ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The first chair was his, but Phil Martelli wasn’t about to sit in it.
He never took a seat in 24 years as a head coach at Saint Joseph’s, and he’s only now getting used to the idea in his third season as an assistant on Juwan Howard’s staff at Michigan.
But Wednesday night, with Howard serving the first game of a five-game suspension for his role in an ugly altercation Sunday at Wisconsin, Martelli was back on his feet, trying to help the Wolverines find their own footing in a pivotal late-season Big Ten game.
