MADISON, Wis. — A frustrating loss turned into an ugly scene at the Kohl Center when Juwan Howard was at the center of a postgame dustup between Michigan and Wisconsin.
As the Wolverines and Badgers went through the postgame handshake line, Howard and Wisconsin coach Greg Gard got into a heated exchange that led to Howard striking Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft in the head.
While that trigged a verbal spat between the coaches, Howard said he felt the need to protect himself after Gard touched him “unnecessarily” in the handshake line and grabbed his right arm.
“I addressed it with (Gard) that I will remember that because of that timeout,” Howard said. “For someone to touch me, I think that was very uncalled for him to touch me, as we were verbalizing and communicating with one another. So that's what ended up happening. And that's what escalated it.”
Gard explained he took the timeout because an official notified him his team only had four seconds to get the ball across half court after the ball had been knocked out of bounds and he had all his backups in the game.
“I was not going to put them in a position with the ball and already got knocked out of bounds, to have to break a press in four seconds when they're coming cold off the bench,” Gard said. “I took a timeout, which I'm allowed to do and brought them over and tried to get them organized. They haven't all been on the floor in pressure situations before and I wanted to give them the best chance to have success coming up the floor and tell them we're not going to shoot the ball.
“All we're doing is getting the ball, break the pressure, come up, and we'll dribble out the clock. We got the full 10 seconds to break that press instead of four seconds. We were on spot, we got to organize, and that is the situation that he apparently he was upset with.”
As Howard went down the handshake line after several of his players, Gard said Howard pulled his mask down and told him, “I’ll remember that.” At that point, Gard said he was trying to explain to Howard why he took the timeout in case he didn’t know about the 10-second reset rule.
“That's where it started,” Gard said. “I said, ‘Hey, let me tell you why I did what I did.’ And he didn't want any part of it and kept moving on.”
As tempers flared, Howard hit Krabbenhoft in the head and that triggered a melee where several players appeared to throw punches, including Michigan’s Moussa Diabate and Terrance Williams II, before the teams were separated.
“I didn't like for it being that way,” Howard said. “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.”
Howard said he would respect whatever type of punishment comes down from the Big Ten. After the game, the Big Ten released a statement that it was assessing the incident and it “will take swift and appropriate disciplinary action when it completes its review.”
