Michigan Wolverines basketball head coach Juwan Howard, in his second season back in Ann Arbor and as a head man at any level, has been named Sporting News' National Coach of the Year. Unsurprisingly, he's also been named the Big Ten's Coach of the Year.

Howard led his group to an outright Big Ten regular-season championship by going 14-3 in league play (19-3 overall), navigating his way through a 23-day mid-season break in between games due to COVID concerns. Now, the Maize and Blue appear to be a lock for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, which begins next week.

“This is a big surprise. A huge surprise. But I’m very appreciative of the award,” Howard told Sporting News upon accepting the honor.

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Howard took over for the legendary John Beilein, the winningest head coach in program history, in the spring of 2019, and had to inject his own flavor into an already strong Michigan culture while simultaneously getting his players to buy into a new leadership style.

“I always told our guys: 'I want to earn your trust.' I think they got the chance to get to know me, see how I ran a practice, how passionate I am about teaching and what I had to offer as far as my experience in the basketball world and my knowledge for the game,” Howard said. “I think I earned their trust from that. The buy-in has been easy on both levels: players with coaches, coaches with players.”

The former Fab Five star has been widely lauded for his ability to manage roster turnover, adding six newcomers to this year's roster (four freshmen and two transfers) and creating a stellar blend of veterans and talented young players.

“[Former point guard] Zavier Simpson was a senior and he was not returning, so I knew I needed to find a point guard,” Howard said of his roster construction. “I went in and watched film on [fifth-year senior Columbia transfer guard] Mike [Smith] and I saw him competing; people always questioned his size, but I looked at that as being a strength of Mike’s. A guy who’s always being counted out because of how small he is, he has that chip on his shoulder.

“With [freshman center] Hunter [Dickinson], [former big man] Jon Teske was leaving and we needed a center. I really loved Hunter’s IQ for the game, and he’s always had success: on the high school level at DeMatha [Catholic High School in Virginia], where he won so many games, and also being with Team Takeover in AAU. He’s always had a taste of winning. But his IQ sold it. He’s such a willing passer, and he has a fire in his eyes.

“I went out and got [freshman forward] Terrance Williams, another kid from the DMV area, played with Hunter in AAU, a competitive winner. And [senior Wake Forest transfer guard] Chaundee Brown has been fantastic for us. He was a starter in the ACC for three years, and I shared with him, ‘Your role is going to be a lot different for us.’ But we needed his shooting, his toughness, his defense. And he believed in the vision. He accepted the role of being the sixth man, and he’s been a star in his role.”

Put it all together, and it's been a marvelous coaching job by Howard this season, with possibly more success to come in this weekend's Big Ten Tournament and beyond.

The pick for Big Ten Freshman of the Year, Dickinson was named to Sporting News' All-America Second Team, as selected by a panel of college basketball journalists and broadcasters from across the nation. Dickinson is averaging 14.3 points and 7.7 rebounds per game, while shooting 59.6 percent from the field on the season, and has been a huge reason for the Wolverines' success.

"This hasn’t been the most successful season for college hoops freshmen, and yet here is the No. 43 prospect in the 2020 recruiting class being selected one of the top 10 players in Division I," Sporting News' Mike DeCourcey wrote. "Michigan needed what he had to offer — a talented big man who is fiercely competitive — and Dickinson needed the stage this team provided. He rebounds fiercely and excels at overpowering defenders. In a league of stellar centers, Dickson managed to stand above most everyone."

He was also named first-team All-Big Ten by the conference's media and second-team by the coaches.

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