Juwan Howard fired by Michigan basketball after 5 seasons
Juwan Howard will not return as head coach of the Michigan basketball program for the 2024-25 season.
U-M AD Warde Manuel has parted ways with Howard after five seasons.
"After a comprehensive review of the program, I have decided that Juwan will not return as our men's basketball coach," Manuel said in a statement released Friday. "Juwan is among the greatest Wolverines to ever be associated with our basketball program. I know how much it meant, to not only Juwan, but to all of us for him to return here to lead this program. 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. I am thankful for Juwan's dedication, passion and commitment to U-M and for all that he, and his legacy, will continue to mean to Michigan."
The Wolverines (8-24, 3-17 Big Ten) just finished a season with the most losses in program history (107 years) and have consecutive years of missed NCAA tournaments for the first time since 1999-2008.
Michigan was 87-73 under Howard overall, but went just 26-40 the past two seasons. Howard will be paid a $3 million buyout since the firing happened prior to June 30, per his contract.
The decision is not necessarily surprising − Manuel said in late January it's his job to look beyond any one season and simply make the best decision for the program, whatever that is − though for some it was perplexing that it seemingly was up for debate for so long.
That same day in January, Manuel reminded there once was a wide-held desire from fans to get rid of then-football coach Jim Harbaugh after a down 2020 season, only for him to keep Harbaugh and be rewarded with a national title. Patience prevailed, he said, before he added it's his job to pay attention to all circumstances at play.
With Harbaugh in 2020, it was a Covid-19 pandemic. Now, with Howard, Manuel cited his open heart surgery.
“I think (patience) is the key with all of our programs,” Manuel said in January. “Juwan is working with the staff, with the team to win, but let’s not discount what personally Juwan has been through. That is also a concern and focus of mine that he is okay and that he’s getting through this.”
Surgery or not, the trend had without question been in the wrong direction. Michigan went 1-10 in the regular season after those comments and finished as the second worst defensive Big Ten team in the past decade.
Of course, that's a far cry from how the tenure began.
Michigan was poised to make the big dance in Howard's first season (2019-20), which was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic as the Wolverines were on the court warming up for a Big Ten Tournament game against Rutgers. The next season appeared to show what was missed out on as Howard and U-M reached new heights when they won the Big Ten Championship and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The former fab five star was named 2021 AP Coach of the Year as his team finished one possession away from the final weekend of the season before it suffered a 51-49 Elite 8 loss to UCLA.
However instead of that being a normal occurrence, it proved to be an outlier as the high water mark of the tenure. Michigan went 45-55 in 100 games the past three seasons (with loss to Penn State), and lost more games in each successive season for four straight years.
After a 29-12 start to his career, Howard finished 59-59 in his final 118 games.
Following the Elite 8 trip, Michigan opened the year in 2021-22 ranked No. 6 in America and soon was ranked as high as No. 4 in the country, before a months-long stumble. Howard's team was 6-3 in early December after a win over Nebraska, then went 11-11 the rest of the way to finish 17-14 on the regular season.
Some experts had the Wolverines on the wrong side of the bubble headed into selection Sunday, but when push came to shove it wasn't that close, as Michigan earned an 11-seed. Then, after having won consecutive games just twice in the prior three months, U-M earned consecutive upset wins over 6-seed Colorado State and 3-seed Tennessee to bring the program to a record fifth consecutive Sweet 16, where it lost to Villanova.
The winning weekend salvaged the season, however the same hasn't been able to be said the past two years.
In 2022-23, Michigan opened the season 7-3, then went 10-12 over its final 22 games as it missed the big dance for just the second time since 2010. While it was a low point at the time, a season above .500 while flirting with the NCAA Tournament bubble into March was a dream compared to what U-M just endured.
Michigan was 6-5 in mid-December, before the entire year fell apart. The Wolverines lost 18 of 20 games as they finished in last place in the Big Ten for the first time since 1966-67 and by win percentage suffered the was the second-worst season (In 1959-60 Michigan went 4-20, which is .167) of all time.
Prior to this year U-M hadn't lost five straight games in more than a decade, than had three such stretches this season.
The first instance came as the calendar flipped and Big Ten play arrived, however U-M won a rivalry game at home against Ohio State as the fab five reunited for a feel good moment, creating a slight hope it could serve as a turning point. Wrong.
