fans learned another big lesson about head coach Rick Barnes on Monday thanks to Michigan Wolverines Dusty May’s decision to leave for the NBA.

Tennessee Vols head coach Rick Barnes is truly a unicorn.

And Vols received yet another example of why that’s the case on Monday.

Dusty May’s decision to leave Michigan for the NBA tells fans a lot about Rick Barnes

News broke on Monday morning that Michigan Wolverines head coach Dusty May is leaving Ann Arbor to become the new head coach of the Dallas Mavericks.

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May led Michigan to a win in the national championship game over UConn in April.

According to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander, May is leaving for the NBA due to the current college basketball environment.

“In talking to multiple sources close to May on Monday, I was explicitly told that the state of college basketball played a serious factor in May leaving for Dallas,” reported Norlander.

“There’s just too much uncertainty in college athletics,” one source said to Norlander. “Parents are relentless, calling and checking in, doing what they do. Every day it’s dealing with s–t. And there are hundreds of coaches doing what they think is best for themselves, not what’s best for the game.”

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The sport is as crazy as ever thanks to wild NIL deals, agents who have no business being agents, parents who don’t always have their child’s best interest at heart, opportunistic family members, and the annual rebuild of rosters via the transfer portal. We saw it push out Villanova’s Jay Wright at the height of his career in 2022. UNC’s Roy Williams and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski called it a career sooner than many expected (and that was in the early days of NIL/transfers — before things got really out of hand).

Yet Rick Barnes, who turns 72 in July, continues to thrive. He doesn’t complain, he still loves coaching and being in the trenches, and he finds a way each year to build a roster via a combination of high school recruiting and the transfer portal. And…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/tennessee-fans-learned-lot-rick-015320282.html

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Publish date : 2026-06-23 01:53:00

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