Bo Ryan Announces Retirement

Ryan said that this was going to be his last season, but clearly he had a change of heart and chose to retire immediately after the Badgers beat Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

Williams pointed out an interesting parallel between Ryan’s retirement and another one at Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Badgers head coach Bo Ryan celebrates by cutting the net after overtime in the finals of the west regional of the 2014 NCAA Mens Basketball Championship tournament against the Arizona Wildcats at Honda Center. He had announced in June that he would retire at the end of this season.

“Greg’s ready”, Ryan said.

“I think they’re going to look exactly the same” as under Ryan, Turgeon said.

“I ended up taking the Stanford job, yet, I was appreciative of Bo’s interest and dedication to the university, how strongly he felt about Wisconsin”, said Davis, who grew up in Wisconsin and graduated from Wisconsin-Platteville. The ripple effects of the move could be felt in College Park on Wednesday, where Maryland Coach Mark Turgeon paid his respects by crediting Ryan for making a “very, very unselfish” move to step down now and allow assistant coach Greg Gard to take over as interim coach before Big Ten play begins. But I couldn’t make the decision at that time.

Bo Ryan obviously wanted long-time assistant Greg Gard to be his successor.

Gard, who said he’s never had more than a one-year contract during his entire coaching career, said there’s no time to feel pressure. The unranked Badgers are 7-5 through the first 12 games of the season. While Nigel Hayes and Bronson Koenig are back, the Badgers lack depth and proven talent beyond those two. He had told athletic director Barry Alvarez of his plans after the Final Four in April, but Alvarez advised him to give it some time, and not to make a decision right after the end of the season.

Ryan, who turns 68 on Sunday, has the most wins in program history with 364 and also has the highest winning percentage in conference history at. Gard has been with him much of the way, joining Ryan’s Wisconsin-Platteville staff in 1993 and following Ryan at each of his stops. Unless Gard totally flames out in B1G play, Wisconsin is likely to retain him with the expectation that continuity with the Ryan era is what’s best for business. When they arrived, Wisconsin had not won a Big Ten regular-season championship since 1947.

In his 14 seasons in Madison, he never finished lower than fourth in the conference.

Wisconsin has been a staple in college basketball for most of my life and for most of his current player’s lives. The next season, Dick Bennett retired after just three games, handing the team to assistant Brad Soderberg.

Wisconsin has seen this before, and the coaching transition drama will unfold over the next three months. He was promoted to associate head coach in July 2008.

A native of Chester, Pennsylvania, Bo Ryan led the Badgers to the NCAA Tournament every year of his tenure.