Not long after Dusty May was hired as the men’s basketball head coach at Michigan, he received a call from Oakland’s Greg Kampe.

Kampe didn’t just reach out to welcome May to Metro Detroit area or to pass along a congratulatory message. He also wanted to pitch him an idea for his coaching debut.

“We had a conversation when he got the job. My thing was this will be the first time Michigan fans will get to see his team play. Why not do it in the mecca of basketball in the Detroit area?” recalled Kampe, who’s entering his 41st season at Oakland.

With May on board, a plan was set in motion and details were eventually hammered out to have a charity exhibition at Little Caesars Arena on Sunday, which will unofficially tip off the 2024-25 campaign for the Golden Grizzlies and Wolverines.“We’re extremely excited to play in front of our fans in Detroit at LCA for a great cause,” May said. “It’s been a long offseason for everyone in college basketball. So now it’s an opportunity for us to turn our attention to the most important thing, which is the players playing games, and we couldn’t be more excited.”

The path to setting up the contest didn’t come without its hurdles. Under current NCAA rules, Division I teams aren’t allowed to publicize and sell tickets for preseason exhibitions against other Division I teams, a reason why most are played behind closed doors. The exception in recent years has been for charity games.

At the Final Four, there were talks about the NCAA allowing Division I programs to play one another in non-charity exhibitions. That’s when a lightbulb went off in Kampe’s head, discussions with May began, the appropriate parties were contacted, and the ball started rolling.

The NCAA, however, didn’t follow through with the rule change for exhibitions and tabled it, throwing a wrench in things.

“Dusty texted me and said, ‘Do you still want to try and get around it?’ And I said, ‘Hell yeah, I do,’” Kampe said.

So, the decision was made to play for charity and raise funds for Forgotten Harvest, Metro Detroit’s largest food rescue operation that works with communities to end hunger.

But the teams aren’t just doing their part and giving back with the Hoops for Harvest exhibition. Earlier this month, Oakland and Michigan stopped by Forgotten Harvest’s warehouse in Oak Park to tour the facility, package apples and lend a helping hand.

“I think it opened a lot of eyes for our players,” Kampe said. “I know my guys reflected on it afterward and felt pretty good about themselves, that maybe they made a small dent into everything we’re trying to do.”

Kampe added that the charity component and the opportunity to play Michigan, which he described as “one of the biggest names in all of America, in the world,” was a win-win for Oakland.

Given the location of the exhibition, May said it made sense for proceeds to go toward a local charity over options in Ann Arbor (Michigan will play another charity exhibition next Friday at home against Toledo that will benefit C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital).

As far as on the court, May felt there were several benefits to facing Oakland, which reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament last year and is coming off arguably its best season in program history.

It gives Michigan — a team that has a whole new coaching staff and 11 new faces on the roster — an opportunity to develop on-court chemistry and a chance to start “establishing our identity as a program.”

On top of that, the Golden Grizzlies play a unique zone, one that gave the Wolverines fits the last time the two programs met, in November 2020, in a game that Michigan eked out in overtime. Oakland’s style of play will help prepare Michigan for other Big Ten teams that play zone down the road.

“We’ve always tried to play teams that are a little bit different than everyone else,” May said. “We thought (Oakland’s) zone, obviously they do a great job of getting you out of rhythm. They’re different shots, different spots, different rhythm shots than you’re going to get most of your other games. We did think we’ll be able to refer back to some of the lessons we learned in this game later on. And that’s why the exhibitions are so important. We don’t want to go play ourselves. We could do that in practice. We want someone that has a contrasting style.

“From our point of view, every scheduling decision comes down: Is it good for our guys? Is it good for our program? Is it good for the game of basketball? … It made sense on all fronts.”

The only downside is Michigan — which May described as a “work in progress” that’s learning a lot about itself — won’t have its full roster available against Oakland. Freshman guard Justin Pippen won’t suit up and May said there are others like Pippen who are day-to-day with “knick-knack injuries.”

It’s possible this meeting between Oakland and Michigan won’t just be a one-off. Kampe and May said conversations have already taken place and both are hopeful this could become a regular occurrence. However, with the ever-changing college basketball landscape and uncertainty of future nonconference scheduling — which could be impacted if there’s more league expansion or an increase in conference games — it’s hard to commit.

Still, May is “definitely intrigued going forward” and he’s looking forward to seeing how Sunday’s charity exhibition is received. The same goes for Kampe.

“It’s a tremendous charity. It’s a great cause. It’s Little Caesars Arena. It’s Michigan and Oakland,” Kampe said. “What better way to spend a Sunday evening.”