Sponsor note. Maybe you've got an idea for a small business. Maybe you've decided you can sell consultation services to LSU basketball coaches despite the fact you're a CPA and have no basketball knowledge deeper than "maybe close out sometimes?" Well, hell, that'll probably work!

What you need now is a lawyer to get your small business on firm footing and review any contracts you sign with LSU's athletic department. Richard Hoeg is that lawyer. He will tell you that, yes, you could improve LSU basketball. He will make it happen. Maybe the next Shaq can get a six seed.

Juwan Howard talks to the NBA on TNT. People even like it when he swears on TV!

I'm going to up my swearing to become more popular.

Howard mentions that part of his drive at Michigan is to clear the path for other black head coaches, and it's maybe not a coincidence that the Big Ten has deviated from the coach hiring script this offseason. Before Juwan Howard, the Big Ten had not hired a black men's basketball head coach since Tubby Smith in 2008. This offseason Penn State and Minnesota have given black assistants head coaching jobs.

On the search. Brendan Quinn on the events that led Howard to the head coaching job. Nobody had to cajole Howard into reaching out to Phil Martelli:

Howard had answers. In the days leading up to the interview, he had spoken to friends throughout basketball, gathering opinions. One of them was Kentucky coach John Calipari. “No one really knew it,” Calipari said, “but Juwan was out there doing his own research all along the way.”

That’s why on the Monday before the interview, Phil Martelli, recently dismissed from Saint Joseph’s and on vacation at Disney, got a text message from Calipari saying Howard was going to call. Martelli, fairly confused, said OK. Once the two connected, Howard first asked Martelli to paint a profile of what it takes to be a great head coach at the college level. They talked through it. Then, toward the end of the conversation, Howard gauged Martelli’s interest in serving as his No. 2. “Something like, ‘Would you be interested in taking this journey with me?'” Martelli remembers. Steve Fisher called next. Howard’s former coach at Michigan and the coach of the Wolverines’ 1989 national championship team wanted to double-check that Martelli was legitimately interested in coming aboard with Howard. “Are you serious about doing this?” Fisher asked Martelli. He was.

The article also contains a quote from Grant Hill that adds to the giant pile of Everybody Loves Juwan.

[After THE JUMP: the most famous, period] 

Merry Leggmas. I object to "one of" in this tweet since no other college hockey goal has given its name to a rad and increasingly popular move:

25 years ago today, @umichhockey's Mike Legg scored one of college hockey's most famous goals: "The Michigan." pic.twitter.com/IL9aaCGNGu

— Michigan Alumni (@michiganalumni) March 24, 2021

Livers on his shirt. He's the only one of the three guys wearing the #NotNCAAProperty shirts who was quoted in the NYT article on the movement, because Jordan Bohannon didn't want to and Geo Baker—wait for it—wasn't allowed to:

To do so, a group that has grown to dozens of players from at least 15 schools, has used Twitter this week to call for change around a single issue — the N.C.A.A.’s control over their marketing opportunities — through the hashtag #NotNCAAProperty. The players have called for, among other things, a meeting with N.C.A.A. President Mark Emmert, a request that a spokesman for the association signaled Thursday might be granted.

“We’re doing this for future athletes, we’re doing this for our future kids,” said Livers, a senior, who added that it was “time for student-athletes to speak up, no more being silenced.”

I did not know that in 2018 Michigan was on the verge of a protest:

Gavitt was not so conciliatory when it came to such actions during the tournament, like one that Michigan players had organized but never followed through with at the 2018 Final Four — skipping the open practices on the day before the semifinals with the other participants, Loyola-Chicago, Villanova and Kansas.

“I would be concerned about any potential disruption of games,” Gavitt said.

Well of course you are, buddy. Maaaan do I wish that had happened. I am upping my probability there is a delayed game in the final four considerably after reading this from Livers:

“I can see some delays” of games, said Livers, who acknowledged that players had talked about how their teams’ tournament fates could influence the course of their campaign. “I can see a lot of that — there’s definitely plans ahead. I don’t want to break the news, but we’re going to use our voices, our actions.”

I would love for Michigan to be the first school to take that step.

