March 15th, 2024 at 11:41 PM ^
Am a bit sad about this. My initials are also JH and I got a job at the university the same year Harbaugh started coaching.
Does this mean I am losing my job too?
March 15th, 2024 at 11:45 PM ^
Depends if you made the university better, or the latter. Just a surreal thing to think about.
Jim started slow, got us to the promised land.
Juan started fast and led us to destruction.
Two tales of the JH.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:57 PM ^
Jim started fast, got stuck in 3rd for a while there while trying to accelerate and then tried fixing it but shifted into neutral, but then figured it all out at the end.
I'm looking forward to the book in a decade, but I think Schlissel was blocking Jim from making wholesale changes earlier.
That's the reason Jim was stuck in 3rd gear and then accidentally stuck it in reverse before finding the rest of the gears.
Maybe he was stuck in 2nd gear. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:05 AM ^
At least your initials aren't WM.
Geeze, man - Wink just got started. Give him a chance.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:52 AM ^
I mean, you have done nothing it improve the MBB either. So… out you go.
Most likely. But…just but…a promotion to HC of the basketball program. Carry on the JH legacy.
Not that legacy. The other JH…you know what I mean
As long as you don't get caught stealing stationary I'm sure you'll be fine
I’m sorry to tell you that yes, this does mean you will lose your job.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:43 PM ^
I'm sure there is still a guy named John Harris at Michigan.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:59 PM ^
Had to check the directory, there’s one.
March 15th, 2024 at 11:59 PM ^
Clearly you mean Jabrill Hot(peppers).
March 16th, 2024 at 12:13 AM ^
Juwan is the Yin to Harbaugh's Yang.
Given my first football season as a fan was 08', I'm okay with that.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:14 AM ^
There was a JH and a JMFH.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:21 AM ^
Terrible shitposting season is upon us.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:52 AM ^
True.
But look at the board, it's dead these days.
There is a still a thread on the front page speculating who Moore is targeting for RB coach.
Complaining about threads needs to be suspended until there's more activity on this board.
It started when we started to win honestly. BPONE, on the other side, brings with it a hot cup of tea, and sometimes a queer Clordish Korean cocktail.
Shitposts sometimes strain into maize and blue hot tamales. They're cheap quenching food for thought.
But most times...they are just shit.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:34 AM ^
In 20-21 both were ranked top 4 at the end of the season. Too bad JH couldn’t keep pace with JH
March 16th, 2024 at 12:51 AM ^
Perhaps this should be a diary entry but I'll share it here.
My opinion: I didn't like how the Michigan fanbase quickly turned on Juwan Howard.
In retrospect, it's no surprise given that this is the same Michigan fanbase that wanted to fire Jim Harbaugh.
"What will change in 1 year?!?!" they asked.
Turns out A LOT.
And I can pull up the receipts. I already put a clownsuit on ThadMattasagoblin. I can do it for many more MGobloggers. (The Internet is truly forever thanks to sites like Archive.is or Wayback Machine.)
It's the same Michigan fanbase that was pissed at Warde Manuel for not firing Jim Harbaugh in 2020 and then was pissed at Warde Manuel for not being able to retain Jim Harbaugh in 2024 (even though it was clear that Harbaugh badly wants to win a Super Bowl). The Michigan fanbase talks out of both sides of its collective mouth. The notion that there's something special about the Michigan fanbase relative to other fanbases is horseshit. That was painfully obvious in how it talked (and still talks) about Paterno vs Schembechler. Both men failed to be leaders in things that matter infinitely more than football.
Also, all this talk from the Michigan fanbase about how Juwan Howard inherited a great team. No. He inherited a great program but not a great team. That's an important distinction. 3 starters (Charles Matthews, Jordan Poole, and Iggy) from the 2019 team left. 2 of those 3 were underclassmen.
Michigan Admissions knee-capped Juwan Howard by not letting him get 2 all-American caliber players (Terrence Shannon Jr, Caleb Love).
Timeline of events:
1. Moussa Diabate leaves because NIL can't go to foreign players. Michigan has a big hole at the PF spot because a talented international player (expected to be multi-year player) chooses to be OAD.
2. Juwan Howard tries to get Terrence Shannon Jr but is denied.
3. Michigan loses many close games, doesn't make NCAAT, and lacks someone exactly like Terrence Shannon Jr. at the hybrid SF/PF spot.
4. Hunter Dickinson leaves because he thinks Michigan doesn't have enough to win. He's not wrong.
5. Juwan Howard tries to get Caleb Love and gets screwed. Caleb Love having enough to get into Arizona but not Michigan is HORSE CRAP.