U-M suffered another five-game losing streak that stretched nearly a month and only stopped when U-M claimed another emotional home win against then-No. 11 Wisconsin. That, however, was the final high moment all year.
Michigan lost its final eight games of the regular season and XXXXXXXX in the Big Ten Tournament.
Even beyond losses on the court, Michigan's program under Howard had seemingly lost cabin pressure in a number of capacities. First, his own behavior. It started in 2021, when he had to be physically restrained on the court during the second half of a Big Ten Championship game after he charged at then-Maryland coach Mark Turgeon and was subsequently ejected.
Fast-forward a year and it was his most serious infraction, in mid-Februrary of 2022 when he smacked Wisconsin assistant staffer Joe Krabbenhoft in the face during a skirmish in the postgame handshake line; he was suspended the final five regular season games of the year, fined $40,000 and put on a zero tolerance policy.
Then, there was this year, in early December − before he was officially reinstated as acting head coach from when he stepped away from heart surgery −when Howard and long time strength & conditioning coach Jon Sanderson got into an altercation.
It followed a back-and-forth where Sanderson had told a frustrated senior forward Jace Howard to stop berating a trainer, which led to the elder Howard coming toward and yelling at Sanderson, who stood his ground and yelled back per documents obtained by The Athletic.
Sanderson filed an HR complaint and was moved elsewhere in the athletic department, before he resigned earlier this month.
A person with knowledge of the situation told the Free Press the policy was not violated because there was "nothing that warranted" any further punishment once HR did its own investigation and deemed nothing was physical in nature.
This is not to mention other shortcomings, like how with all the support given to players around the program, point guard and leading scorer Dug McDaniel still managed to be suspended for six away games due to academic progress issues, which played no small part in torpedoing the season.
U-M's most recent Big Ten Tournament loss brought its disastrous season came to a fitting end and now that the No. 1 question has been answered about the future, here are a few more.
Which players return? There was already rumor of McDaniel heading back home somewhere in the DMV (looking at you Georgetown), while Oliver Nkamhoua, Jaelin Llewellyn and Tray Jackson are all out of eligibility.
Terrance Williams and Nimari Burnett both went through senior day ceremonies last weekend and while Williams has one year of eligibility remaining and Burnett has two, neither implied their return to Ann Arbor is imminent.
If all that were to happen, it would leave Tarris Reed Jr., Will Tschetter, George Washington III, Youssef Khayat and Jace Howard as the lone scholarship players a new coach would be looking to keep. Michigan also has two incoming recruits, Michigan's Mr. Basketball Durral 'Phat Phat' Brooks and Oak Hill's Christian Anderson, but neither are consensus top 100 prospects, which means true instant impact is far from expected.
Not to mention, they'd be allowed to get free release from their national letter of intent with a coaching change.
The third incoming player potentially is Khani Rooths, a fringe five-star power forward from IMG Academy who is verbally committed, but yet to sign on the dotted line. Somehow still holding onto him is essential.
Even if somehow U-M is able to do all of things, it would still have a handful (somewhere between 3 and 5) of scholarships available that would need to be filled via the transfer portal.
It's a place where they've had success with players like Mike Smith, Chaundee Brown and Nkamhoua, but they've also been burned with credit transfer issues while trying to get guys in the door like Terrance Shannon Jr. and Caleb Love. Even when they're in the door, if this year was any indication, it can be difficult to build a strong core of a team in just one offseason. There's no guarantee it works.
Howard kept his staff close in assistants Phil Martelli, Saddi Washington and Howard Eisley. Though they're not all a package deal, one would presume unless one of them is tabbed as the successor (highly unlikely) a new face will of course want to come in with their own staff and mold things in their own image.
Beyond that, there are plenty of questions still.
About the the buy in from the higher levels of the university. About if there's enough investment in NIL to really stand a chance in this new day and age.
The Wolverines have gone to two national championships in the past dozen years. It's a program, that when done right, has that kind of punch and reach. However it's also one that if not nurtured properly can fall into irrelevancy.
U-M went from five straight Sweet 16's to the cellar in just 24 months and now that there's a new look Big Ten, perhaps there's one more question that's worth asking that hadn't been in some time.
Is Michigan basketball even a premier job? Manuel will have to sell someone it is.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Juwan Howard fired by Michigan basketball after 5 seasons
