Coaches react to Bo Ryan retirement

In either case, Wisconsin will feel the potentially crippling impact of Ryan’s absence immediately as the season marches on without it’s legendary coach. Ryan trusted his heart and why last night was the night.

“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. His teams also finished no worse than fourth in conference play each year he was at the helm. The soft record was expected with the departure of so much of Wisconsin’s talent base, which included Player of the Year Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker.

“But I knew, I knew the energy level… the speaking, the traveling, the trying to do other things, to help other people – I enjoy doing it, but the thing was, I felt it was time”, said an emotional Ryan. He’s 45, and will now be evaluated by Barry Alvarez, who Ryan has been conversing with about the retirement for a number of months. When Davis was Iowa’s coach, Ryan brought his team to Carver-Hawkeye Arena for practices and attended several games.

Ryan started his journey in 1972 as a junior varsity high school coach outside of Philadelphia, slowly climbing the coaching ranks through the high school, Division III and finally Division I ranks.

Michigan State needed a victory to clinch a share of the Big Ten title and was so confident it would knock off Wisconsin that the banner was already in the rafters, rolled up and waiting for the final horn. He preferred sessions on fundamentals. Discipline. That was always his demand. What’s “right” in this scenario?

“Not long after that, he became the Platteville coach”. Wisconsin won four regular season Big Ten titles during Ryan’s 15 years at the gig and three Big Ten tournaments.

One, Brad Soderberg, had been the interim coach but wasn’t asked to remain.

A true gentleman’s coach, his peers singing his praises of how Ryan went about his coaching ways.

Ryan was a 2015 Naismith Hall of Fame finalist. In the end, Ryan earned leaving on his terms.

Wisconsin has never been known for having outstanding National Basketball Association prospects, and that’s just fine. That would have left the Badgers in the best shape moving forward for whomever took over the reins, be it Gard or someone else.

Ryan never seemed sure of his decision to proceed after a preseason announcement that this would be his last on the sideline in Madison. The son who is an assistant coach at Ohio. And Ryan wants to be there. Gard, 44, has spent more than half his life as a Ryan lieutenant. He has dominated in Minnesota early (grabbing Jon Leuer, Jordan Taylor, Jared Berggren and Mike Bruesewitz), identified local talents like Josh Gasser, and was the lead recruiter for younger players such as Alex Illikainen, Khalil Iverson and Andy van Vliet.

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