Gard gets an extra year

[Pounce Needs Pals]

[BBFran]

Looks like UW Madison’s athletic administration knew what it was doing.

Damn good thing for UWM that UW dropped Milwaukee from its schedule.

[FTA1982]

LMAO. love to hear Fran on this.

[Pounce Needs Pals]

I do find it very sh*tty that someone is taping you, without you knowing it.

[nickpanther]

i'm not sure what WI state law is on secret recordings,. I know some states allow a person to record someone secretly and release it. Personally I wouldnt consider reaching the round of 32 a disappointing season, any season you can get a W in the Dance is a good one, and theres no shame in losing to the national champion.

[Pantherholic]

It's behind their paywall so I'm posting it here...

A perfect marriage fails: Alando Tucker could have stayed at UW for years, but his desire to take over as head coach led to his demise
Jeff Potrykus
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel


MADISON – When Alando Tucker returned to the Wisconsin men’s basketball program in July 2019, this time as an interim assistant coach, the pairing had the potential to be a perfect marriage.

Tucker, the leading scorer in program history who since February 2018 had served as UW’s director of student-athlete engagement, agreed to fill in for Howard Moore. A mentor and close friend of Tucker’s, Moore had suffered serious injuries in a car crash on Memorial Day weekend that took the lives of his wife and daughter.

Tucker appeared to be the right man at the right time and was embraced by everyone in the program.

Yet the relationship soured in less than two seasons and ended in a messy divorce in April when UW officials decided Tucker would not return for a third season.

Wisconsin head basketball coach Greg Gard hasn’t commented publicly on why Tucker was not named as a full-time assistant and instead has talked about the reasons he chose to hire Sharif Chambliss, a former UW player and veteran assistant who spent the past five seasons at Wright State.

Tucker has declined all interview requests since the Journal Sentinel reported on April 27 he was not expected to return next season.

Yet interviews with more than a half-dozen sources close to the UW athletic department and/or Tucker reveal he was not retained because he engaged in a coordinated plan to undermine Gard and get himself installed as coach.

Those sources spoke under the condition that they would not be named by the Journal Sentinel.

“It was a plot,” a source familiar with both the program and Tucker said.

According to several sources familiar with the program, Tucker went so far as to tell then-athletic director Barry Alvarez he was prepared to replace Gard and lead the team when the Badgers were struggling in late January during the 2019-20 season.

Alvarez made it clear he did not plan to make such a change; UW won its final eight regular-season games to secure a share of the Big Ten title; and UW officials attributed Tucker’s bold suggestion to inexperience and youth.

They eventually concluded Tucker wanted to advance his own career at the expense of Gard and the program, and the overwhelming feelings of those in the department included disbelief, pain and betrayal.

“Unbelievable,” said a source who is close to Tucker and the athletic department. “Speechless. Mind-blowing. All of those.”

Sources told the Journal Sentinel after the conclusion of the 2020-21 season that rather than work to unify the locker room during a trying season exacerbated by COVID-19 protocols, Tucker instead caused tension. He did so by using his close relationship with the players to coalesce support and power around him.

For example, a team source noted Tucker would tell one player to ignore the coaching points of a fellow assistant in charge of that player’s position group.

“I feel sad for the seniors,” a source said. “That is what I feel sad about because the players are the ones that are affected the most.”

Last season UW returned seven seniors from the team that won the share of the 2020 Big Ten regular-season championship with a 14-6 mark. The players and coaches expected to challenge for the 2021 title, but the Badgers instead finished 10-10 in the league after a 4-1 start.

The seniors met with the coaching staff one day after a 15-point home loss to Iowa left UW 9-7 in the league and 15-8 overall. The meeting was emotional, with players and coaches sharing their thoughts on the issues plaguing the team, and lasted more than two hours.

A heavily edited audio recording of the meeting, which highlighted the seniors criticizing Gard, was furnished to the Wisconsin State Journal on June 21.

More:Next season should reveal if the issues that hampered UW men's hoops were anomaly or systemic

UW officials have not commented publicly on who was responsible for recording the meeting and sharing the edited recording.

