Juwan Howard Fired As Michigan Men's Basketball Coach
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:
— Alejandro Zúñiga (@ByAZuniga) March 15, 2024
“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
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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Warde did was what necessary, and I’m sure it wasn’t easy. I have to tip my cap to him.
This presumes that Warde made the decision. A questionable presumption given that we know Warde's preference is to do nothing.
The University had to do something to give fans and future recruits at least a ray of hope going forward.
Warde/The University should have let him go for cause as soon as the Wisconsin incident happened. That was unacceptable behavior at the time and in retrospect was a major red flag/ precursor of what was to come. At the time winning covered over his flaws and prevented what should have been a clear cut decision to move on.
Had he done that Warde would have been vilified too. The second incident should have been it however.
It was the second anger incident. The year before he had had to be restrained from going after Maryland’s Turgeon.
I was OK with the 5-game suspension(that’s not a slap on the wrist, especially since it took place in the stretch run of the season) but I don’t know how he survived the Sanderson thing, on top of all that.
I defended him then, and thought a zero tolerance agreement was just right going forward.
It's when he violated that on more than 1 occasion I thought he had to go.
And I'll be honest, if he were still winning & making deep tournament runs I'd still have supported more chances for him.
I'm no better than a Hoosier fan apparently 🤷♂️
Why assume that he didn’t? You have zero evidence of that.
He just said it was questionable, and I think that's fair. The sentiment and pressure to make a change had to be overwhelming.
It's not fair. He's the AD and you're questioning whether this was really his decision? If Ono thought he was that useless that he just worked this out himself, I think he'd have fired Warde too by now.
I didn't say I was questioning it, I just said it was not unreasonable to think that who really forced the issue was debatable.
Based on what? Warde’s public comments? What’s he going to say publicly while the season is ongoing? “Juwan is terrible and make no mistake, he will be fired once the season ends.”?
At this point it's pretty clear a lot of fans, including those at UM, have no idea how to run an athletic department and would be shitcanned in a heartbeat for being immensely more incompetent than Warde Manuel is perceived.
yup, exactly
Anything good that happens to the athletic programs is Santa forcing Warde's hand. Anything bad is Warde not doing anything. Got it.
It’s a familiar troupe here though, see our previous head coach and his OCs.
Is that another way of saying "past performance does not indicate present results"?
You and hundreds of others would have blamed Warde if Juwan hadn’t been fired, so now that he has fired Juwan promptly, it’s “questionable.” Warde literally can do no right in the eyes of some people. If you want to blame him, you need to credit him too.
And this is important from a public pressure standpoint; so much of the criticism of Warde is specious, which makes real shortcomings harder to see clearly. I respect criticism that focuses on known issues like the Mel Pearson fiasco. It is, additionally, fair to connect that situation with scrutiny of the basketball program’s culture. But most of the hate directed at Warde is packaged with no evidence that he is actually responsible for the presumed offenses, or traffics in assumptions that are not proven by the facts, and often build suppositions on events or presumptions that are not known at all.
Internet hate is a stupid thing. Warde has shortcomings, and I thought he would be gone last summer. It’s frustrating seeing so much of the hate directed at him be for things that are either not based on fact or not his responsibility at all.
Edit: you appear to have edited your post. And the new text is still bad. You say it’s questionable because we “know that Warde’s preference is to do nothing.”
We don’t know that. Many internet people assume it. A big plank of that assumption is the assumption that Warde didn’t want to fire Juwan and the further conclusion that this was because he didn’t want to go to the effort of hiring another coach. Well, he fired Juwan. You don’t “know” anything.
I’m sorry, I'm tired of this. That is stupid. Circular evidence-free reasoning that should be beneath Michigan fans.
^^^ bingo
Well said. The same argument applies to some others who are regularly maligned on this blog.
Fantastic response. This fanbase is as full of the dumbest fucking takes as any one out there, and it's stuff like "the AD is still incompetent at his job even though he did what I wanted" because the hive mind has been (including by writers at this blog) that Warde is stupid and so no evidence to the contrary is acceptable.
No need to go skirt ad hominem territory. The fact that Manuel did the blatantly obvious right thing to do doesn’t prove anything either way.
I would say "give this man all the points" but he already has all the points.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Guy came from New Orleans and played def. line at Michigan for Bo. After breaking his neck he stayed at Michigan and received 2 Masters degrees from Michigan. I can't question this guy's resume and especially his loyalty to Michigan. Go Blue!
