John Niyo: Michigan unlocks Aday Mara's talent and the good times roll

INDIANAPOLIS — The nickname still makes Dusty May laugh, in part because Aday Mara wears it so well.

Take Wednesday, for instance, when Michigan’s basketball team boarded a bus in Ann Arbor, bound for the Final Four. Most of the coaching staff and some of the players were wearing their typical Nike Jumpman warmup gear for the sendoff. Not Mara, though. The 7-foot-3 center always stands out in a crowd, but he made sure of it on this afternoon.

He was among a handful of players wearing a suit, and the free-spirited Spaniard — dubbed the “Big Goof” by May and assistant Kyle Church earlier this season — had taken it a step further, adding a fedora and sunglasses to complete his outfit.

“They gave us a suit, like, a week before,” Mara explained Thursday, a few hours before the Wolverines hit the court inside Lucas Oil Stadium to prepare for Saturday’s national semifinal showdown with Arizona. “So I was talking with some of the guys, and I was saying, ‘We gotta wear it! At least for the Final Four or something like that.’ And they were, like, ‘OK, I'm down.’

As for the accessories, though, Mara’s teammates mostly just humored him as he kept bombarding them with messages to coordinate.

“He was like, ‘Should I get this hat? Should I get this hat?’ ” laughed Will Tschetter, one of Mara’s closest friends on the team. “‘And sunglasses, right?’ ”

Right, well, he went ahead with the full Blues Brothers look, even if his teammates didn’t. And the fact that he did surprised absolutely no one.

“I mean, obviously his swagger’s off the charts,” Tschetter said, shaking his head. “So, yeah, he obtained his goal.”

And, yeah, the nickname fits. As May explained Thursday, it’s a reference to the show “Reno 911!” — a mockumentary parody series from 20 years ago — and an episode involving the oddball character, Lt. Jim Dangle, buying a new pair of cowboy boots.

“So there was one day Aday made a play and he was just being silly on the court, and it was the same day that I had sent the staff a (video of) Lt. Dangle goofing in his new boots," May recalled. "I think it was Coach Church who said, ‘He's just goofin’,” so he immediately became the 'Big Goof.' ”

In the bigger picture, though, that’s no small thing for Mara, the UCLA transfer whose breakout junior season isn’t simply a function of him finding a home in the middle of Michigan’s free-flowing offensive system. It’s also a byproduct of what May likes to call the “psychological safety” he preaches in his program.

And whether that’s letting Eliot Cadeau and Morez Johnson Jr. be the competitive “psychos” they naturally are or Nimari Burnett and Roddy Gayle playing the part of the “serious seniors” or giving Yaxel Lendeborg and Mara the freedom to be silly when the situation allows, May says, “We want all these guys to be who they are.”

Transition to Michigan

It doesn’t take long to understand who or what Mara is, either, and when Michigan started recruiting Mara among a handful of big men in the transfer portal last spring, “I fell in love with him as a person, literally,” the coach said.

“It was just the way he makes people feel when he's around them,” May said. “It's impossible not to feel better about yourself because of how engaging he is, how warm he is. And he really, really cares about other people.”

Tschetter has a similar personality, so it’s no surprise the two hit it off immediately last summer. And while Mara credits the fifth-year senior for making his transition “way easier,” whether it was taking him fishing and inviting Mara and other teammates over to his house for dinner, the feeling is mutual.

“Obviously, his personality is super-contagious and bubbly,” Tschetter said. “But just hanging out with him the first few times, I knew that we were going to be good pals.”

What no one knew right away, though, was just how good a player he’d be after spending the last two seasons largely chained to the bench at UCLA, where Mick Cronin’s abrasive coaching style ultimately proved to be a poor fit. Mara prefers not to dwell on that time, but after averaging just 13 minutes a game as a sophomore, he admits, “I didn’t feel like I got the opportunity to help the team and show the people what I was able to do.”

“He had talent,” May said of Mara, widely viewed as one of the top international players in his draft year when he initially signed with UCLA. “Everyone for the last 10 years has known he's had talent, but how do you unlock that talent? We weren't sure we could. We did feel like we had the system in place where we could maximize what he does well.”

Mara says he felt the same way after seeing what May’s staff was able to do with the big-man tandem of Danny Wolf and Vlad Goldin a year ago. And it didn’t take long once he got on the court with his new teammates last summer to know he’d made the right call.

“It took me a couple of months to get my confidence and to start liking practicing again,” he said. “Because it was hard, those two years. But as soon as I realized the group that we had, the way that we were practicing and how we were enjoying practicing and playing basketball …”

'Can I play?'

Well, that’s when the coaches started to unlock the talent. Mara posted double-doubles in three of his first four games in November, including an 18-point, 13-rebound effort against Wake Forest in which he also added six assists and five blocks in 37 minutes. He went on to nearly double his minutes and production this season, winning Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year while earning third-team all-conference honors.

“It feels great because after those two years I was thinking, I don’t know … I didn’t have a good vision of myself,” Mara said. “I was like, ‘Can I do it? Can I play? Am I gonna be ready for the next level?’ So you think all those things. But just being here, playing like this, enjoying basketball again, it just feels great. Because that’s what it’s all about, playing the game (and) enjoying it.”

And he’s enjoying every minute of this postseason run, well aware he’s making history of his own while the Wolverines chase their ultimate goal of a national title. Mara will be the first Spanish-born player ever to play in the Final Four, and his parents, Javier and Gely, both will be here in Indianapolis to see it. They arrived in the U.S. earlier this week and are eager to watch their son play in person for the first time since over the Christmas break.

“And I hope I can keep them for two games instead of one,” Aday said Thursday, smiling.

After that, they’ll all have decisions to make about whether now is the right time to enter the NBA draft. Most mock draft projections have Mara pegged as a late first-round prospect, thanks to his elite size and shot-blocking ability but also his creative passing — he’s closing in on 100 assists this season, to go along with 100 blocks — and his obvious basketball IQ.

“Both options are good,” Mara said. “But we're gonna play a Final Four. I don't really care about the draft right now. That’s gonna be … finish the season, talk with my family, see which option is the best.”

This matchup against Arizona looms large in that respect, too, as Michigan faces a mirror image in the Wildcats, with their huge, talented frontcourt, including a brutish 7-2, 260-pound Lithuanian center in Motiejus Kravis who also is viewed as a potential first-round NBA prospect.

“They play with a lot of physicality,” Mara said. “So it’s gonna be a good game for me to prove myself and prove to people that I can play at this intensity.”

But whatever happens here in Indianapolis, there's no arguing this point: Michigan proved to be the right fit for Mara.