Wisconsin Basketball should ask for severe punishment for Juwan Howard

The Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team had an incredible performance in the second half of their game on Sunday against the Michigan Wolverines. Led by none other than Johnny Davis, Wisconsin outscored Michigan by 14 points in the second half and took home the big-time victory to keep pace at the top of the conference.

Unfortunately, that’s all overshadowed by the immature actions of Michigan head coach Juwan Howard.

For the second time in less than a year, Howard was at the center of some very inappropriate behavior with another coach.

The incident stemmed from a timeout Badgers’ head coach Greg Gard called near the end of the game. With Wisconsin up by 15 points with 15 seconds remaining, Gard called a timeout as Michigan, who had at least one starter in the game, was running a full-court press on the Badgers’ backups. Wisconsin had already used six of the ten seconds allotted to them to get the ball over the halfcourt line and calling the timeout not only reset that to 10 seconds, but also allowed Gard to draw up a play for his backups.

Howard was upset with that timeout and continued to press with 15 seconds remaining. He even had his guys foul on the ensuing inbound as he was very upset.

The Wisconsin Basketball program should seek severe punishment for Michigan Wolverines’ head coach Juwan Howard following Sunday’s incident.

As the final buzzer sounded, Howard didn’t immediately go into the handshake line to congratulate the Badgers. He eventually did and had a confrontation with Gard when the two came upon each other.

Howard told Gard “he’ll remember that” when they saw each other in the line, to which Gard responded by saying, “oh hey, wait” in an attempt to explain their actions. Gard placed his hands on Howard to try to explain why the timeout was called and Howard exploded at that point. He began yelling expletives at Gard and wagging his finger directly in Gard’s face.

This prompted others to get involved including Badgers’ assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft. The incident continued to escalate for a few more moments, peaking with Howard open hand slapping Krabbenhoft and a number of players from both sides throwing punches after that.

It’s sad that there will be some players from both teams that will now face consequences because Howard–someone who is supposed to be a leader of young men on his team and to others across the country–couldn’t handle his team folding like a lawn chair in the second half of a critical Big Ten Conference game.

There have been a lot of mental gymnastics by advocates and famous alumni since, stating Howard isn’t solely to blame for this incident. They try to cite Gard and the other Badgers’ staff for “instigating” the situation. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

https://twitter.com/ZachHeilprin/status/1495598900002107393?s=20&t=6U9Tar935PNFyA85zb8I4A

Less than a year ago, Howard was ejected from a game in which he tried to go after then Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon. This is a man with a budding history of trying to get physically aggressive with his peers.

Advocates of Howard’s have cited Gard placing his hands on Howard as the reason for the incident. Heck, Howard even said in a postgame interview in which he apologized for nothing that he felt the need to defend himself from Gard’s aggressive actions. Give me a break. Yes, in a perfect world Gard would’ve let Howard walk past him in his temper tantrum and followed up when cooler heads could prevail. However, these two have known each other for years now and Gard wanted to explain why he did what he did. There’s no world where Gard is responsible for Howard making a mountain out of a molehill.

Wisconsin’s athletic directory Chris McIntosh spoke after the game and shared he had already had a conversation with the Big Ten Commissioner. It’s clear Wisconsin is asking for a swift and aggressive punishment for Howard. And they should. The only thing is the Big Ten only has the power to hand out a two-game suspension and $10,000 fine–max–to Howard.

The Badgers should demand Michigan steps in and makes it more severe. This isn’t the first such occasion and a message needs to be sent to current and future Michigan Wolverines about how you handle yourself in defeat. To turn a blind eye to his incident and not step in is to enable a future event. A future event that might be more severe, as this fight was already an escalation of the previous one just 11 months ago. If the conference and school don’t step in immediately, who knows what will happen next time.