Bo Ryan Retires

Sad news after the Badger win yesterday, Head Coach Bo Ryan steps down as head coach.  Now he did this for all the right reasons.  He wanted longtime assistant Greg Gard to be his successor.  After the loss to Duke (ugh) in the title game last April he announced this season would be his last, then said he wasn't sure if it would be and so on.  But he chose now because he wanted to finish the players semester, then turn it over to Gard assuring him a chance to be head coach.  There was no indication that AD Barry Alvarez would hire Gard once Bo retired and he wanted as I said Bo wanted that to be the case, so now Gard at least gets a shot.  As opposed to retiring at the end of the year where Alvarez could search for anyone to replace Ryan.  Now following Badger basketball for basically my whole life, I'm not going to jump off the deep end and say they'll fall back to constant mediocrity, because Bo has established Wisconsin as a great Big Ten program, and Gard has been an assistant to Bo for 23 years including this year, he did a lot of the recruiting, basically don't expect the program to change much, he may not take it to the next level, time will tell, but I guarantee that they'll remain competitive.  Now obviously going from assistant to head coach is a huge change and he may not handle the pressure, but if Bo believes in him that's good enough for me and should be for anyone who roots for UW.  This year was apparent it was going to be very up and down and rough anyway, so if Gard can have this team playing better by the end of the year he should have a shot with the program.

Now as I said, I'm a lifelong Badger fan, and for as long as I can remember there has been one guy at the head of the team, that man being Bo Ryan.  (He didn't take over until 2001 and I was 6 so before then it's a little hazy ok?)  Being a Badger fan there's been a lot of highs and certainly lows.  For example back to back Final Fours, those are positives despite losing in heartbreaking fashion to Kentucky in 2014 then beating them last year (only team to do that) then losing to Duke which is always the worst.  There's been lows, certainly, some early tourney exits, most notably to me in 2007 they were a 2 seed and one of the best teams in the country all year and they lose the second game to UNLV, that sucked.  Then in 2008 they were a 3 seed and had to get through Davidson and Steph Curry to get a shot at Kansas and a Final Four trip, and they got waxed.  Though Steph already had become my favorite player and I was in awe watching him tear apart the Badgers, but it still sucked.  But let's get back to the good because there has been a ton of it under Bo, 7 Big Ten titles, never finishing lower than 4th in the Big Ten, 2 Final Fours as I said, 14 NCAA tourney appearances and all of those consecutive, of those 14 tourneys he won 25 games before Wisconsin had won just 9 tourney games, 364 wins in those 14 seasons at UW most in school history, his record overall in college (UW-Platteville UW-Milwaukee and UW) is 747-233, he won over 70% of his Big Ten games (71.7%) best ever for anyone who's coached in the Big Ten at least 6 years, he never had a losing season at UW and actually only ever had one which was his first season at Platteville.  Just an incredible coach with incredible facial expressions and a man who simply won and won a lot, I'm really upset he couldn't get that D-I title last year I mean that smug Coach K already had 4, and that's 4 too many to begin with.  Also that group of guys on the team last year was a great group and they deserved it.  His guys stayed four years (except Sam Dekker but he played 3 years) his teams played defense, fundamentally sound, efficiently on offense, and took care of the ball, and played as hard as any team anywhere, they simply played the right way and were always a great example of how to play the game.  Coach Bo Ryan, I hope you enjoy your retirement, you sure as hell earned it, it won't be the same without you there.  And in instead of a couple gifs of Bo's incredible facial expressions I will instead leave you with perhaps the greatest thing Bo has ever done at Madison.  Enjoy.




I'll miss ya coach.