I think those saying "Warde's preference is to do nothing" are misinterpreting Warde's bureaucratic instincts to minimize risk (which often incentivizes doing nothing to avoid the ownership of hirings and firings). Keeping Juwan would have been a big bet on Warde's part; instead, he made the obvious choice for Michigan and the smart choice to reduce risk to himself.
Football is king, and if Warde really means it when he says "Transformational not Transactional", then Warde will be putting the program at risk. I'm expecting an excellent 2024 team, largely due to a phenomenal 2022 recruiting class. But when that class heads off to the NFL after this year, we may see an impact from the lack of NIL since then. Hopefully, Warde shows himself to be a chameleon, moving from "Transformational not Transactional" to "Transformational not Transactional" (and here's your blue-blood market value NIL). I'm also annoyed at the lack of support he showed Harbaugh for penne-ante infractions, but I guess it all worked out. He did decide to keep Harbaugh after 2020, so he gets credit for that.
As a minority partner in the athletic department, basketball is not going to drive a Warde firing unless it is absolutely putrid like it was this year. I thought the Juwan hire was a good choice at the time, and Warde made the obvious decision to move on this year, so I have no complaints there. As long as he doesn't flat out blow it in the upcoming coaching search, I don't see it impacting his standing as long as football carries the water.
While I appreciate that Warde didn't make the dumb decision to keep Howard on, the decision to fire him was really the only decision to be made for the good of the program.
Should he be applauded for it?
Here’s the issue. It seems like every decision Warde makes (or any AD for that matter) makes is either wrong, and he deserves the blame for it, or it’s an obvious decision and he deserves no credit.
Warde made the right decision. Yes, he deserves credit and should be applauded for that move. It doesn’t matter if it is an seemingly obvious decision. And no, it does not outweigh all of his poor decisions or make him a great AD.
Someone who is bad at their job can still do a good thing and it’s okay to acknowledge that.
Fair point. Not sure why this is getting so nasty. Warde did the right thing in this case. He may still suck at his job. Or maybe he doesn’t. There is evidence of both. Maybe he’s a mixed bag?
This is where we're at? "Guy does job (for once)" warrants a pat on the head now?
I did my job today too. Do I get a parade?
If your job involved making a rare, massively impactful, expensive, and public decision, than yes.
So everyone wanted Howard fired, Warde does it at the appropriate time (the day after the season ends) but instead of acknowledging what he's done right, we should vilify him for every single thing he's ever done wrong? Makes sense.
I’m really interested to see the hire here because as Brian has said several times, all Warde’s major decisions to this point have been pretty gift-wrapped. I’m not a fan but if he wants to rehab his image to the fan base, nailing this hire is an absolute must
I don’t care what the fanbase thinks. But he still needs to nail the hire, and evaluating him on it is 100% fair, *after* he completes the process.
While I was pleasantly surprised by the decision, I think that Warde waited too long. Hindsight being what it is, his decision to back Juwan in the midst of the Sanderson incident was wrong, and many people pointed that out at the time. I will apologize for the Warde criticism if he knocks the hire out of the park which itself will require a big picture assessment.
Can you elaborate? Would Michigan be in a clearly stronger position to hire the best possible candidate had they made this move weeks ago? I can imagine there’s an argument to be made, but the benefits are not obvious to me.
Good point. Keep in mind, coach had some medical issues he was working through, and his son was on the team, so maybe riding the wave to the end of the season, doing his due diligence, conducting inter-program interviews and letting cooler heads prevail was the smartest way to begin this new chapter.
This probably didn't need to be rushed.
I assume by "knock[ing] the hire out of the park" you mean "hire someone I approve of." Otherwise, what's the standard? How will we know?
I love the confidence everyone here has that they know more about the job Warde is doing than the regents, Ono, the coaches in the athletic department, and the boosters. I have yet to hear any of them express criticism of Warde — even Harbaugh, who as far as I know never said a bad word about Warde.
Nonetheless, we all know he's shit at his job. Despite the national football championship. Hell, even despite the apparent consensus that Warde screwed up the Pearson firing, in fact we've made the NCAA hockey playoffs every year since. What kind of results do we want from an athletic director, or an athletic department, honestly?
I'm 100% on board with the job Warde is doing, and my only concern is that knuckleheads like the ones who comment on this blog will somehow force him out to replace him with someone who ... I don't know ... goes public with statements demonstrating righteous anger whenever the blogosphere wants him to, regardless of the actual success of the programs he oversees.
That’s the thing. Michigan athletics is making money hand over fist and we’re winning conference titles at an unprecedented rate and competing on the national stage. We are winning and making money. The results are there. There’s really no debating that.
