College Basketball Rumors – Wisconsin Badgers Needed Bo Ryan to Retire Sooner

University of Wisconsin, Head Coach Bo Ryan announced his retirement Tuesday evening following the Badgers win over Texas A&M Corpus Christi. Assistant Greg Gard takes over as interim coach. Ryan won 747 games as a college basketball head coach, including four Big Ten Tournament championships and as many conference Coach of the Year awards.

With trips to the Final Four in both of the past two seasons, including Wisconsin’s first appearance in the national championship game since 1941, Ryan is essentially going out on top, and he departs having raised the program to unprecedented heights.

The Badgers’ coach for 14-plus seasons, he indicated he felt the end of the fall semester was the ideal time for him to step aside and give Gard a chance to demonstrate to Wisconsin administrators that he should become the program’s next head coach.

Gard helped Ryan win three of his four NCAA Division III titles at Platteville. For now, Wisconsin will move on without its most legendary coach, who abruptly exits on a high note, even if it was against an overmatched opponent with few people paying attention.

Alvarez said about Bo Ryan, “He has put our basketball program on the map”. Remember a younger Bo firing away at Big Ten referees over a decade ago as the new guy in town?

“I was surprised like everybody else”, Williams said.

Ryan has said he didn’t want to be coaching this year. Barry thankfully encouraged me to take some time to think about it and I have done that.

Ryan says it was a joy to lead the Badgers several months more than he had thought he would be able to, as the Bo Ryan retirement takes effect, he’s saying goodbye to coaching the game of basketball for good. Overall, Ryan ranks 27th on the NCAA’s all-time wins list. Ryan’s retirement came at a bit of a curious time considering it is the middle of the season but it seems he might have had great intentions for calling it quits now, according to ESPN. Ryan molded offensive stars, for sure, like Sam Dekker and 2014-15 national player of the year Frank Kaminsky, but players knew they had to play defense and play with smarts to earn time.

“I’ll see you down the road”, Ryan said.

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.

Just as Bo Ryan said in his final postgame press conference, we knew this day was coming, we just didn’t know it would be tonight.

Ryan had planned to retire at the end of the season. But Ryan stressed he wasn’t leaving the players after six months, but rather that he got an extra six months with them for staying on this long.