Think of all the close losses we've had the past 2 seasons. Those 2-3 players would've made a difference. Many games are decided in a 4-7 point spread. Yeah, they would've flipped many results.
In an alternate timeline, Juwan Howard gets Terrence Shannon Jr, Michigan makes the 2023 NCAAT as a 23-8/24-7 regular season team (so before BTT), Shannon returns for another season, Hunter Dickinson stays, Michigan gets Caleb Love, 2024 Michigan plays like a 1 or 2 seed (26-5/27-4) and is a Final Four contender. (Yeah, yeah..."spare me the if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle" posts.)
It's amazing how 1 transfer portal snafu had such a horrific chain of events.
FYI: Juwan isn't the first coach to take over a program 2 years removed from a National Championship runner-up finish. Coach K took over Duke in 1980-1981. Duke was 2 years removed from losing to Kentucky in 1978 NCAAT Final in St. Louis (because Jack Givens was on FIRE and scored 40+ points).
Look up Coach K's first 5 seasons at Duke (especially the first 3). And then look at year 6. (i've linked his wiki page for convenience.) It's amazing that Duke's AD Tom Butters didn't buckle to the pressure of Duke's major donors. And back then, nearly all players stayed 4 years. So Coach K inherited super talented players like Gene Banks and Jim Spanarkel from the start and struggled because they didn't fit his preferred system (attacking man-to-man defense).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Krzyzewski#College
I don't know if Juwan Howard would've been able to engineer a turnaround. But Michigan fans knowing that UM Admissions knee-capped Juwan Howard on 2 elite players and then acting surprised that his tenure collapsed? I find that annoying. Juwan isn't without faults but there's no doubt that he got sabotaged by UMAdmissions with its goofy graduate transfer vs upperclassman dichotomy.
And spare me the "he wasn't classy" nonsense. Our in-state rivals have that prick Tom Izzo as HC. Izzo abuses refs every game with his tirades. And there's many instances of him going overboard and chewing out (or even trying to manhandle) his own players.
Juwan shouldn't have slapped the Wisconsin dipshit. The Mark Turgeon confrontation was a nothingburger. And Sanderson was a he-said, he-said affair that didn't turn physical even if it was confrontational.
Winning cures everything. Just ask Michigan Football. And Juwan Howard didn't win enough. But he also didn't get to stock enough ammo in the arsenal to win enough.
I ... kinda agree? No doubt there have been commenters here jumping all over Juwan with aggression, and no doubt many people here were too quick to do so. And I'm on the record (and repeatedly) as a defender of Juwan's.
But ... to suggest his firing wasn't justified is bizarre. The constant trend of the basketball team has been downward, and if this year wasn't enough — the worst result in some 60 years of Michigan basketball, and coming in last in the Big Ten by five games, following a season in which we didn't make the tournament despite two first-round draft picks and Hunter Dickinson — to justify a separation, it's hard to imagine what would.
A lot of us have mixed feelings today, and a lot of us like Juwan, and really really wish things had worked out differently. But Crisler has been half-empty for the second half of the year, and it's the AD's job to identify a problem and address it.
I'm with you in regretting the venom and hostility displayed all-too-often here against Juwan and Warde. But the suggestion that Juwan's firing was unwarranted is a strange one, to me, and comparing his record here to Coach Ks at Duke is laughable.
You misinterpreted parts of my post. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough so I want to clarify.
1. I did not mean to suggest or indicate Juwan's firing was unwarranted. After 2021, the Michigan Basketball program was undeniably getting worse season after season. And an 8-24 record is unconscionably awful. If Juwan Howard had managed to go 15-17 this season then perhaps he deserved 1 more season to see if he could right the program. (Tangent: After a very successful start to his Purdue career, Matt Painter had a 16-18 season followed by a 15-17 season in 2013 and 2014. Purdue chose to be patient and it worked out for the Boilermakers. Juwan needed to show that he could keep the program afloat this season. He did not. Hence, he wasn't retained.)
I did, however, make my case for how UM Admissions hindered Juwan Howard's attempts to rectify the roster and the chain of events that unfolded.
2. I did not compare Coach K's record and Juwan's record. However, I did point out that a similar scenario had played out before. And I want to clarify: by scenario I'm referring to a program that nearly reached the pinnacle being sub-.400 a few short years later.
At Michigan, Beilein went from trending toward getting fired in 2011 (pre-Sparty turnaround) to nearly winning a National Championship in 2013 to missing the NCAAT in 2015 to barely making the 2016 NCAAT as a play-in (and then losing a heartbreaker to ND) to playing for the National Championship in 2018. That's quite the roller coaster, no? Our fortunes changed dramatically within 2-3 year windows.
