In his brief stay in Ann Arbor, Dusty May has assembled quite a staff. Basketball coaching staffs tend to remain more intact than football coaching staffs, so expect several of them to stick around for several years.
John Beilein and Juwan Howard were fortunate to have highly regarded assistant coaching staffs during their time at Michigan. Today we are going to explore where each of them is now.
Jerry Dunn
Dunn followed Beilein to Michigan from West Virginia, where he served the Wolverines for three seasons before taking an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons. After a brief stint as a player development coach with the New York Knicks, Dunn was hired as head coach at Tuskegee University.
Dunn coached Tuskegee for five seasons in which he compiled a 52-87 record before being fired in May 2019.
mike jackson
Jackson left Beilein’s staff to take on a similar role with Matt Painter and the Purdue Boilermakers. After a brief stint at West Lafayette, he jumped to Providence, where he was Coordinator of Basketball Operations. In 2015, he left the college coaching game. Currently, he is the athletic director at Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts.
John Mahoney
After leaving Michigan, Mahoney traveled to IMG in Florida to lead the national graduate team. He has since founded his own company, 212 Sports Academy, which is a post-graduate company that focuses on helping young athletes make the jump to college basketball.
LaVall Jordan
Jordan was one of Beilein’s top assistants until he was hired by UW-Milwaukee in the spring of 2016. In just one season with the Panthers, Jordan went 11-24, but nearly made the NCAA Tournament when Milwaukee reached to the Horizon League Tournament Championship as a No. 10 seed.
Jordan was quickly hired by Butler to replace Christ Holtmann in 2017. Over five seasons at Butler, LaVall compiled an 83-74 record and reached the NCAA Tournament just once. Jordan was fired in 2022 and has since appeared as an analyst on Fox Sports.
jeff meyer
Meyer was at Michigan from 2008 to 2017. When LaVall Jordan was hired at Butler, he brought in Meyer to be his top assistant coach. Meyer remained at Butler until November 2020, when he announced his retirement from coaching.
Alejandro Bacari
Alexander coached with Beilein until 2016, when he was hired as head coach at Detroit Mercy. He struggled to make things work with the Titans, as they went 16-47 in his two years in the program. He was fired in March 2018. From 2019 to 2021, Alexander returned to the assistant coaching ranks at the University of Denver.
Since then, he has worked for River Rouge Schools as a health, culture and wellness coordinator.
Billy Donlon
Donlon was an assistant at Michigan for just one year after being the head coach at Wright State for six. After Ann Arbor, he spent two seasons as an assistant at Northwestern before returning as head coach, this time at UMKC.
In three seasons as UMKC’s head coach, Donlon went 46-39 while going through a conference change. Donlon is now the associate head coach at Clemson under Brad Brownell.
Saddi Washington
Washington was one of the assistant coaches most beloved by fans. After surviving the transition from John Beilein’s staff to Juwan Howard’s staff, Washington remained in Ann Arbor until this offseason. Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans chose him where he will start in a similar role to the one he had at Michigan.
DeAndre Haynes
Haynes spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Michigan. He was not retained when Juwan Howard replaced John Beilein. Haynes jumped to Maryland as an assistant coach, where he stayed for two years. He is now an assistant coach at Marquette under Shaka Smart, where he has been since 2021.
Lucas Yaklich
Yaklich, the defensive mastermind for the last few years of Beilein’s teams, was a popular choice by some sectors of the Michigan fan base to be promoted to head coach. When the program opted to hire Juwan Howard, Yaklich was hired by Texas as an assistant coach.
In 2020, the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) hired him to be their head coach. Over four years, he went 47-70 as the Flames attempted to join the Missouri Valley Conference from the Horizon League. After the most recent season, UIC fired him.
Phil Martelli
Martelli, the former St. Joe’s head coach, was Juwan Howard’s right-hand man and interim head coach for long stretches last season. Dusty May opted not to retain Martelli as he hired a new staff. He doesn’t seem to have landed anywhere yet, but retirement isn’t out of the question for Matelli’s next move.
Howard Eisley
Like Martelli, Eisley was not hired by new Michigan head coach Dusty May. However, at only 51 years old, he wouldn’t anticipate Eisley leaving the coaching world just yet. He has yet to find a new job.
Jon Sanderson
The reported verbal altercation between Sanderson and Juwan Howard made headlines and was one of the final nails in the proverbial coffin of Juwan Howard’s time at Michigan. Sanderson resigned and spent the remainder of the 2023-2024 season with Illinois. Following the season, Vanderbilt hired Sanderson to be its new Director of Men’s Basketball Performance under new head coach Mark Byington.
The common theme here is a series of very successful Michigan assistant coaches who struggled as head coaches. Nearly everyone who received promotions to head coach elsewhere soon returned to assistant coaching at a different program. LaVall Jordan was the most successful of the group. Time will tell what will happen with Dusty May’s new staff.
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