I don’t like many of the decisions that have been made or the scandals that have happened during his tenure, but I also struggle to sit here and say any of them are fireable offenses on their own. It’s also not my job, nor the job of anyone on this blog, to make that determination. Much of the criticism of Warde seems to be people upset about a certain outcome and looking for a scapegoat or a general ignorance of the inner workings/hierarchy of running an athletic department. Specifically one the size of Michigan’s.
we’re winning conference titles at an unprecedented rate and competing on the national stage
Well, our #1 sport has been doing that. For the rest of our sports, it's a mixed bag.
Apparently you don’t pay attention to anything other than our #1 sport. We literally broke the school record for most conference championships each of the past two years…
“The Maize and Blue won 13 Big Ten championships, a school and conference record, one year after taking home 12 Big Ten (and 13 total) league titles in 2021-22“
March 16th, 2024 at 12:17 PM ^
I certainly follow our #2 and #3 sports. Manuel's hires in those (Howard and Pearson) didn't work out the best, and yet, they were easy hiring decisions. Time will tell about Naurato.
Beyond that, our most successful programs have tended to have coaches whose hirings predated Manuel.
He made the right move here, and in a timely fashion. I have no complaint about how he handled Howard. But I'm not sure how much confidence I have in him to find the right replacement. There is no obvious candidate this time. I hope my concern turns out to be misplaced.
I certainly follow our #2 and #3 sports.
Well Warde’s job is to oversee the success of all sports, not just the top 3. Though the top 3 have all seen their fair share of success during his tenure as well.
Howard and Pearson) didn't work out the best, and yet, they were easy hiring decisions
Howard was really the ONLY option based on the timing of Beilein’s departure and he had initial success. Warde also moved on from him when it was clear the success isn’t going to return. Pearson was a very successful hire, the issues with Pearson came off of the ice. Naurato took the team to the Frozen Four during his interim season and was widely considered one of the top young coaches rising through the ranks. Again, no brainer. Making the easy decision means making the right decision and not trying to be the smartest guy in the room and going off script. That’s a plus in an AD.
Beyond that, our most successful programs have tended to have coaches whose hirings predated Manuel.
And yet, the most successful stretch of conference titles in school history didn’t occur under any of the ADs that preceded Manuel. Why does he only get credit for the success of coaches he hires? It’s still his responsibility to make sure those coaches have the resources they need to compete long after they’ve been hired. Considering we’re winning more conference titles than we (or any other B1G school) ever have, sounds like he’s doing that.
Again, if we’re looking strictly at the results, he’s been very successful as Michigan’s AD. Using the metrics his superiors would use to judge success, he’s passing with flying colors. Win and make money. Any questions related to his job status would be centered around his handling of specific events/scandals that have occurred. Which is a fair criticism, but it’s unclear whether any of it is worthy of causing the guy his job on its own.
Don’t forget though we don’t have high speed WIFI at the football games and I can’t tweet my thoughts out live. So obviously this means Warde has to go.
Why is his performance such a focus (the main focus for many) anyway? And it's not even just his performance. People attack him personally all the time here. It's as ugly and as low class as anything I've read on RCMB.
March 16th, 2024 at 11:18 AM ^
Good question. And in terms of Warde's performance, the one really crucial moment in his tenure was his handling of Harbaugh's contract after the dreadful 2020 Covid season. Many wanted Harbaugh fired, some wanted him retained, but it was all in the context of a global pandemic that completely altered the context of the decision.
In that extremely unclear and challenging moment Warde did something unconventional and in fact quite remarkable: he cut Harbaugh's salary in half and incentivized him to make needed changes and earn back the cut in his pay. This quite obviously pissed Harbaugh off, making it a very risky move on Warde's part, but it turned out to work perfectly. Despite Harbaugh being offended he did make major changes to his staff and his approach and then we had the best 3 seasons of Michigan football in my lifetime (I'm 61).
While Warde's handling of several other incidents with Pearson, Juwan etc. may be open to question, the one big decision that he had to get right, he nailed. (I'm not blaming him for pulling back on the TRO hearing last fall--I think that decision was probably made above Warde's head.)
As for the impending hire of a new men's basketball coach--the proof will be in the pudding. And it will take 2-3 years to see how it actually turns out. IMHO it's time for the armchair AD's to stand down and continue reveling in the our national championship football team.
March 15th, 2024 at 10:27 PM ^
I’m not tipping my cap for a guy doing the most obvious and required part of his job.
I wish Juwan nothing but success in the future. Head back to the NBA and do some great things as an assistant.
Juwan is a Michigan Man, through and through, and I don't know if there was a single one of us who didn't want him to succeed here.
But actions and results speak volumes.
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