In his short time in Ann Arbor, Dusty May has assembled quite the staff. Basketball coaching staffs tend to stay more intact than football staffs do so hopefully we can expect to see several of them stick around for several years.
John Beilein and Juwan Howard were both fortunate to have very well-regarded assistant coaching staffs during their times at Michigan. Today we’re going to explore where each of them are now.
Jerry Dunn
Dunn followed Beilein to Michigan from West Virginia, where he served the Wolverines for three seasons prior to 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 the head coach at Tuskegee University.
Dunn coached Tuskegee for five seasons in which he amassed a 52-87 record before being let go in May of 2019.
Mike Jackson
Jackson left Beilein’s staff to take a similar role with Matt Painter and the Purdue Boilermakers. After a short stint in West Lafayette, he jumped over to Providence where he was the 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 travelled down to IMG in Florida to lead the national post grad team. He has since started 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 away 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 as Milwaukee made the Horizon League Tournament Championship as a No. 10 seed.
Jordan was quickly scooped up by Butler to replace Christ Holtmann in 2017. Over five seasons at Butler, LaVall amassed an 83-74 record and reached the NCAA Tournament just once. Jordan was let go in 2022 and has been making appearances as an analyst on Fox Sports since then.
Jeff Meyer
Meyer was at Michigan all the way from 2008 to 2017. When LaVall Jordan was hired at Butler, he brought along Meyer to be his top assistant coach. Meyer remained at Butler until November of 2020 when he announced his retirement from coaching.
Bacari Alexander
Alexander coached under Beilein until 2016 when he was hired as the head coach at Detroit Mercy. He struggled to get things going with the Titans as they went 16-47 in his two years with the program. He was fired in March of 2018. From 2019-2021, Alexander returned to the assistant coaching ranks at the University of Denver.
Since then, he has worked for River Rouge schools working as a coordinator for health, culture, and wellness.
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 prior to returning as a head coach, this time at UMKC.
In three seasons as UMKC’s head coach, Donlon went 46-39 while navigating a conference change. Donlon is now the associate head coach at Clemson under Brad Brownell.
Saddi Washington
Washington was one of the most beloved assistant coaches by the fanbase. 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 scooped him up where he will begin in a similar role to what he had at Michigan.
DeAndre Haynes
Haynes spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Michigan. He was not retained when Juwan Howard took over for John Beilein. Haynes jumped over 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.
Luke Yaklich
The defensive mastermind of the late-years Beilein teams, Yaklich was a popular pick by some sections of the Michigan fan base to be promoted as head coach. When the program opted to hire Juwan Howard instead, Yaklich was picked up by Texas as an assistant coach.
In 2020, he was then hired by the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) 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. Following this most recent season, he was let go by UIC.
Phil Martelli
Martelli, the longtime St. Joe’s head coach, was Juwan Howard’s right hand man and acting head coach for long stretches of the past season. Dusty May opted to not retain Martelli as he brought in a brand new staff. He doesn’t appear to have landed anywhere just yet but retirement is not out of the picture for Matelli’s next move.
Howard Eisley
Similar to Martelli, Eisley was not retained by new Michigan head coach Dusty May. However, at just 51 years old I would not anticipate Eisley leaving the coaching game just yet. He has yet to find a new gig.
Jon Sanderson
Sanderson and Juwan Howard’s reported verbal altercation 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 remaining portion of the 2023-2024 season with Illinois. Following the season, Sanderson was hired by Vanderbilt to be their new Director of Men’s Basketball Performance under new head coach Mark Byington.
The common theme here is a string of very successful Michigan assistant coaches who struggled as head coaches. Nearly all who received promotions to head coach somewhere else shortly returned to being an assistant coach at a different program. LaVall Jordan was the most successful of the bunch. Time will tell what happens to Dusty May’s new staff.
