Wisconsin removes 'interim' tag, names Greg Gard coach, It’s official: The interim label has been removed from Greg Gard’s job title.
Gard was named the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Monday evening, the school announced in a news release. The announcement came after the UW Board of Regents Executive Committee met at 5 p.m. and approved a five-year contract for Gard.
Exactly 12 weeks after being promoted following the abrupt retirement of Bo Ryan, Gard was granted the right to run the program on a long-term basis by athletic director Barry Alvarez.
Gard, 45, will be introduced as coach during a news conference at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon at the Kohl Center’s Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to be named the head coach at the University of Wisconsin,” Gard said in a statement. “I’m extremely thankful to coach Alvarez, the Athletic Board and the Board of Regents for this incredible opportunity to lead my home-state program into the future. It’s a role and a responsibility that I cherish and take extremely seriously.
“It’s been a long journey over the last quarter-century or so, but for me to be able to spend my entire career in this state and be surrounded by such incredible support has been vital to my success. I am so grateful to everyone who has played an integral part in my development.
“I am thankful to Coach Ryan for the opportunity he gave me to be a college coach over 25 years ago. He has been a positive mentor in the professional development of my career and showed great confidence in my abilities and potential as I grew as a young coach.
“I’m looking forward to building on the great tradition at Wisconsin and representing my home state in a manner that can make Badgers fans proud.”
Current and former Badgers have heartily endorsed Gard, who has been with the program since Ryan arrived in 2001.
Gard has also won over the fan base by helping turn around a team that had a .500 record in mid-January.
“He was under complete pressure to turn this around, and to go where he is right now is really kind of incredible,” said Ben Brust, who played for the Badgers from 2010-14, when Gard was the program’s associate head coach.
“He’s done it by re-laying the foundation of what everything was built on over the past 15 years. To do that in a short period of time is really incredible.”
The Badgers were 7-5 when Ryan announced his retirement on Dec. 15 following a 64-49 victory over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. After Ryan gave a 10-minute opening statement and left without taking questions, Alvarez introduced Gard as the interim coach but said he’d open the job up to a national search after the season.
As it turned out, Gard made Alvarez’s decision a no-brainer by doing a tremendous job during a nearly three-month stint in the interim role.
“As I said many times throughout the past weeks, I’ve been very impressed with the job Greg has done with this team,” Alvarez said in a statement. “Not just from a wins and losses perspective but also in terms of player development and making necessary adjustments.
“It became clear to me as the season wore on and I was able to observe Greg both on and off the court that he was the right person to lead our men’s basketball team. I was extremely excited to be able to offer him the job and fully believe that the program is in good hands for years to come.”
Gard, a native of the southwestern Wisconsin village of Cobb, who had worked under Ryan since the mid-1990s, has said on multiple occasions that he didn’t view his new role as an audition. But he’s certainly made the most of his opportunity.
UW posted the job opening two weeks ago with an anticipated starting date of March 8. That was a clear sign that Alvarez had decided Gard was the right man to lead the program.
UW is 13-6 since Gard took over and finished in a tie for third place in the Big Ten, extending a streak of top-four finishes to 15 seasons.
The Badgers (20-11, 12-6 Big Ten), who closed the regular season with a 91-80 loss at No. 15 Purdue on Sunday night, open play in the Big Ten tournament on Thursday as a No. 6 seed. They’ll play either Nebraska or Rutgers.
UW’s NCAA tournament streak, which dates to 1999, was in jeopardy after the Badgers fell to 9-9 overall and 1-4 in conference play following a 70-65 loss at Northwestern on Jan. 12.
But the Badgers closed the regular season with 11 wins in their final 13 games and are a lock to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
“It really wasn’t looking so great,” Brust said. “I was at the Northwestern game in Evanston and I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, there goes the top-four streak, there goes the NCAA tournament streak.’ Just to see it all turn around has been just awesome.”
Gard’s coaching career began under the most modest of circumstances when he applied to be an eighth-grade coach in the Southwestern School District in 1990. Gard was 19 years old and a student at UW-Platteville at the time.
Eventually, Gard caught the eye of Ryan, who was then the head coach at UW-Platteville, and was asked to join Ryan’s staff full-time in 1994.
Gard followed Ryan to UW-Milwaukee and came along when the Badgers hired Ryan to replace interim coach Brad Soderberg following the 2000-01 season.
Gard kept adding responsibilities under Ryan, who endorsed Gard as his successor when he announced last summer that the 2015-16 would be his final one at UW.
The announcement that the interim role will be stripped from Gard’s title comes only a couple days after news broke that Ryan had been cleared of an allegation by a woman that he misused university resources while having an affair with her.
Ryan has admitted to the affair but denied that it had anything to do with his abrupt retirement. He said in a statement that the timing of his retirement was intentional because he wanted Gard to get “his hard-earned opportunity” to coach the Badgers. That doesn’t explain why Ryan waited until the day he retired to notify Gard of the news.
The announcement left Gard scrambling, but he got a lot accomplished in a short amount of time. He hired an assistant coach (Howard Moore) to fill out the staff and overhauled the offense, bringing back Ryan’s trademark swing system.
Gard has also expanded UW’s bench and has been willing to stray from Ryan’s blueprint in certain defensive principles.
The result has been a terrific 12-week audition that earned Gard a job he truly cherishes.
“Those 23 years that he was with coach Ryan, he obviously wasn’t just going through the motions,” Brust said. “He was constantly learning for this moment. It all led up to this.
“He’s done a great job of taking everything he’s learned and also kind of forming into his own (beliefs). He’s not just doing everything coach Ryan did. He’s taking a lot of the same principles, but he’s adding some of his own personality into it as well.”