I was suggesting that Juwan Howard could've possibly engineered a turnaround IF he had greater institutional support/leeway. But if UM Admissions is going to hamper him in the age of the transfer portal, then the odds were low. And if UM Admissions will continue to be a problem for the next coach, then we can expect to see some more rough seasons.
3. When people were still in the honeymoon phase with Juwan Howard in 2021 and the early part of the 2021-2022 season, I said Juwan was making a mistake going after OADs because they are fool's gold. They key to sustained success in college sports is to get old and stay old. Ex: Did you know that the overwhelming majority of Final Four teams have at least 3 upperclassman starters? And multiple bench players tend to be upperclassmen too. Experienced quality talent matters. (Michigan could've had that coveted combination this season if Hunter Dickinson, Terrence Shannon Jr, and Caleb Love were all on the roster. And according to Ken Pom, each was a top 5 player in each one's respective conference this season. Brutal.)
For whatever reason, Juwan did not seem to understand the "get old and stay old" adage and it led to some poor roster management. It was a perfect maelstrom of not getting his top choices from HS (like Calipari does at Kentucky) and then not being able to clear his top choice from the transfer portal. To maintain a program, a coach has to be great at either building through HS recruiting or transfer portal recruiting. He can't fail at both. Juwan made the mistake of going for too many shiny 5 stars who ultimately ended up going elsewhere.
Hence, there was always a roster imbalance. Consider this: after Simpson graduated (following 2020 season), Juwan Howard had to rely on a series of transfer PGs: Mike Smith, DeVante Jones, Jaelin Llewellyn. Mike Smith was the best of the bunch but none of them were elite. When he finally developed a guard (i.e. combo guard Bufkin rather than a true PG, Bufkin left after 2 years (when he was expected to be a 3 year player). By the the time we finally developed a true PG in Dug McDaniel, the roster had holes elsewhere.
Juwan didn't have a consistent pipeline that proactively filled roster spots with more talent. We were always lacking somewhere and it finally caught up to him the last 2 seasons with the bottom falling out this season.
Tangent: Hunter Dickinson going to Kansas probably saved Bill Self from having an unthinkable 14-17 season. Bill Self (who is arguably the best coach in men's CBB) took Hunter Dickinson and had a 10 loss season. In 24 seasons as HC of a high major team (Illinois + Kansas), he's had only 3 different 10 loss seasons; 2024 is one of them. KU is currently 22-10. Imagine KU without Hunter Dickinson. You don't have to. Did you see how badly KU got blasted in the Big 12 Tournament by mediocre Cincinnati when KU was without Hunter Dickinson and Kevin McCullar? It's basically 2024 Michigan.
Talent acquisition is vitally important to all levels of success. I liked Juwan Howard swinging for the fences but Calipari's approach to HS recruiting shouldn't have been his approach at Michigan. And because that approach failed, he was always relying on the transfer portal to fix the deficit and it never came to fruition despite Juwan's best intentions. (Thanks, UM Admissions.)
Michigan and Juwan may come out the better here. Coach K had four year handcuffs to teach his system. Juwan's system isn't clear to anyone yet.
Both Michigan and Juwan need to change if they want to succeed in MBB. It will take more than eight foot showers and hookers. I'm more interested in the manager than the coach to come. Michigan has some learning to do and could have tried that with Juwan (similar to Jim H.) There was no contrition in Juwan's path. There was in Jim's. Whether Michigan can change fast enough to help the next coach? We will see.
I like this post. I disagree with the sentiment. Wisconsin was a bridge too far. But I am sorry to see Juwan go like this. He could have done better. I'm glad he got his ticker cleaned. There's life to live and next season to play.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:35 PM ^
1. I did not mean to suggest or indicate Juwan's firing was unwarranted.
Then why did you write 30,000 words about this? Because that's the only issue. You want people to acknowledge that Shannon and Love and Hunter would have helped? Yeah, everyone knows they would have helped.
We can debate--pointlessly--if that would make UM a lock for the Final Four or if Juwan would still have turned it into a bubble team (does Shannon still have his off-court issue? does Dug? does Hunter still get injured? does the team still not play defense?) but it's all really irrelevant at this point if you agree that Howard's firing was justified.
"You want people to acknowledge that Shannon and Love and Hunter would have helped?"
Yes. That's basically my 2 posts in 1 sentence.
They would've helped and Juwan would likely still be employed.
In the various anti-Juwan threads I've seen, there's been a lot of venom directed at Juwan but no one mentions how he got screwed over on 2 key critical TP recruits which would've significantly altered how Juwan and Michigan program are perceived.
