PHILADELPHIA — Over the years, Greg Gard said he was “forewarned’’ by his friends in the coaching community. Everyone has to replace someone, but some footsteps are much more difficult to follow than others.
“Like, hey, it’s hard to take over for a legend, it’s hard to step from an assistant into a head coach’s role,’’ Gard said Thursday.
From the outside looking in, it does not look hard at all, Gard’s ascension to the Wisconsin coaching throne, replacing Bo Ryan as the face of the program. The Badgers are back in the Sweet 16, for the fifth time in the past six years and no other school in the country can make that claim. All is as it has been with Wisconsin, even though there is a new man, largely unknown outside of the Badger state, at the controls.
“I really felt — this has been as seamless a transition as I can — I don’t have anything to compare it to,’’ Gard said.
Friday night, Gard and the seventh-seeded Badgers (22-12) face No. 6 seed Notre Dame (23-11) at Wells Fargo Center, the extension of a season that no one really saw coming, in more ways than one.
This was supposed to be a down year after the glory year for Wisconsin, the year after knocking off unbeaten Kentucky in the national semifinals and then falling just short against Duke in the national championship game, with Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker leaving for the NBA and Ryan already announcing that 2015-16 would be his final season in Madison.
What followed was one of the most well-orchestrated, downright ingenious and perhaps a bit unscrupulous coaching machinations ever perpetrated on a university.
In June, Ryan announced 2016 would be his last season with the Badgers. But on Dec. 15, after a victory over Texas A&M Corpus Christi, Ryan stated he was heading into retirement, effective immediately. That ended a 494-game run for Ryan, a stretch of 14-plus seasons — every one ending in an NCAA Tournament bid and the last two ending in Final Four appearances.
Ryan, 68, said he stepped away when he did because “it was the right time for me to retire and for Greg Gard to have the opportunity to coach the team for the remainder of the season.’’ It sure looked to be a selfless move to ensure that his buddy and loyal assistant would get his shot, plus, allowing Ryan’s legacy to live on in Gard’s presence.
It was not a maneuver the Wisconsin administration appreciated, the old coach applying pressure to make an appointment the school did not necessarily want to make. The Badgers were 7-5 when Gard, 45, was handed the keys to the team. He had been at Ryan’s side for more than two decades, at Wisconsin-Platteville and then Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the past 14 years in Madison.
The Badgers were 1-4 in the Big Ten and 9-9 overall after a January loss to Northwestern and the “interim’’ tag in front of Gard’s name looked as if it would be replaced by “former’’ at season’s end.
“It really wasn’t much of a change because they had generated the same philosophies on everything,’’ junior guard Bronson Koenig said. “[Gard] told us right from the start that it wasn’t about him, that it was about the players.’’
The change was that the Badgers — 66-12 the previous two seasons — weren’t winning. Gard made his tweaks, installing the “swing’’ offense that helped spread the ball around, and winning ensued.
On March 7, the school dropped the “interim’’ tag — “the best loss we had all year,’’ Gard said — and he signed a five-year contract. Gard has beaten Maryland, Michigan State, Iowa and Indiana, and his team has shown great resolve thus far in the Tournament, out-grinding Pittsburgh (47-43) and knocking off No. 2 seed Xavier 66-63 on Koenig’s buzzer-beating beauty from the deep right corner.
“It’s been a whirlwind,’’ Gard said. “It’s been surreal. Everything has happened so fast and there have been so many events that — it’s been the worst year of my life and it’s been the best year of my life rolled into one.’’
Gard’s father, Glen, battled brain cancer last summer and died in late October, when Ryan was still the coach and Gard was his trusted assistant.
“Bo is a part of this program,’’ Gard said. “He’s on the Mount Rushmore of basketball in the state of Wisconsin. Obviously I’m indebted for him. He saw a young college kid 23 years ago and said, ‘Hey, do you want to get into this profession?’ And I did at the time and he gave me a great opportunity, and obviously I’m very fortunate and appreciative of that.’’