Gard was named the University of Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Monday evening, the school announced in a news release. The announcement came after the UW Board of Regents Executive Committee met at 5 p.m. and approved a five-year contract for Gard.
Exactly 12 weeks after being promoted following the abrupt retirement of Bo Ryan, Gard was granted the right to run the program on a long-term basis by athletic director Barry Alvarez.
Gard, 45, will be introduced as coach during a news conference at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon at the Kohl Center’s Nicholas-Johnson Pavilion.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to be named the head coach at the University of Wisconsin,” Gard said in a statement. “I’m extremely thankful to coach Alvarez, the Athletic Board and the Board of Regents for this incredible opportunity to lead my home-state program into the future. It’s a role and a responsibility that I cherish and take extremely seriously.
“It’s been a long journey over the last quarter-century or so, but for me to be able to spend my entire career in this state and be surrounded by such incredible support has been vital to my success. I am so grateful to everyone who has played an integral part in my development.
“I am thankful to Coach Ryan for the opportunity he gave me to be a college coach over 25 years ago. He has been a positive mentor in the professional development of my career and showed great confidence in my abilities and potential as I grew as a young coach.
“I’m looking forward to building on the great tradition at Wisconsin and representing my home state in a manner that can make Badgers fans proud.”
Current and former Badgers have heartily endorsed Gard, who has been with the program since Ryan arrived in 2001.
Gard has also won over the fan base by helping turn around a team that had a .500 record in mid-January.
“He was under complete pressure to turn this around, and to go where he is right now is really kind of incredible,” said Ben Brust, who played for the Badgers from 2010-14, when Gard was the program’s associate head coach.
“He’s done it by re-laying the foundation of what everything was built on over the past 15 years. To do that in a short period of time is really incredible.”
The Badgers were 7-5 when Ryan announced his retirement on Dec. 15 following a 64-49 victory over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. After Ryan gave a 10-minute opening statement and left without taking questions, Alvarez introduced Gard as the interim coach but said he’d open the job up to a national search after the season.
As it turned out, Gard made Alvarez’s decision a no-brainer by doing a tremendous job during a nearly three-month stint in the interim role.
“As I said many times throughout the past weeks, I’ve been very impressed with the job Greg has done with this team,” Alvarez said in a statement. “Not just from a wins and losses perspective but also in terms of player development and making necessary adjustments.
“It became clear to me as the season wore on and I was able to observe Greg both on and off the court that he was the right person to lead our men’s basketball team. I was extremely excited to be able to offer him the job and fully believe that the program is in good hands for years to come.”
Gard, a native of the southwestern Wisconsin village of Cobb, who had worked under Ryan since the mid-1990s, has said on multiple occasions that he didn’t view his new role as an audition. But he’s certainly made the most of his opportunity.
UW posted the job opening two weeks ago with an anticipated starting date of March 8. That was a clear sign that Alvarez had decided Gard was the right man to lead the program.
UW is 13-6 since Gard took over and finished in a tie for third place in the Big Ten, extending a streak of top-four finishes to 15 seasons.
The Badgers (20-11, 12-6 Big Ten), who closed the regular season with a 91-80 loss at No. 15 Purdue on Sunday night, open play in the Big Ten tournament on Thursday as a No. 6 seed. They’ll play either Nebraska or Rutgers.
UW’s NCAA tournament streak, which dates to 1999, was in jeopardy after the Badgers fell to 9-9 overall and 1-4 in conference play following a 70-65 loss at Northwestern on Jan. 12.
But the Badgers closed the regular season with 11 wins in their final 13 games and are a lock to receive an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
“It really wasn’t looking so great,” Brust said. “I was at the Northwestern game in Evanston and I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, there goes the top-four streak, there goes the NCAA tournament streak.’ Just to see it all turn around has been just awesome.”
Gard’s coaching career began under the most modest of circumstances when he applied to be an eighth-grade coach in the Southwestern School District in 1990. Gard was 19 years old and a student at UW-Platteville at the time.
Eventually, Gard caught the eye of Ryan, who was then the head coach at UW-Platteville, and was asked to join Ryan’s staff full-time in 1994.
Gard followed Ryan to UW-Milwaukee and came along when the Badgers hired Ryan to replace interim coach Brad Soderberg following the 2000-01 season.
Gard kept adding responsibilities under Ryan, who endorsed Gard as his successor when he announced last summer that the 2015-16 would be his final one at UW.
The announcement that the interim role will be stripped from Gard’s title comes only a couple days after news broke that Ryan had been cleared of an allegation by a woman that he misused university resources while having an affair with her.
Ryan has admitted to the affair but denied that it had anything to do with his abrupt retirement. He said in a statement that the timing of his retirement was intentional because he wanted Gard to get “his hard-earned opportunity” to coach the Badgers. That doesn’t explain why Ryan waited until the day he retired to notify Gard of the news.
The announcement left Gard scrambling, but he got a lot accomplished in a short amount of time. He hired an assistant coach (Howard Moore) to fill out the staff and overhauled the offense, bringing back Ryan’s trademark swing system.
Gard has also expanded UW’s bench and has been willing to stray from Ryan’s blueprint in certain defensive principles.
The result has been a terrific 12-week audition that earned Gard a job he truly cherishes.
“Those 23 years that he was with coach Ryan, he obviously wasn’t just going through the motions,” Brust said. “He was constantly learning for this moment. It all led up to this.
“He’s done a great job of taking everything he’s learned and also kind of forming into his own (beliefs). He’s not just doing everything coach Ryan did. He’s taking a lot of the same principles, but he’s adding some of his own personality into it as well.”
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