Sunday afternoon’s Big Ten tilt between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Michigan Wolverines ended with the two teams needed to be separated in the handshake line. Late in the game, Wisconsin coach Greg Gard took a timeout when the outcome was already decided, which apparently did not sit well with Michigan coach Juwan Howard.
In essence, Gard was saying he wanted to reset the 10-second clock to get the ball past halfcourt.
Michigan was pressing UW backups when the game was decided.
Gard called timeout to reset the clock and put his guys in a better spot.
Howard got pissed.
Then postgame happened.
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) February 20, 2022
The two coaches came together at the end of the game for a handshake, but Howard had some choice words for Gard. Players and coaches attempted to get in between the two while tensions were on the verge of boiling over, but while that was happening, Howard extended his arm and swiped at Badgers assistant Joe Krabbenhoft, making contact with his face.
A brawl then broke out between the two teams, with plenty of pushing and shoving and several players appearing to throw punches without any of them landing.
Juwan Howard took offense to a late timeout from Wisconsin and took a swing in the handshake line, chaos ensues pic.twitter.com/dk4hnkTscP
— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) February 20, 2022
This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened to Howard’s Michigan squad — the former Fab Five member-turned-head coach got ejected from a Big Ten Tournament game against Maryland last year for getting into it with now-former Terrapins coach Mark Turgeon, which he said was the result of him feeling like he was “being threatened.” The loss dropped the Wolverines, which entered the season ranked in the preseason top-10 but have struggled mightily to meet those expectations, to 14-11 on the year and 8-7 in conference play.