Michigan's basketball season (and the Juwan Howard era) are mercifully over. What happens now?
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It’s over.
Thankfully, mercifully and painfully — it’s over.
On Wednesday night, the “it” was the Michigan basketball season (or at least officially — the season had been over long before the final whistle in Minneapolis). On Friday afternoon, though, while the majority of the Big Ten teams were still alive competing for a Big Ten Tournament Championship, that “it” grew to include the Juwan Howard era in general.
The announcement that Michigan was moving on from Howard (and the final two years of his deal, worth roughly $7 million total) came shortly after lunch time on Friday, a punctuation mark on a pretty stark change of plans by Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel in recent days. Over the last few months, people close to the situation that I’d been speaking with kept saying things like “don’t be surprised if he’s back next season.” As word of those plans starting leaking and Michigan fans shared their near-unanimous displeasure with the way things were trending, it appears Manuel’s hand was forced, and Howard’s once-promising tenure in Ann Arbor reached its conclusion at the end of Year 5, a season with an 8-24 record that was Michigan’s worst single season in more than 50 years.
Manuel’s comments (via a written release) were as follows:
"After a comprehensive review of the program, I have decided that Juwan will not return as our men's basketball coach. 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 final line of the release was “a national search will begin immediately.” I’ll have more on that (and the man running the search) later in this column.
But first, a few more words near the top about just how dismal things had gotten, and just how much of a no-brainer call this had become … even if Manuel didn’t agree with that assessment until late in the process.
Yes, the Michigan men’s basketball program, less than two years removed from qualifying for its fifth straight Sweet 16, saw its season end shy of the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year on Wednesday. But unlike last season where the Wolverines were on the bubble and had a chance to compete for something in the final week(s) of the season, this season has been a lost cause with nothing to fight for for quite some time. All the Wolverines needed was for that door to officially close, and that’s what happened earlier this week when that door slammed shut at the hands of lowly Penn State, an 11 seed in the Big Ten Tournament on a Wednesday night — a night in the Big Ten Tournament reserved for the worst of the worst, a night that Michigan had never even had to play in prior to this season.
That’s what happens when you’re 8-24 and haven’t won a basketball game in more than a month. And let’s be clear: Michigan didn’t just end its season on a nine-game losing streak. It ended its season on a nine-game losing streak where it played like a team with a pulse for exactly one (1) of those games — an 8-point loss to Purdue.
The other eight games? Losses by 30, 29, 23, 20, 15, 14, 10 and then nine points — with the last of those coming Wednesday night when Michigan’s bench cobbled together a 6-0 run in the final minute of the Penn State game to make a 15-point deficit a far more acceptable (and considerably more deceiving) 9-point loss.
These weren’t just losses. They were indictments. And the final handful of weeks of the season were littered with them, with no real reprieve for anything else. Michigan wasn’t competitive. Hell, Michigan wasn’t even watchable. And I mean that in more than just the figurative sense of the word.
Look, I was never actively rooting against Juwan Howard. Nor did/would I ever root against Michigan when it was competing under his leadership. But I’d be 100% lying if I told you that apathy surrounding the program hadn’t pretty intensely seeped in.
A month or two back, I kind of kept it to myself that I wasn’t frequently watching full Michigan hoops games live for the first time in more than a decade, because I felt pretty guilty about it. I was still DVRing them and keeping tabs on what was going on. But that in itself felt like a chore and felt like more than enough when it comes to a time commitment this winter. By Wednesday night’s season finale, not only was I not watching it live (c’mon — Survivor and The Amazing Race are back on TV and the Love Is Blind reunion special was on) but I also can’t really see a scenario where I ever watch the game in its entirety on tape delay.
Does that make me a bad fan? Or at least a fair-weathered one? I guess that’s up to others to decide. But I honestly don’t think so, nor would I ever judge anyone else for deciding there are better ways to spend your valuable free time than to watch, well … that. I’ve said in this space on more than one occasion that I’m not interested in being the fan police and telling people how they should and shouldn’t approach fandom. But while I said I’d never judge someone who deemed the 2023-24 season was too much to stomach, I’d honestly have a hard time not judging someone who wasn’t turned off by what this program has become.
Is there some hypocrisy there? Absolutely. But at least I’m a hypocrite with standards.
Below the paywall jump below, I’ll dig deeper into how things went wrong for the Juwan Howard era, what’s next for him, whether this move changes anything when it comes to my feelings about Warde Manuel, and what’s next for the Michigan hoops program in general.
Let’s explore.