A message left with Tucker for comment was not returned.

UW went 1-1 in the Big Ten tournament and was seeded No. 9 in the NCAA Tournament. The Badgers routed No. 8 North Carolina, 85-62, in the opening round and saw their season end March 21 with a 76-63 loss to eventual champion Baylor in the second round.

Gard, according to multiple sources, was subsequently told by UW officials that Tucker had approached Alvarez with his hope of being named coach. At that point, the consensus was that Tucker would not be retained though UW officials did not want the situation to turn into a public spectacle.

UW Chancellor Rebecca Blank chose to appoint Tucker to the nine-person committee tasked with finding a replacement for Alvarez. That committee was revealed April 7.

Tucker applied for the full-time assistant position less than two weeks later but was subsequently informed by Gard he would not get the job. A source informed the Journal Sentinel of that development on April 27.

Tucker remained on the search committee and, according to multiple sources, lobbied for UW to hire Northern Illinois athletic director Sean Frazier.

Frazier was hired at UW in 2007, served as Alvarez’s deputy athletic director from 2011-13 and knows Tucker.

Sources told the Journal Sentinel that Tucker hoped that if Frazier was hired as UW’s athletic director, he would remove Gard.

“He truly believed Frazier would fire Greg and hire him,” one source said.

UW announced June 2 that deputy athletic director Chris McIntosh would replace Alvarez.

McIntosh officially started his new job July 1. Gard, his staff and a roster with eight new players are busy preparing for the 2021-22 season. Tucker will not be involved in any way at UW and his house is for sale.

Several sources noted that all parties involved lost during the 2020-21 season: the players; Gard; assistants Joe Krabbenhoft and Dean Oliver; all those in the athletic department who played a role in bringing Tucker back to UW in 2018 as director of student-athlete engagement; and Tucker.

“I feel bad for the players,” one source close to the program said. “They deserved better.”

[BBFran]

I spent some time with a college hoops head coach recently (not someone anyone here knows) and we were discussing this situation. He told me that absolutely nothing was more toxic to a program than a disloyal assistant coach. Tucker was a truly great player at Wisconsin, but how he got it in his head that he had any qualification to be a head coach, with no training for it, eludes me. And the schemes suggested here are just harebrained.

Gard and the UW program made a huge upgrade when he hired Shariff to fill that slot. Combined with the great young talent they have coming in and coming up I expect them to be back contending for the Big Ten title very quickly.

[skrapheap]

What was Tucker reading? "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Amanda Braun?

[ghostofdylan]

Aug 2, 2021 19:17:33 GMT -6 skrapheap said:

What was Tucker reading? "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Amanda Braun?

Pay the man, Shirley! (Thanks to Norman Chad for the inspiration).

[nickpanther]

i think Tucker got high on his own supply, frankly. and I think we can now narrow down who released that edited recording of the kids bashing Gard: Tucker or someone close to him. needless to say, Tucker is finished, permanently, at Madison.

[ghostofdylan]

Aug 2, 2021 21:23:55 GMT -6 nickpanther said:

i think Tucker got high on his own supply, frankly. and I think we can now narrow down who released that edited recording of the kids bashing Gard: Tucker or someone close to him. needless to say, Tucker is finished, permanently, at Madison.

I certainly don't think he'll be coaching in college anytime soon.

[skrapheap]

Aug 3, 2021 10:30:12 GMT -6 ghostofdylan said:

Aug 2, 2021 21:23:55 GMT -6 nickpanther said:

i think Tucker got high on his own supply, frankly. and I think we can now narrow down who released that edited recording of the kids bashing Gard: Tucker or someone close to him. needless to say, Tucker is finished, permanently, at Madison.

I certainly don't think he'll be coaching in college anytime soon.

Nor should he.

"Personnel concerns" being what they are, i suppose it's possible that news of this kind of behavior won't come to the notice of the folks making actual hiring decisions, unless they ask "Why exactly did you have to leave the Badgers staff?"

I wouldn't want him banned permanently from coaching...just until he acknowledged that trying to engineer your boss's departure is NOT a good thing and that he should not have done it.