Enough Is Enough, It's Time For Michigan To Move On From Juwan Howard

This Michigan basketball season went off the rails pretty early, but I never in my wildest nightmares expected we'd be here in early March talking about the worst Michigan basketball team of all time, but here we are. Assuming Michigan basketball doesn't win out (LOL), this version of Michigan basketball will lose more games than any team in school history, surpassing the 2007-2008 team. That team had something of an excuse, as it was John Beilein's first season. There is no such excuse with this year's team. This is pathetic.

I’ve given Juwan a long leash. I forgave him when he assaulted an opposing coach. I forgave him when he got into a confrontation with their strength and conditioning guy. I forgave him when he let his best player transfer to Kansas. I can’t forgive this. This is the definition of insanity. It’s not just that they’re bad; they give off an aura of unlikeability. This team does not play for their coach anymore. 

I won’t sit here and act like every moment in the John Beilein era was special. I remember the 2015 season, which had so many injuries that Andrew Dakich was getting starting minutes by the end of the year. That team got rattled; I never got the impression that they quit. This team gives maximum effort until somebody punches back, and then they fold like a lawn chair. They don’t know how to win, and they have become comfortable with losing. I haven’t even brought up the off-court issues that this team is dealing with. Michigan’s best player Dug McDaniel was part of the weirdest suspension in the history of college sports in which he was suspended for road games on Wednesdays in which Jason Benetti was the announcer or some shit. That became a bigger story than it needed to, and then you had Juwan Howard and John Sanderson, Michigan’s well-respected strength and conditioning coach, getting into a confrontation in the locker room in December. Sanderson has since left the program. It's genuinely felt like one issue after another.

Is there a talent issue on this team? You could always use more talent. But I would argue that a relatively healthy Michigan basketball team should NEVER have an 8-23 record. They have enough talent to be competitive, and they are not. They had enough talent last year when they had two top 15 picks and Hunter Dickinson, and they still didn’t make it past the second round… of the NIT. Enough is enough. This is a program that, over the last two years, has lost to Long Beach State, McNeese State, and Central Michigan and has had overtime wins against Eastern Michigan and Ohio. 

This year‘s group started the year pretty strong with a 3-0 record, including a dominant win over St. John’s. I thought perhaps maybe they’d surprise some people. They have surprised me. They’ve surprised me with how completely unwatchable they are. It pains me to say it about a guy who has done so much good for the program as a player (and even as a coach for a few years) but this has gone completely of the rails. Keeping him for another year would derail the program. It's time for a change.