The events that led to Michigan men's basketball coach Juwan Howard throwing a punch at a Wisconsin coach — resulting in a five-game suspension — created a maelstrom of opinions on social and other media Sunday and Monday, with respected coaches and analysts directing blame at both teams' head coaches, and some questioning the wisdom of the traditional postgame handshake line.
This is the rare occurrence when just about everybody is right, other than Howard and his counterpart, Greg Gard.
To recap the sequence of events, there were 15 seconds remaining in Wisconsin's 77-63 victory. Howard kept his starters in the game and employed a press, even though there was not enough time to complete a successful comeback.
Wisconsin had substituted bench players into the game. As the Badgers tried to break the press, the ball was knocked out of bounds, leaving them four seconds to get the ball past midcourt without receiving a backcourt violation.
Gard called a timeout with 15 seconds remaining. He would say later that calling the timeout reset the backcourt violation clock to 10 seconds, and that he didn't want players coming in cold off the bench to be forced to try to break the press within such limited time.
Howard would say later that he didn't like Gard calling the timeout.
As the game ended, Howard walked to the Michigan handshake line. He was walking past Gard when he said, in part, "I'll remember that …" and tapped Gard on the chest.
Gard put his hands on Howard's arm, moved in front of him and began arguing, at one point grabbing Howard's shirt front. Had Gard simply let Howard keep walking, it's hard to imagine a fight breaking out.
