Michigan basketball coaching staff complete under Dusty May
Tony Garcia
The first coaching staff under new Michigan basketball head coach Dusty May is essentially complete.
Drew Williamson and Kyle Church, two former assistant coaches under May during his time at Florida Atlantic, populated in the U-M staff directory on Monday; both were listed as “Assistant Men’s Basketball Coach.”
Williamson was added to the Owls coaching staff in 2021, where he helped lead FAU to consecutive NCAA tournament appearances as well as a Final Four in 2022-23. This came after eight years as an assistant at Virginia State, where he was eventually elevated to associate head coach.
Named by the Minority Coaches Association as one of the top NCAA Division II assistant coaches in the country in October 2020, Williamson got his coaching career started at his alma mater, Old Dominion.
He played at ODU from 2003-07 and he still holds the program record for consecutive starts (130), was second in steals (215) and seventh in career assists (555) as he led the Monarchs to two March Madness appearances and an NIT Final Four.
“He’s one of the best leaders I’ve ever been around,” Williamson said of May in a video last year. “His everyday approach to everybody else, he puts everybody else before him, the way he serves us is unbelievable. The thing we appreciate more than anything is how much belief he has in every one of us — coaches, managers, players.
“We have to emulate that, fall in place with what he’s doing because we believe in him as well.”
Church, meanwhile, joined the Owls program in April 2018; he and May had worked together for five seasons prior to their time in Boca Raton when Church served as director of basketball operations at both Louisiana Tech and Florida while May was an assistant on those staffs.
The two will join a pair of other Michigan assistants who are both currently on staff; Akeem Miskdeen, a former Georgia assistant who was the first hire of the May tenure. Though he’s not yet listed in the staff directory, a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed Miskdeen’s hire to the Free Press on April 4, while his social media bios already list him as an assistant on the U-M basketball coaching staff.
He will be flanked by Justin Joyner, a long-time Saint Mary’s coach who confirmed he was coming to Ann Arbor a week after May hired Miskdeen. Joyner, 36, will join the program as associate head coach after seven years of working his way up at SMC, including the past two seasons when he held that title under Randy Bennett.
The final spot on the coaching staff belongs to former Oklahoma State head coach Mike Boynton Jr. The Cowboys coach of the past seven years had been in talks with the Wolverines for weeks, and though he was not officially added to the directory, a source confirmed the hire is imminent; not to mention he’s changed his social media profile as well.
Boynton posted just before the weekend “The time has arrived. Here. We. Go… Onward and Upward. #GoBlue” and changed his profile picture to the Block M.
Boynton spent his playing days at South Carolina (2001-04) and coached at Furman, Coastal Carolina, Wofford, South Carolina, and Stephen F. Austin for the next dozen years before he left for Stillwater in 2016.
Known as one of the game’s top recruiters, Boynton landed future No. 1 overall pick and now Detroit Pistons point guard Cade Cunningham, who helped the Cowboys make their lone tournament (2021) under Boynton. Oklahoma State also had a top 10 class last season, per 247Sports composite rankings, and a pair of top 50 players in four-star forward Eric Dailey Jr. and four-star center Brandon Garrison, however, the wheels fell off as OSU went 12-20 overall and just 4-14 in the Big 12.
OSU went 119-109 under his tutelage.