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Did Juwan Howard do an all-time terrible job of coaching in 2023?
By Alex Hickey
Published:
A generation from now, Kobe Bufkin and Jett Howard may be wrapping up long and successful NBA careers. Given that both were selected in the top 15 picks of the 2023 NBA Draft, it is not an unreasonable expectation.
At that time, younger fans might first notice that Bufkin and Howard played for the same Michigan team in 2023. And they’ll probably think, “Wow! The Wolverines must have been pretty good that year.”
A Google search — maybe there will be brain implants to expedite the process by then — will lead them to discover the actual fate of the 2022-23 Wolverines.
Instead of an answer, they’ll only find a question: what the hell went wrong with that team?
Only Juwan Howard knows. And it begs an answer before next season begins.
It had better be a good one, because on the surface it appears that he just did one of the all-time butcher jobs in the history of Big Ten coaching.
Michigan didn’t just fail to reach the NCAA Tournament with a pair of Top-15 picks. The Wolverines also came up short with their actual most productive player, second team all-American Hunter Dickinson.
Dickinson is considered by most services to be the best player to enter the transfer portal this offseason, and his signing with Kansas is a solid defense of that argument.
As measured by pure talent, the Wolverines had the most potent “Big 3” in the B1G last season. That’s not speculative. It’s evidenced by the actions of NBA general managers. No other college team had multiple players drafted in the top 15 this year.
Yet this team ended its season with a second-round NIT loss to Vanderbilt.
How?
A (brief) defense of Juwan Howard
The mess that Michigan’s season became cannot be laid entirely at Howard’s feet. As is often the case when things go south of expectations, there is injury luck involved here.
Other than his son Jett, the biggest addition to Michigan’s roster last offseason was Princeton graduate transfer point guard Jaelin Llewellyn. As we saw during the Tigers’ Sweet 16 run, Princeton’s offense was quite potent.
Llewellyn only played in 8 games before his season ended with a torn ACL.
At that point, freshman Dug McDaniel was thrust into a starting role as point guard. He was not ready for it. (Example: McDaniel didn’t score and committed 3 turnovers in 26 minutes of a 59-53 loss to Michigan State on Jan. 7.)
That adversity will likely serve McDaniel well in the coming season. It won’t be surprising if he’s one of the Big Ten’s most improved players. But his youth was certainly a factor in Michigan’s 2023 struggles. He was recruited to learn the ropes from a 5th-year senior, after all.
That said, placing the blame for Michigan’s season squarely on an 18-year-old is a cop-out. Especially with the level of talent around him.
The case against Juwan Howard
History points to Howard being guilty of coaching malpractice.
From a long-view lens, this was Michigan’s first time producing a pair of top-15 picks since 1994 — ironically, one of whom was Juwan Howard himself.
Led by the last remnants of the Fab Five — Howard, Jalen Rose and Jimmy King — that Michigan team reached the Elite Eight before losing to eventual national champion Arkansas.
Those Wolverines were not an anomaly. Teams with a pair of top-15 draft picks typically reach the second week of the NCAA Tournament.
Teams with multiple top-15 draft picks (since 2016)
2017
Duke (Jayson Tatum, Luke Kennard): 2-seed, upset by 7-seed South Carolina in second round. South Carolina went to the Final Four.
Kentucky (De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk, Bam Adebayo): 2-seed, lost to eventual national champion North Carolina in Elite Eight.
2018
Duke (Marvin Bagley III, Wendell Carter Jr.): 2-seed, advanced to Elite Eight.
Michigan State (Jaren Jackson, Miles Bridges): 3-seed, upset by 11-seed Syracuse and Jim Boeheim’s junky 2-3 zone defense in second round.
Kentucky (Kevin Knox, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander): 5 -seed, advanced to Sweet 16.
2019
Duke (Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett, Cam Reddish): 1-seed, advanced to Elite Eight.
North Carolina (Coby White, Cameron Johnson): 1-seed, upset by Auburn in Sweet 16. Tigers went on to lose by 1 in national semifinal.
Kentucky (PJ Washington, Tyler Herro): 2-seed, advanced to Elite Eight before losing to Auburn in overtime.
2020
Florida State (Patrick Williams, Devin Vassell): No NCAA Tournament due to COVID-19. However, the Seminoles were the ACC regular-season champions and ranked No. 4 in the final AP poll.
2021
Gonzaga (Jalen Suggs, Corey Kispert): 1-seed, national runner-up.
2022
Duke (Paolo Banchero, Mark Williams): 2-seed, advanced to Final Four.
No recent team to produce multiple draft picks in the first half of the first round has lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, much less failed to get in.
The same was true of the other 10 schools to produce multiple draft picks in 2023. Every single one of them advanced to at least the second round of the NCAA Tournament, including Big Ten rivals Penn State and Indiana. And that stat accounts for the entire draft, not just lottery and near-lottery picks.
The verdict
Whether it was his coaching or his construction of roster depth beyond the 3 primary pieces and Llewellyn, Howard deserves the bulk of the blame for Michigan’s failures in 2023.
In recent Big Ten annals, Archie Miller’s failure to reach the 2019 NCAA Tournament with freshman point guard Romeo Langford feels like the closest comparison, though it’s really not all that close.
Langford was drafted 14th overall. Juwan Morgan and Justin Smith have gone on to play in the G-League. The Hoosiers should have reached the NCAA Tournament, to be sure. But that team was too flawed to go on a run, so the failure isn’t as pronounced as that of the 2023 Wolverines.
Next year will mark an interesting crossroads in Howard’s coaching career.
Talent-wise, Michigan appears much closer to the bottom of the Big Ten than the top. If Howard can somehow push the buttons and reach the Tournament with this squad, he begins to look something like former LSU coach Dale Brown.
Brown famously failed to reach the second week of the tourney with superstars Shaquille O’Neal and Chris Jackson yet managed to make a pair of Final Fours with far less talented rosters. Howard’s prior Sweet 16 success at Michigan would suggest this is a plausible outcome.
That’s the glass half-full scenario.
The alternative outlook?
If you thought things were bad last year, just wait and see what happens next.
Alex Hickey is an award-winning writer who has watched Big Ten sports since it was a numerically accurate description of league membership. Alex has covered college football and basketball since 2008, with stops on the McNeese State, LSU and West Virginia beats before being hired as Saturday Tradition's Big Ten columnist in 2021. He is an Illinois native and 2004 Indiana University graduate.