Gard is Ryan’s longtime assistant coach, and he will take over as interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
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Ethan Happ and Bronson Koenig scored 15 points apiece as Wisconsin beat Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 64-49 on Tuesday.
According to the school, Ryan’s assistant of 22 years, Greg Gard, will assume the role of interim coach.
Rather than finish out the year, Ryan chose to end it after the final game of Wisconsin’s semester, a win over Texas A&M-Corpus Christi on Tuesday.
He collected a school-record 364 victories and seven Big Ten championships during his tenure, including four regular-season titles and three conference tournament championships. Among the accomplishments during his tenure, the Badgers won seven Big Ten championships, made 14 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, went to two Final Fours and one national championship game.
“His record speaks for itself”. They’re off until next Wednesday when they face Green Bay before opening their Big Ten schedule at home against Purdue on December 29. Ryan’s teams finished fourth or better in the league in every season he coached.
They will recall his unblemished mark on Selection Sunday: Wisconsin never missed the Big Dance with Ryan on the sideline.
With 747 career wins, 19 championships and countless conference and national coach of the year accolades, there is little doubt that Ryan is among the great coaches in college basketball history.
It does make a lot of sense for Bo Ryan to step down now as this season has gotten off to a very rough start.
Turning an eye to the future, Wisconsin will try to maintain its aggressive, hard-nosed mentality and do Ryan proud under Gard’s guidance. In June, he had said that this would be his final season, but by August, Ryan appeared to be wavering on that decision.
But Ryan earned the right to make a choice for himself on Tuesday night. They lost 68-63 to Duke, and are 7-5 on the current season. It’s just not done at Madison overnight, not when you’re not going for the one-and-done players, who probably wouldn’t have gone to Wisconsin anyway.
Misinterpreting Bo Ryan’s words and actions has become sort of a media contagion in recent years, not unlike voting against baseball players for the Hall of Fame because of suspicion of steroid use.
He never had the best players, but he had the best teams.
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And by retiring now, the man Ryan wishes to be his hand-picked successor will get a long audition to carry on what he has built in Madison. He has the highest winning percentage of all-time among any head coach at.
