Gard Could Tweak, But No Wholesale Changes at Wisconsin

What University of Wisconsin men’s basketball fans dreaded for months became reality Tuesday night when Bo Ryan officially announced his retirement, effective immediately.

“Time wise, I know how things get out and how people talk; if anything, if we had planned something, you know it would have happened that way”, said Ryan.

Ryan had toyed with the idea of retiring before the season began, but wouldn’t make the move unless his assistant coach Greg Gard was named the new head coach. “I think he’ll make a great head coach”.

UW assistants Gary Close and Lamont Paris had no idea of Ryan’s impending departure until he pulled them aside in the locker room and delivered the news about 90 minutes prior to the Badgers’ game against visiting Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

In June, Ryan announced he would retire at the end of the season. When Dick Bennett retired abruptly three games into the 2000-01 season, essentially forcing Pat Richter to promote Brad Soderberg as the interim head coach, the Badgers exited the NCAA tournament with their tails tucked between their legs.

The 2015 Badgers under Bo Ryan may at first be known for their current record of 7-5 but that is not what Ryan should be remembered for. He has accumulated 747 career wins. Davis’ son, Keno, worked one of Ryan’s camps in Platteville, and former Iowa player Rodell Davis spent a year under Ryan. But Tuesday night he did. He frequently reminisced about his coaching career at Division III Wisconsin-Platteville and his hard-scrabble upbringing outside of Philadelphia.

In what was believed to be a non-scripted plan, one of the best coaches in the Big Ten decided that it was time for him to step down. His accolades will be acknowledged through the coming weeks and months as the Badgers look to regroup, but it’s the personality and the way he coached that made him so great. “I’ll be checking some games out”, Ryan said.

If Bo Ryan had his way almost 30 years ago, Tom Davis might have set the school wins record at Wisconsin and not Iowa. Ryan and company were able to avenge that loss a year later in the win that propelled them to the Final. “I was pretty shocked to say the least”, Kaminsky told ESPN.

The development with Ryan seemed to take the players by surprise, but forward Nigel Hayes said he noticed something different about the coach before the victory over the Islanders.

“I imagine they’re going to look exactly the same”, Turgeon said of Wisconsin, which will host Maryland on January 9th. Among Big Ten coaches, he has the highest conference play wining percentage ever. “This is semester. We start finals and I want to give Coach Gard plenty of time to get the guys ready and to get them in position, where as a head coach, he has a chance … to take a run at the job”.