juwan howard

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]

2.5 years ago, your author wrote a brief post about the news that Juwan Howard had been extended as Michigan Men's Basketball Head Coach. In the intervening time since being given that five-year extension, Howard's Wolverines went 43-55 and today, just two days after finishing 8-24 in the 2023-24 season (Michigan's worst record in four decades), Howard has been fired. Statement: 

Michigan AD Warde Manuel:

“Despite his love of his alma mater and the positive experience that our student-athletes had under his leadership, it was clear to me that the program was not living up to our expectations and not trending in the right direction.” https://t.co/uwT7s6FXxi

— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) March 15, 2024

Juwan Howard was hired May 22, 2019, after former coach John Beilein exited for the NBA's Cleveland Cavaliers. Michigan's coaching search was muddled due to a lack of quality candidates, with the search coming a few months after most coaching vacancies were filled nationally. Howard was the consensus option, a program icon as a player from the Fab Five days who embarked on a long and successful professional playing career. After his playing days, he had been an assistant coach in Miami under esteemed NBA coach Erik Spolestra. Howard had no NCAA coaching experience, or head coaching experience of any kind, but was regarded as a talented up-and-coming coach. 

Howard's first season was rocky, finishing 19-12 after getting off to an illustrious start. Michigan was only 10-10 in conference play but were headed for (roughly) a 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament, thanks to the B1G being loaded in 2019-20. The NCAA Tournament never happened due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was an okay opening. Howard followed it up with a magical 23-5 season that earned him the extension, winning the B1G Regular Season Championship and a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The team made it to the Elite Eight but fell just short to a Cinderella UCLA team. 

Howard brought in an elite recruiting class for 2021-22 and signed the extension shortly into the next season, then holding a 2-0 record. Things got murky after that, the team alternating wins and losses before just barely slipping into the NCAA Tournament as an 11-seed, with a 17-14 record. Along the way, Howard was suspended for five games for slapping a Wisconsin assistant coach during an infamous altercation following a loss to the Badgers in Madison. In the NCAA Tournament, the Wolverines moved past Colorado State and then upset Tennessee, making the Sweet 16 and seeming to salvage an otherwise frustrating year. The team got blown out by Villanova in the next round and the season came to an end. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

The wheels came off over the next two seasons leading to the present. Howard's 2022-23 team endured a series of baffling late-game collapses that submarined their season, narrowly missing the NCAA Tournament and then getting bounced from the NIT after another meltdown against Vanderbilt. The offseason saw star Hunter Dickinson transfer out of the program, while Kobe Bufkin and Juwan's son Jett Howard declared for the NBA Draft.

Michigan struggled to fill those holes, as they battled continued problems with the transfer portal. Howard also underwent a serious heart procedure in the offseason, leaving him unable to coach the beginning of the 2023-24 season. The season that unfolded was a catastrophe, starting reasonably well but coming apart by December before losing 19 of 21 games in calendar 2024 to end the year. Along the way another incident unfolded, an altercation with strength coach Jon Sanderson, leading to Sanderson's exit from the program and recent hiring by Illinois. Michigan finished last in the B1G for the first time in over 55 years and were easily bounced on Wednesday night from the Big Ten Tournament by Penn State, ending their season. 

Despite frequent discussion of whether Howard would return, from a bird's eye view Michigan had no choice. The conditions of the program had deteriorated so severely that only one choice could be made here, coming on the same morning that The Athletic published a piece about cultural problems in the Michigan program. The candidates to replace Howard are not yet obvious and the next few days will see people, including AD Warde Manuel, assemble a list of targets. We will have coverage on that in the near future but for today, the news is simply that a long-needed change has been made. 

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Michigan Men's Basketball's 2023-24 season, the worst in four decades (or longer), met its merciful conclusion tonight at the Big Ten Tournament. The team trailed a 15-16 Penn State team for nearly the entire contest, falling behind by 11 at halftime, making a small push in the early second half, before falling apart and then going out with its tail between its legs. Michigan made one of its final 10 field goals and did not score a point over a four minute stretch in the game's waning moments, not scoring again until the walk-ons were in. The game that unfolded on the court from both teams was sloppy, disorganized, and fitting of two bad teams. Michigan finishes the season 8-24. 