One of the biggest "people are just in charge of things" ever. It's time for another round of Mark Emmert Piñata madness, thanks in part to the NCAA's botched handling of the women's basketball tournament. That appears to be a standard level of bureaucratic bumbling common to large organizations that don't really prioritize certain things. Emmert bungling the cash cow is another level entirely:

All those are going to pale in comparison to what promises to be Emmert’s defining legacy of incompetence at the NCAA, a mistake that’s going to likely cost the association more than $3.5 billion in upcoming years. In 2016, the NCAA had eight years left on its NCAA tournament television contract with CBS and Turner and decided not to take it to market.

Instead, the NCAA extended the deal until 2032 at a modest increase of less than 3% annually. At the time, Emmert took a victory lap in the media, saying that uncertainties in the “evolving media landscape” led to the extension.

Well, the landscape has evolved. And those who trade in the television business have declared it a failure of vision, destined to go down as one of the worst sports television deals in modern athletic history.

Ruthlessly extracting revenue is the one thing the NCAA is supposed to be good at! We've got six sport drink bottles per player on the sidelines this year because the NCAA wants to use bench shots as further revenue generators. And this was the guy who was in charge of things:

At the time, a gentleman named Mark Lewis ran championships for the NCAA and spearheaded the deal. (Lewis is now working in the liquor business in Bozeman, Montana.)

An eyepopping aside.

Here's Dana O'Neil carpet-bombing Emmert in the Athletic if you're so inclined.

The Ringer on Franz. They have him ninth:

Unselfish playmaker who has great court vision for his size and the ability to deliver accurate passes straight off the dribble. … In some systems, he could be a major threat facilitating from the elbow areas, running dribble handoffs with shooters or serve as the ball handler or screener in the pick-and-roll. ... Has a computer brain on defense. Reads plays instantly and disrupts actions by beating opponents to their spots. He will make a significant impact as an off-ball defender throughout his career.

Someone make some more Wagners post-haste.

Indiana, flailing. Coaching searches frequently devolve into fiasco, and Indiana's basketball search has offically reached that point. There was a Brad Stevens Day, which Stevens debunked by calling himself a "masshole." There was We Tried Thad Matta Day, but Matta reportedly failed a physical (or did not fail a physical and was not offered the job, forget it Jake it's coaching search). Now the name is…

…the strongest buzz coming out of the weekend centered around New York Knicks assistant coach and Indiana alum Mike Woodson.

Man, that is leaning hard into the Howard model. Explicitly:

There's some chatter that Indiana has seen what Juwan Howard has done at Michigan and been impressed, which could increase the chances for Woodson or fellow Hoosier alums Keith Smart and Calbert Cheaney.

Woodson has been an NBA coach since 1996, with eight years as a head coach with the Hawks and Knicks. He did pretty well in his head coaching stints, unlike most of the NBA-to-college swings in the dark, but he's 62 and probably does not have the infinite connections in AAU and the like that Howard did thanks to his sons. Smart and Cheaney have thinner resumes, but Cheaney has the advantage of being 49.

The most important thing:

Beilein also remains involved, but there's a line of thinking that it would be done by now if he was the pick.

Hell yeah go get that Marquette job.

Porter Moser is also being brought up and if he's willing to jump that would make a lot of sense. Moser's resume is considerably stronger than it was two years ago, when I was real mad he was even in the conversation for the Michigan job.

Something about LSU coaches, man. I know Ed Orgeron recently won a national title but I mean what:

#LSU coach Ed Orgeron admits "I hired some coaches I didn't even interview from the last staff, and I'm never doing that again."

"I interviewed everybody (this time)."

— Jerit Roser (@JeritRoser) March 23, 2021

If I had done this I would not say it out loud, like I thought it might get me a cookie. Also:

Ed Orgeron on his hiring of defensive coordinator Daronte Jones: "Daronte was like the fourth or fifth choice, but who cares? So was I." #LSU

— Brooks Kubena (@BKubena) March 23, 2021

This will be charming until Orgeron goes 8-4 and then he'll be thrown off a boat.

Etc.: Farleigh Dickinson is adding sports in the hope of increasing overall revenue. Jeremy Woo on Luka Garza's NBA future. <shakes fist at Patrick Ewing>. Never say anything into a hot mic. Pete Thamel on Nate Oats, who Michigan will probably meet if they get past Florida State. Justice department weighs in on athletes'  side in the Alston case, which is now at the Supreme Court. How LSU slow-walks sexual assault investigations and transparency. Note that Michigan does some of this with their worst-in-class FOIA office.