Tennessee basketball: Rick Barnes just became Juwan Howard’s best advocate

It wasn’t exactly a defense. However, the measured, thoughtful comment by Tennessee basketball head coach Rick Barnes on Monday turned into the best case you could make for Michigan Wolverines head coach Juwan Howard after the incident that took place Sunday.

Howard initiated a physical altercation with a Wisconsin Badgers assistant coach after his team lost 77-63. The dispute began over Howard getting tense with Wisconsin head coach Greg Gard due to him calling a timeout with under a minute to go and the game in hand.

Suggestions for Howard’s punishment ranged from firing him to suspending him the rest of the season to just suspending him for a couple of games. However, Tennessee basketball’s leader talked about his own past and defended Howard’s character when discussing it in his Monday press conference. Here’s a bit of what Barnes said.

"“I can only tell you, I made a lot of mistakes as a young coach. I got myself too emotional, and that comes from being competitive. I have had a couple of well-documented incidents that honestly, looking back, I wish wouldn’t have happened. I wish I would have been, some people say mature, I think it is competitive instincts.”"

By far, this is the best case to make for Howard. It’s true that Barnes was involved in tense altercations with other head coaches in the past. Back in 2013, speaking on The Seth Davis Show, Barnes reflected on being thrown out of a game with the Clemson Tigers back in the 1990s. He was still defending his actions then.

Taking that into account, Barnes is now Howard’s best advocate. It’s hard to make a case that Howard’s actions are unprecedented given the past of other coaches, and Barnes is one of the most respected coaches in the game.

As a result, this defense of Howard is powerful. Other critics could point to Bobby Knight getting fired over his actions, and they could also note that this is Howard’s second dispute. He had another one with then-Maryland Terrapins head coach Mark Turgeon last year.

However, Barnes commanding respect the way he does and going out of his way to remind people about his own indiscretions from his younger coaching days, indiscretions he still defended less than a decade ago, can’t be overlooked here. This is exactly what Howard needed.

Obviously, Barnes has had his issues with other coaches while head coach of Tennessee basketball. Penny Hardaway started a verbal war between the two after his first year as head coach of the Memphis Tigers, but none of that was on Barnes.

If UT and Memphis don’t continue the series, it’ll be because of a combination of that and the game this year being canceled because Hardaway didn’t take the proper steps to make sure his players weren’t vaccinated. That alone, though, wouldn’t have caused it.

Anyway, it was very classy for Barnes to speak up on Howard’s behalf. Although there’s still a case to make for firing Howard, the Tennessee basketball head coach’s comments can at least make us all think. Tensions truly can run high in these college games, and Barnes made it clear he knows that better than anybody.