The first 13 minutes of the game were arguably the worst combined sequence of basketball between the two teams of Michigan's season, a year where there have been plenty of candidates. Michigan's offense was turning the ball over with machine-like efficiency, committing three in the first 2.5 minutes and they had seven turnovers on their first 15 possessions(!!!). Michigan couldn't hang onto the ball and it's not like Penn State was playing a whole lot better, the shooting quite cold and too many turnovers themselves. At the under eight media timeout the score sat at 16-10 in favor of the Nittany Lions, with the two teams combining for 12 turnovers against nine made field goals.

It was a game that certainly looked like the 14 seed vs. the 11 seed in the B1G Tournament (mostly because it was). Nimari Burnett was Michigan's only positive offensive contributor early on, making three triples in the first half while Dug McDaniel, the team's usual offensive engine, was ice cold (0 points, 0/5 in the first half). Burnett's third three cut the lead to 18-16 PSU and Michigan would end up tying it at 20 with just under 4.5 minutes to play. It felt like Michigan was playing poorly, but their opponent wasn't doing much better and the Maize & Blue were hanging around. 

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Penn State tacked on a 10-0 run, though, that gave them full control of the game going into halftime. They got it started with a three from the wing by Zach Hicks, added a neat little layup from Qudus Wahab, and then McDaniel was stripped by Ace Baldwin Jr., fouling in response. PSU made both free throws in the bonus to lead by seven and the lead hit double figures a half-minute later when Hicks drilled a corner trey. Hicks added one more three in the final minute and Jaelin Llewellyn's tough runner was off the mark as the horn sounded and Penn State led 33-22 at the break, using that strong spurt late to grab command. Michigan shot 7/29 from the floor and turned it over eleven times in the first half. 

They also were dealing with foul trouble, a theme that would continue in the second half. McDaniel, Tarris Reed Jr., and Will Tschetter all accrued two fouls in the first half, leaving them vulnerable. However, the early stages of the second half were good for Michigan, the only good string of basketball they played all game. Burnett stayed hot with a driving layup on the team's first offensive possession and Reed made a spectacular block from behind on Wahab on the team's first defensive possession. The tone was set and Michigan then got McDaniel into the game with a three (his first FG of the contest), followed by a Terrance Williams II jumper. Quick 7-0 run and Michigan was only down 33-29. 

Michigan was hanging in there down only 40-35 about four minutes into the second half and that was more or less where the fun ended. They couldn't get consistent stops, which dampened their ability to make a major run even as their two primary problems offensively in the first half (turnovers and McDaniel's struggles) improved. Michigan turned it over only once in the first 10 minutes of the second half, while McDaniel began to look more like himself, still not at his best but a drive and layup to trim the lead to 50-46 Nittany Lions was a sign that Dug was more alive. That McDaniel layup came just over the midway point of the half, while Reed was on the bench after picking up his fourth foul and just before the wheels began to come off.

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Michigan scored just five points over a nine minute span thereafter, bricking shots from all over the court while their defense was of course unable to muzzle Penn State enough to stomach that atrocious effort from the offense. Even the best defenses in college hoops wouldn't do well trying to support an offense that scores five points in nine minutes, but Michigan's is uniquely ill-equipped for that situation. PSU didn't run away with it, but they chipped in points to continue stretching the lead, going up by nine on a Wahab hook with 7.5 minutes left and then restoring a double digit lead with under 6 minutes left on a desperation heave three from Hicks. 

You didn't get the sense, given the way the game had gone, that Michigan had much of a run up their sleeve to get back in the game. But even considering those low expectations, the way Michigan's offense went out in this game was shambolic. There was an 0/2 trip to the line for Williams. There was Reed fouling out. There was a possession where Michigan got three open looks for jumpers around the court and missed all three. There was Jace Howard missing the front end of a one-and-one, Michigan getting the offensive rebound, and Howard missing a point-blank layup. They could not facilitate coherent offense and their shooters could not hit the broad side of the barn. 

The final minutes of the game didn't have any intensity to speak of and Michigan didn't begin intentionally fouling until Burnett did so with 1:08 left. The score was 64-51 Penn State and frankly, there didn't seem to be much point in doing so. Like so many Michigan games in the second half of this season, the game ended with an array of walk-ons in the game. Jackson Selvala's three was the last score of the game- and of Michigan's season- cutting the deficit to nine. The final score was 66-57 in favor of Penn State, Selvala's three to cut it to single digits thereby ensuring that this game would be only Michigan's second loss by <10 points in the past two months. In the words of a PSU fan watching: 

haven't watched michigan play much this year so this is my first real extended watch and my thoughts are as follows: jesus christ

— Bill DiFilippo (@billdifilippo) March 14, 2024

[AFTER THE JUMP: Thoughts on the season]