michgoblue

December 16th, 2023 at 12:16 AM ^

Reading a lot of the comments in this thread and I just can’t figure out why so many people want to keep Juwan. Does this incident on its own merit firing?  None of us know, but probably not. Does this incident, when combined with multiple prior incidents merit firing?  Maybe but the dial starts to swing more towards yes. But put all of these “incidents” off to the side for a moment and let’s just focus on basketball. Juwan has been in charge for several years now. The program is decidedly worse now than it was before he got here. If I am being honest, I can’t think of a single thing that Juwan is above average at:

1.  Recruting - below average to outright bad.  And yes, admissions, NIL, etc caveats do apply, but even with those caveats, his recruting is no good  

2. Roster construction - again, below average to outright bad.  And while this may be related to recruiting, you need to identify the areas in which you need guys and have first, second, third and fourth options when you recruit.  The lack of scoring wings certain years, shooters other years, and bigs other years is inexcusable.

3. Lineup management - this may be one of his greatest weaknesses.  Time after time I am left scratching my head at some of the lineups that Juwan sends out and almost without fail, those lineups that we can all see as making no sense perform terrible.

4. The team consistently shows weak effort.  That shows up in our putrid defense and defensive rebounding (both of which are largely areas in which effort can result in results). 

5. Team culture - Juwan created an environment where his younger son was, by all accounts, a team cancer who didn’t play defense at all, didn’t even attempt to rebound and was nothing but a me-first ball hog who made a short stop in AA on his way to the draft. And now his older son was involved in an incident that led to a public fight between two coaches and the dismissal of our long time strength coach. He seems to have done a bad job of creating the type of team culture conducive to winning. 
 

I am a huge fan of Juwan as a fab 5 member and Michigan legend. I was as excited by his hire as just about anyone. But anyone who is paying attention and not looking at it through rose colored glasses can see that he is just not a good head coach and a change must be made to save the program. 
 

Joined: 11/16/2009

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michgoblue

December 16th, 2023 at 8:33 AM ^

Juwan had some early success as a recruiter based off of the “new coach hype” that all new coaches tend to get, and also based upon his star power and connections to the first few classes through his sons’ basketball careers. That has really faded. The past few classes have been decent, but the trend line is decidedly negative. 

Joined: 11/16/2009

MGoPoints: 32201

michgoblue

December 16th, 2023 at 8:37 AM ^

I want to move on from Juwan (hard to believe I am writing that as I was one of his most avid supporters), but Michigan is far from the laughingstock of the sports world. We are currently ranked #1 overall in the entire country and favored to win a national title in arguably the most significant college sport, we have championship level teams in a number of other sports and our b-ball team is currently . . . Middling? Meh? 5-5?  So yeah, even if the b-ball program is trending down and many of us don’t think that the current coach can turn it around, I think calling Michigan the laughingstock of the sports world just may be a touch af a stretch. 

Joined: 11/16/2009

MGoPoints: 32201

MinWhisky

December 16th, 2023 at 9:25 AM ^

It's pretty simple. 

Part one: Juwan's son, Jace, reacted very negatively to, or in the presence of Sanderson.  I'm guessing it was pretty blatant, that Sanderson didn't let it pass, and that it was privileged behavior that's been around the BB program since Juwan took over.  I think that for Sanderson, it was probably the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back as he saw the players' attitude adversely impacting his ability to conduct "Camp Sanderson". 

Part two: it's either him or me and UofM chose to keep Juwan.

Joined: 10/17/2011

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bronxblue

December 16th, 2023 at 10:03 AM ^

Glad to see this thread went about how I expected, with a split between people happy a review was performed and what looked like a minor incident ended with nobody getting in trouble and the other half pissed off they couldn't fire Juwan Howard for faux morality reasons.

Sanderson filing an HR incident felt like an overreaction, and my hope is both him and Howard hash this out and move forward.  If they don't that'll suck, but Howard is already sort of on a short leash and if this program is going to get back to where it was then everyone involved is going to need to get better.

I will say that it's weird people thought the team would be happy or welcoming to Sanderson had this complaint led to Howard's removal.  Generally the guy who got your coach fired, the one you signed up to play for, isn't particularly popular.

Joined: 11/22/2008

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Kinnie

December 16th, 2023 at 11:11 AM ^

Juwan seems like kind of a tool. He doesn’t do interviews.  Cant keep players. Fights with staff and other coaches.  Let him go get healthy and be an NBA asst.  that seems like his ceiling. 

Joined: 10/16/2023

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stephenrjking

December 16th, 2023 at 1:56 PM ^

Well, that's all on it. For now. 

They moved fast, which is good. Warde *in this area* isn't the most trustworthy evaluator of appropriate workplace behavior--see also Pearson, Mel.

But it is what it is. Howard's on-court performance is irrelevant to this particular situation.

But his ability to manage staff and personnel is. Clock is ticking. I think he gets a hot seat year next year, but there's a lot of this year left to play. 

Joined: 03/15/2012

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