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F

or the Michigan men’s 
basketball team, Juwan 
Howard’s undefeated start 
is a pipe dream-turned-reality.
Just seven games into his 
tenure, the 
first-year 
coach has 
already 
scored a 
pair of top-
10 wins. In 
doing so, he 
slayed two 
coaching 
juggernauts 
in North 
Carolina’s 
Roy Williams and Gonzaga’s 
Mark Few — both of whom 
rank top-10 in all-time winning 
percentage — en route to 
claiming last week’s Battle 4 
Atlantis.
When Howard was first 
introduced, it appeared he’d be 
inheriting a shell of last season’s 
Sweet 16 team. The Wolverines’ 
three leading scorers jumped 
to the NBA, while the coach 
who built the program into a 
perennial contender followed 
suit soon after.
With only one recruit set 
to join the program following 
the decommitment of four-star 
forward Jalen Wilson, it seemed 
as though Howard’s first season 
could be discounted given 
the surrounding uncertainty. 
Instead, he retained four-star 
guard Cole Bajema’s pledge and 
lured Franz Wagner away from 
Alba Berlin of the EuroLeague.
For a program that was 
widely expected to take a short-
term step backward under 
Howard, early returns have 
produced the opposite. And now, 
six months after losing Jordan 
Poole, Ignas Brazdeikis, Charles 
Matthews and John Beilein, 
Michigan is ranked No. 4 in the 
nation after a record-tying leap 
from unranked territory.
It’s not a fluke — rather, it’s 
a product of Howard’s hiring 

and the culture he’s already 
established.
“First and foremost, (Howard 
is) just telling us it’s a player-led 
team and allowing us and giving 
us responsibility,” sophomore 
guard David DeJulius said after 
beating the Tar Heels. “When 
you get that responsibility, you 
take ownership of your own 
team. Other than that, he does a 
great job of having open, candid 
conversations with us on and off 
the floor.
“When you have a coach 
that you know cares about you 
genuinely, both on and off the 
floor, then you’ll run through a 
brick wall for him.”
This type of immediate 
success isn’t run of the mill, 
even in the highest-profile 
coaching gigs. By now, Howard 
has made it tough to believe 
he’s only a month removed 
from his first game at the 
helm, in which the Wolverines 
came dangerously close to 
squandering a 30-point lead 
against an Appalachian State 
team that finished 11-21 last 
season. 
In each game since, Michigan 
has taken a step forward. An 
eye-opening one, at that. It’s 
a credit to Howard’s culture, 
which the nation noticed for the 
first time in the Bahamas.
“(There’s an) open-door 
policy,” junior guard Eli Brooks 
said after Michigan’s win over 
North Carolina. “Anytime you 
need (Howard), he’s there. He’ll 
let you know that, too. You can 
really feel it. Some people say 
it’s not real, but with him, it’s 
real.”
For Howard, such a culture is 
representative of his coaching 
style. By putting the power 
in the players’ hands during 
games, his preachings become 
more than just words.
“Coming out of half, usually, 
most coaches you may know 
want to adjust and control the 
game as much as possible,” 

junior forward Isaiah Livers 
said in Atlantis. “But we’re 
lucky enough to have a coaching 
staff where they let us dictate 
our own coming out in the 
second half, and then we rely 
on (Howard’s) words. He’s more 
of a players’ coach where he 
understands the game. You can’t 
play the game if you’re being 
controlled the whole time.”
From a technical standpoint, 
Howard has been equally 
effective in the same capacities 
that made him a well-regarded 
NBA assistant coach. During 
his six-year stint on the Miami 
Heat’s staff, he was responsible 
for the ascension of centers 
Hassan Whiteside and Bam 

Adebayo.
Senior center Jon Teske 
is the perfect case study of 
Howard’s early impact in Ann 
Arbor. After posting 9.5 points 
and 7.0 rebounds across 27.9 
minutes per game last season, 
he’s averaging 13.3 points and 
9.7 rebounds on a career-best 
56-percent clip from the field 
across fewer minutes per game 
(27.4) so far this year.
Howard’s impact on Teske 
was most apparent against 
the Tar Heels and Bulldogs, in 
particular, as the 7-foot-1 center 
tallied a combined 29 points 
and 23 rebounds en route to 
tournament MVP honors.
“Since the first day, (Howard) 

has been teaching me, showing 
me tips,” Teske said. “He’s got 
a lot of knowledge of the game, 
so just asking him questions 
and he’s more than willing to 
help me, and it’s showed the last 
couple of games.”
At this point, Howard appears 
to be well on his way to crafting 
the perfect marriage of culture 
and fundamentals.
Granted, most of this group 
was part of last season’s team, 
which climbed as high as No. 2 
in the national poll following a 
program-best 17-0 start. After 
mid-January, though, Michigan 
lost seven of its final 20 games.
To first-year associate head 
coach Phil Martelli, who 

spent the last 34 years at St. 
Joseph’s, the attention around 
Howard’s immediate success is 
anything but an overreaction. In 
Howard, he sees someone with 
everything needed to reach the 
pinnacle of coaching.
“I’m here to help Juwan 
Howard coach on a Monday 
night in April,” Martelli said in 
October. “ … Because he’s going 
to do that.”
A month into Howard’s 
tenure, that proclamation is 
starting to sound a whole lot 
more plausible.

Dash can be reached at 

dashdan@umich.edu or on 

Twitter @danieldash428.

Howard’s marriage of culture and fundamentals shines through

DANIEL 
DASH

ALEXIS RANKIN/Daily
Michigan coach Juwan Howard has emphasized a culture of open communication en route to a 7-0 record after winning the Battle 4 Atlantis on Friday.

8 — Tuesday, December 3, 2019
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

