Warde Manuel, Michigan’s athletic director, rejects the high-risk, high-reward tag on his hiring of Juwan Howard as head basketball coach. Every day that goes by, Manuel draws more backing on that score.
Now, an assistant coach hired by Howard isn’t going to be dubious about future success, to be sure. That would be like Tiger Woods opining that, yeah, he’ll probably miss this six-footer to win The Masters.
But few push back on this notion: plucking Phil Martelli off the temporary college basketball unemployment line is an incredibly savvy move. When the 24-year veteran as St. Joseph’s head coach speaks, it carries a little more weight than a grad assistant hire.
Martelli did speak this week, unequivocally, on WPEN out of Philadelphia. What he said on The Mike Missanelli Show naturally got more than a few Michigan fans fired up.
