Great guy. He was on a couple of my fantasy nba teams in the mid to late 90s. Good get on my part at the time and on UM's part now.
Juwan Howard to UM.
- Thread starter FeelinFilthy
- Start date
As a Purdue fan I fully approve of this hire. He won’t be targeting the same guys and once the luster wears off after his first couple of seasons, my guess is they will be searching again. Michigan now has high success expectations. I thought IU did, but apparently missing the tournament 3 straight years is acceptable now. So maybe Howard can survive that initial learning curve.
There were several coaches I didn’t want to see take that Michigan job and he wasn’t one of them. He may work out, he may get all of his vacated, he may get run out quickly. What an exciting time for Michigan.
good luck to them, we have one of our ex players as a coach so who knows how it will work out for them.
While likely anybody they hired would have been a step down from Beilein, this seems like an especially underwhelming hire.
I hated Michigan during the fab 5 era, so that may Factor into my opinion.
Yeah I was way wrong on this one. Thought they could attract a heavy hitter.
This choice by Michigan is a total mystery to me. Beilein was admirable for his coaching and his deserved clean reputation. Howard is a known cheater and not especially known for his coaching. So why?
When your top twenty say no.
He may be successful, but having said that, I am fairly confident the rest of the B1G will take their chances.
I don't really care and wish him well.
Just keep it clean in recruiting and I will have no issues with them.
I think this hurts MSU more than us.....
Just keep it clean in recruiting and I will have no issues with them.
I think this hurts MSU more than us.....
There is no doubt in my mind that Penny's recruiting success forced the hire. Especially since JB left so late in the process. Maybe he promised he could get Lebron’s son? I have no idea. But I would be surprised if Howard makes it five years and doesn’t set Michigan way back.
The value of having a long term coach can’t be overstated. If a team misses a few hires in a row, it can devastate a program. I think michigan should have promoted the assistant on a one year trial and then looked at having a full season to get their guy. Seems rushed, but it was likely their best option outside of promoting within. JB put them kind of in a bag there.
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I thought that during their issues, Howard may have been the least culpable of all of them. And he has been an assistant coach for the last 6 years, and basically acted as a player/assistant coach the couple of years before that. I think he wasn't even in uniform his last year of "playing." He's been on some short lists for NBA head jobs, including, ironically, Cleveland.
I think that for Michigan it's not a great hire, but they didn't have a lot of options. I thought it was weird that Jalen Rose was essentially putting pressure on the UM AD to make this hire. That just seems wrong. Politics shouldn't be involved and I'm not sure why they feel they need to "go back" to that era.
Who knows how good Howard is with x’s and o’s but like Hardaway I’m sure he can get the Jimmy’s and Joe’s. Probably the biggest reason for the hire
Probably but it's not quite that easy. Penny already had a good if not great chance of landing these recruits because of his position in AAU. He was literally coaching a lot of these studs. It was and is an obvious consequence and perfect timing. I've already seen Michigan fans trying to make the same comparison and I don't see it. We shall see.
In regards to the recruiting competition, I went back through the Beilein recruiting classes at Michigan. There sure aren't a lot of guys I remember Purdue having much involvement with, especially not in the recent classes. This surprised me as the early Beilein years he and Painter went head-to-head a lot. With that said, I wonder how many of these guys Juwan Howard would have recruited:
Zavier Simpson
Zak Irvin
Mitch McGary
GRob III
Zach Novak
Stu Douglass
Zavier Simpson
Zak Irvin
Mitch McGary
GRob III
Zach Novak
Stu Douglass
What about Zeb Jackson? I thought we were in on him for a short time. And it keeps the "Z" thing going...
I think it had more to do with timing than anything else. It was really, really poor timing for UM to be able to attract a 'high level' coach. I thought maybe Shaka Smart would have been a target and Belein was already making more than Smart was so they could have offered him similar or slightly more, IMO.
If that was it, why not appoint assistant coach for a year and go after Shaka Smart or someone else with a proven record?
It would almost certainly crash your program in that current guys would transfer out and you would be hard pressed to actually recruit. It definitely put UM in a hard place to find a good coach. I do think they did about as good as they could have done though.
That’s a good point. We will see if they made a good decision. I think that Michigan may fall out of the top tier of Big Ten which does not bother me a bit.
so unless I’m missing something, Howard has never been a head coach or coached in college? And he has never been involved at the AAU\grassroots level either…yeah…
I'm not sure how going from John Beilein to a guy with zero head coaching and zero college coaching experience "hurts" anyone.
UM had to find a basketball coach in May, and they had no options. Howard is quite literally the best UM could do.
Now this is a big loss. They will see a major drop in their defense.
Michigan moving away from everything that made them successful is interesting to me. Though they should have promoted within. I definitely expect that program to take a dip and it really just breaks my heart (tic).
Villanova's recent success couldn't have helped there. I imagine it is difficult to meet expectations in the same city as Jay Wright. Martelli was a great add by Howard.
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