MADISON, Wis. – This is bad news for the “Fire Greg Gard” minority.
Coaching a program that won its final eight conference games to claim an unlikely share of the 2020 Big Ten regular season title, University of Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard was named the conference’s coach of the year Monday by both the media and his conference coaching peers.
"This is a team award," Gard said on the BTN selection show. "You're not in this position unless you have a really good team."
Picked to finish outside the top five by the reporters who cover the conference, leery about how the program would replace All-American Ethan Happ and two other seniors, the Badgers were sitting in seventh place in the Big Ten at the midpoint of the season and trying to figure out how to move forward without its leading scorer in conference games.
UW (21-10) went 9-1 without Kobe King to finish 14-6 in the league, including winning their final eight games from Feb.9 to Saturday’s 60-56 victory over Indiana. The victory over the Hoosiers involved the Badgers erasing a nine-point deficit in the second half.
Wisconsin did the bulk of its work down the stretch with only eight scholarship players, none of who were named to the conference’s first or second team (Nate Reuvers was a consensus third-team selection; D'Mitrik Trice was a third-team pick by the coaches and honorable mention by the media).
"I think they came together," Gard told BTN about his team adjusting after King's departure. "They understood the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Once they figured that out and really believed in that, they just took off."
The Badgers were not ranked in either of the preseason top 25 polls but are ranked No.18 in this week’s Associated Press poll. Projected to be seeded as high as No. 4 in the NCAA Tournament, Wisconsin will be the No.1 seed for the Big Ten tournament, which runs Wednesday through Sunday in Indianapolis, and will play either Michigan or Rutgers Friday morning (11 a.m./BTN)
Gard, in his fifth season as head coach, guided UW through a tumultuous season off the court. In addition to King’s departure, Wisconsin had to deal with the NCAA upholding a decision to keep forward Micah Potter ineligible for the first 10 games of the season and strength coach Erik Helland being forced to resign at the beginning of February after using a racial epithet when telling a story to a group of players from his NBA days.
However, all that fails to compare to the deadly auto accident involving assistant Howard Moore and his family Memorial Day weekend. Moore lost his wife and daughter and suffered severe burns when their vehicle was struck by a wrong-way driver. He subsequently suffered a heart attack and remains in a long-term rehabilitation facility.
Gard received the call when he was with two of his assistants – Joe Krabbenhoft and Dean Oliver. Gard hired former All-American Alando Tucker to replace Moore on an interim basis. After recording his 100th career victory as a head coach, Gard deflected praise placed on his shoulders to his three assistants, the players and the program’s support staff.
He did it again after UW's victory over Indiana, bringing in his three assistants – decked in Big Ten championship shirts and hats – so they could receive credit for their work.
“I can’t be more proud of these three guys,” Gard said after the victory over. “They have been to hell and back over the last nine months with what we’ve had to face as a team. They’ve stuck together. They’ve been phenomenal. I don’t have word to describe how good they’ve been. The team has been a reflection of the leadership and the guidance we’ve got from these guys.”
Not surprisingly, the feeling is mutual.
"You talk about this team's resiliency and it starts right here," Oliver said Saturday, pointing to Gard. "Because whenever we gone through anything, he stayed the course. He never got distracted from what we're trying to do, always kept everybody calm, always kept us on the same path. He deserves the way we're playing right now."