Should University Of Michigan’s Basketball Coach, Juwan Howard, Be Fired?
If you have not heard yet, yesterday Juwan Howard, the University of Michigan’s basketball coach took a swing at Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft and landed a pretty good open-hand strike on the coach. Howard said he was upset at Wisconsin taking a time out with 15 seconds left in the game and Wisconsin leading by quite a bit.
UPDATE: Here is a new piece of video that I just found and gives you a very good luck at the amount of anger no that court:
Here is a video of what led up to the incident and the incident itself:
Michigan is not ranked in the top 25 NCAA basketball poll but Wisconsin is coming in at 15 and it showed with Michigan losing 77 to 63. According to reporting by CBS News after the game ended Wisconsin’s head coach Greg Gard confronted Howard, “who appeared to be slow to enter the handshake line, just near the scorer's table. Gard physically stopped Howard from moving past him and the two exchanged words before tensions rose in a hurry”. It appeared that Gard was attempting to talk with Howard and we later find out that Gard was attempting to explain why he took that time out.
At that point it got ugly. Juwan Howard then pushed his finger into the Wisconsin head coach's face, which as you can imagine did not help the situation. After that for what appears to be no reason Howard took and landed an open-handed swing at Wisconsin assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft. As you could imagine things quickly escalated from there with the team's players getting into a brawl.
Wisconsin’s head coach, Gary Gard told CBS Sports:
Apparently, he didn't like that I called a timeout to reset the 10-second call…We only had 4 seconds to get the ball past half court. I didn't want to put my bench guys in that position of scrambling, so I took the timeout. He did not like that when he came through the handshake line.
Michigan’s head coach, Juwan Howard said:
I didn't like the timeout they called, I'll be totally honest…I thought it was not necessary at that moment, especially with it being a large lead. ... I thought that wasn't fair to our guys.
Howard then stated that Gard initiated some sort of contact in the handshake line and said:
For someone to touch me, I think that was very uncalled for…That's what escalated it. ... At that point, I thought it was time to protect myself.
Here is a video of the press conference after the game:
The question now is should Coach Howard be fired as the head coach of the University of Michigan basketball team?
Nolan Finley the Editorial page editor at The Detroit News certainly believes so, do you?