In sports, you see athletes get into fights with opponents all the time.
When there’s so much emotion mixed in with the heat of the moment, it could simply take an athlete to look at another the wrong way, and next thing you know punches are thrown and ejections are made.
However, one thing you don’t see every day is an actual head coach throwing a punch.
And that’s exactly what happened today, when Michigan head basketball coach Juwan Howard attempted to throw a punch at Wisconsin’s assistant coach Joe Krabbenhoft during the postgame handshake line, following their brutal 77-63 loss to the Badgers.
Things escalated when Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard stopped Howard to exchange a few words, and tensions quickly rose as several players and coaches surrounded the two.
Howard can be seen grabbing Gard’s sweater and pointing in his face before Krabbenhoft got into the thick of things.
That’s when Howard reached out and grabbed his face.
There was a lot of pushing and shoving, and it appeared that Michigan forwards Moussa Diabate and Terrance Williams threw punches.
Howard explained why the postgame events unfolded, according to ESPN:
“I didn’t like the timeout they called, and I’m being totally honest with you. I thought it was not necessary at that moment, especially with it being a large lead… I thought that wasn’t fair to our guys. And so that’s what happened.”
Gard told CBS in an interview:
“Apparently he didn’t like that I called the timeout to reset the 10-second call. Because we only had four seconds to get the ball over half court. I didn’t want to put my backups — I had all my bench guys in the game — I didn’t want to put them in that position of scrambling with only four seconds.”
“So I took a timeout and got us a new 10 seconds and it helped them get organized and get the ball in. And he did not like that when he came through the handshake line. I’ll leave it at that and the tape will show the rest.”
Howard addressed the media after the game, but you can imagine a suspension is coming very soon.
