louisville being weird

The Howard Interview. Juwan Howard sat down with Brendan Quinn for what Quinn says is his first one on one interview in two years. That, in and of itself, is part of the issue. This section is kind of like… well… I mean…?

In the end, Howard says he wishes he’d opened up more. He wishes people knew junior forward Will Tschetter keeps a garden in his backyard, where he and Jenine grow jalapeño, kale, bell peppers, lettuce. He wishes he’d been more open about his feelings on going from one-game shy of the Elite Eight in March 2021 to outcast in March 2022. He wishes he hadn’t been so reticent about his heart surgery. He wishes people knew that, during the interview, former captain Eli Brooks called to check in on him.

He says he wishes he let people get to know him.

One of the issues with hiring a first-time head coach is that sometimes they don't know the shape of the job. They've seen it, they've been around it, but being it for the first time is something different. Especially when you come from a Miami Heat organization where all that stuff is minimized because you have a long-term, secure coach in a well-run organization. Beating the bushes is not a thing that Howard ever had to do.

The other main takeaway from the interview is that Howard should not have coached this year:

Doctors set his recovery time at 6-12 weeks. He spent 15 days in the hospital post-op.

Howard told assistant coach Howard Eisley, a lifelong friend, that he would return in two weeks. He saw doctors’ recommendations as races to win, not timelines to live by. And he suffered for it.

“I thought I was a Marvel hero, but this was real life stuff I was dealing with, and I was extremely naive,” he says. “I was impatient with the process.”

Howard wasn’t fully recovered when he returned to the Michigan bench for a November trip to the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas, he says. Multiple complications emerged throughout the season. He rarely slept through the night. Doctors advised him to step away and undergo another surgery to address an atrial flutter that sapped his energy and caused severe discomfort. He was scheduled to undergo a 7 a.m. procedure following a Jan. 23 road game at Purdue, but heavy snow grounded Michigan’s return flight. Howard’s surgery was canceled and he declined to reschedule it in-season, against doctors’ recommendations and to Jenine’s displeasure.

The surgery is scheduled for April 19.

There is a timeline where Howard does not get Terrence Shannon and Caleb Love spiked into the earth by admissions (and Shannon, uh, settles down with a nice poli sci major in Ann Arbor); a timeline where he does not have health issues. He likely still has his job, and Michigan might have been really good through year five. That is not this timeline, but it is so close that it hurts. Howard's issues were only half of his own making.

[After THE JUMP: basketball roster stuff, hockey items]