As the Wolverines enter a brutal home stretch, they’ll be without their head coach for the rest of the regular season.
The Big Ten, in collaboration with Michigan and Wisconsin, announced Monday that it has suspended Juwan Howard for the next five games for his role Sunday’s postgame altercation when he hit Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft in the head and sparked a skirmish at the Kohl Center.
That means Howard will miss Michigan’s upcoming home games against Rutgers on Wednesday and Illinois on Sunday as well as the rivalry rematch against Michigan State on March 1, the home finale against Iowa on March 3 and the regular-season finale at Ohio State on March 6.
He’ll be able to return to the sideline for the Big Ten tournament, which starts on March 9 in Indianapolis.
In addition to Howard, Michigan’s Moussa Diabate and Terrance Williams II and Wisconsin’s Jahcobi Neath will be suspended one game each for throwing punches in the scrum.
Following Sunday’s 77-63 loss, Howard said he took exception to Wisconsin coach Greg Gard calling a timeout with 15 seconds left when the Badgers were up by 15 points. At that point, the Wolverines had multiple starters on the floor and the Badgers had emptied their bench with five little-used reserves.
Michigan was still playing defense — Gard called it a press and Howard called it man-to-man pressure — and Wisconsin was struggling to get the ball past half court. Gard explained he didn’t want to put his players in a bad position, so he took the timeout to give his team a full 10 seconds to advance the ball — instead of the four seconds it had left after the ball was knocked out of bounds — and run out the clock.
“They can do that and play the game all the way out,” Gard said. “We did the same thing by taking the timeout to help my players get organized.”
When the two coaches met in the handshake line, Howard let Gard know he didn’t like the late timeout. That’s when Gard, in an attempt to offer an explanation, grabbed Howard’s arm and stopped him from walking by.
“I think that was very uncalled for him to touch me,” Howard said. “There wasn't cause for that when we're talking. At that point, I thought it was time to protect myself.”
Things escalated from there, as Howard and Gard exchanged words and both sides started jostling. Howard struck Krabbenhoft in the face with an open hand and a scuffle broke out with several players throwing punches.
“Unfortunately, it ended up like that. I didn't like it being that way,” Howard said when asked about his players joining the fight. “But you know what, I respect our young men for saying what they’re saying as far as we are a family, truly. But I did not want it to be in a situation where it escalated like that.”
But it did. And now Howard must pay the price for his postgame behavior and the Wolverines must forge ahead for the next couple weeks without him.
