FAU’s Dusty May enters March Madness eyeing return to Final Four

The chatter starts even before the first coach is fired, and by the time college basketball coaching jobs actually open up, the speculation is rampant about who is going where.

Yes, Florida Atlantic coach Dusty May said, the constant rumors about his future are a distraction and he is often forced to address them.

“I think a lot of coaches face this. It’s not out of the ordinary. It’s just happening over a long period now because jobs come open during the season,” May said Thursday.

May, the 47-year-old former student manager for Bob Knight at Indiana, might be the hottest name on the coaching market. He is 126-68 in six seasons at FAU, which is making its second straight March Madness appearance after a surprising run to the Final Four last year.

The eighth-seeded Owls begin this year’s NCAA Tournament Friday against ninth-seeded Northwestern in the East Region at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

No. 1 overall seed UConn, which faces 16th-seeded Stetson in the first round, likely awaits the winner of FAU-Northwestern.

May has been most frequently linked to Louisville, which fired Kenny Payne last week — a long-expected move at a blue-blood program that won only 12 games the past two seasons. He is also expected to draw interest from Michigan and

Vanderbilt.

“I try not to get caught up in it,” May said. “But as a college basketball coach, I talk to a lot of people. I talk to coaches, I talk to recruits, I talk to our signees, so it comes up a lot. It is distracting, but our job is (to) compartmentalize what we are supposed to be doing.”