I believe you that you didn't see it brought up. But it was brought up in almost every Juwan-bashing thread. Obviously you're still free to share your perspective on it as well, but it has been part of the discussion.
The comparison to Coach K’s first four years are totally off base other than yes, Duke AD Tom Butters was under pressure after year 3.
As a NC native, a freshman at NC State in 82-83, and later a Duke alum as well, I lived through all this. In K’s first year he did have a senior in Gene Banks who was a great college player but Spanarkel was gone and he and Mike Gminski were key to Duke’s success prior to K arriving. Duke went 17-13 his first year, then won ten and eleven games in year 2 and 3.
But after Banks the cupboard was bare and in those years Duke was competing in a brutally tough ACC. UNC was runner up in 81, was National Champion in 82, and still had Jordan in 83 but lost in the regional final. UVA had Ralph Sampson who was a better college player than Jordan. He never won a National Championship but they were almost unbeatable with him. 13 losses in his last 3 years. Five were to UNC and two late his senior year to NC State on their way to winning a National Championship the year after UNC. And Maryland and Wake Forest weren’t pushovers those years either.
The Big Ten that Howard just finished last in is a joke compared to the competition K was facing in much of his first decade but certainly first three or four years. Then by years four and five he won 23 and 24 games and he had Duke in the final four by year six and never looked back.
I like Juwan a lot and yes he was definitely handicapped in some ways Michigan may need to change to be more competitive but his situation isn’t close to K’s start at Duke.
K had some underclassmen in the shitty years that clearly were going to get the program turned around. I don't know that he could do the same thing today with the portal being what it is.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:15 PM ^
His key recruiting class, Mark Alarie, Jay Bilas, Johnny Dawkins, and David Henderson were all freshman his third year (Amaker arrived a year later) and went 11-17 and pressure was probably highest at the end of that year since they won 24 as sophomores. I think it had to be clear that this was a very solid core and honestly not really sure he was that close to being let go with these guys coming back.
@BlueDad22
Thank your for the details. I appreciate you providing context to the story.
March 16th, 2024 at 12:47 PM ^
My opinion: I didn't like how the Michigan fanbase quickly turned on Juwan Howard.
Look, I don't care to pile on the man - I loved the Fab Five - but when you inherit a program that has won 30 games in consecutive seasons and reached the national title game one year before your hiring, and then go 8-24 a few years later, with a team of your own recruits, you're going to lose the fanbase. When you throw in the anger incidents, that only makes it worse.
The Shannon/Love/Kante situations wouldn't have been so disastrous if we'd found replacements for them. A coach has to have a plan B if plan A doesn't work out. Beilein lost his share of recruiting battles, and had a recruit (Robin Benzing) fail to qualify, but when that happened, he would find someone else that could fit in the program. With Howard, if we missed on a guy, that was it.
I wish Howard all the best and sincerely hope this is not the end of his coaching career. But I think he is probably better suited for the NBA.
Pretty happy about this. Will miss Jimmy. Everyone says Moore will be amazing. Giddy up
We will never see this again.
Never say never.
There are numerous football alumni that could one day possibly come back to coach at Michigan (e.g. Joel Honingford, Junior Hemingway) as well as basketball alumni (e.g. John Horford, Jett Howard).
*Highly unlikely*, but not impossible to have two JH alumni head coaches again.
The high point of the dual JH-dom was obviously them meeting up at the end of 42-27. That handshake feels a different now, as one of them is about to go on a long, long decline to irrelevance.
March 16th, 2024 at 10:38 AM ^
An image that deserves to be on the wall at any Michigan bar:
March 16th, 2024 at 12:20 PM ^
Juwan was sitting about 15-20 yards away from us about 10 rows behind the Michigan sidelines for PSU 2022. I thought pretty cool that he was down in the bench seats instead of up in a box (and not exactly comfortable for a guy his size).
Don't necessarily envy the person sitting directly behind him. A nice "cool story, bro" moment, but... probably not a great view of the game.
Definitely not. Nobody sat the whole game anyway but still a pretty obstructed view
March 16th, 2024 at 11:23 AM ^
After Juwan Howard's second year, I had the idea of doing a humorous comparison of Michigan's superstar alumni coaches, and awarding a winner in each category. I had a variety of categories loosely in my mind, but it's crazy how much similarity they had between their lives as superstar college players, solid pros, and broader some cultural impact (though clearly the Fab Five was much greater in that regard).
One category was going to be "best initials" with a tie for the winner.
Another was a "TV Cameo" category comparing the West Wing appearance to the Saved by the Bell appearance (winner: Howard for the better show in its prime, though its not as decisive since Harbaugh got to be himself while Howard had to pretend to be a Duke player).
No more JH or JH but we still have GOJG.