Moving on: A list of potential replacements for Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan

by Eric Kohlbeck

July 18, 2015

A fixture in Wisconsin athletics, a likely future member of the Hall of Fame and a coach that has paced the sidelines of the Kohl Center for more than a decade, is on his way out.

Bo Ryan, who for the past 14 years has led the men’s basketball team to the NCAA Tournament, including back-to-back Final Fours in 2014 and 2015, announced earlier this summer that the 2015-16 season basketball season will be his final one as head coach.

Ryan is the program’s all-time winningest coach with a 357-125 record and in addition to never missing the NCAA Tournament at Wisconsin, no Ryan team has ever finished lower than fourth in the Big Ten.

Greg Gard (Wisconsin associate head coach)

When talking about the coaching career of Bo Ryan, Greg Gard goes with it like the vice president goes with the president. Gard has been alongside Ryan for the past 22 years going back to his first season as a college basketball coach at University of Wisconsin-Platteville in 1993, when Ryan was the head coach. Gard was with Ryan at UW-Platteville when they won three Division III national championships in 1995, 1998 and 1999 and followed him to UW-Milwaukee where he was an assistant coach from 1999-2001. And when Ryan was upgraded once again in 2001 to be the next head coach at Wisconsin, Gard was right there next to him once again.

Gard has remained with Ryan in Madison since 2001 and was bumped up to associate head coach of the Badgers in 2008. Now, with Gard just behind Ryan for the past eight seasons, many believe he is the favorite to take over once Ryan retires after the 2015-16 season.

And Ryan wants nothing more than for Gard to be his successor.When Ryan announced he was retiring at the end of next season, he went out of his way to mention Gard.

“I’ve decided to coach one more season with the hope that my longtime assistant Greg Gard eventually becomes the head coach at Wisconsin,” Ryan said in a statement.

"Greg Gard had an incredible scouting report. If he isn't the best asst in the country I don't know who is"
– Bo Ryan pic.twitter.com/nVzzOB84xK

— Wisconsin Basketball (@BadgerMBB) April 5, 2015

In addition to being the Badgers X’s and O’s guy while leading the recruiting charge, an endorsement from Ryan is hard to stray away from and it’s something athletics director Barry Alvarez will have to take into account when searching for Wisconsin’s next head coach. Gard has turned down offers to become a head coach at the Division I level before, rejecting Army, Toledo and most recently UW-Green Bay in 2010, presumably with the hope that he could eventually take over at Wisconsin. Will it finally happen?

Tony Bennett (Virginia head coach)

A name all basketball fans across the state of Wisconsin know is Tony Bennett. Bennett is from Wisconsin, played college basketball at UW-Green Bay and was an assistant coach at Wisconsin from 1999-2003. In 1999 and for part of 2000, Bennett served under his dad, Dick, who was the head coach at UW-Madison. Bennett then coached with Ryan from 2001-03 before he coached with his father once again at Washington State as an assistant from 2003-06. After his dad retired from Washington State following the 2005-06 season, Tony was given his first head coaching job there.

In each of his first two seasons at Washington State, Bennett guided the Cougars to 26 wins which is tied for the most in a season in school history. In 2006-07, Washington State earned its first NCAA tournament berth since 1994 and advanced to the Sweet 16 the following season. In 2009, Bennett left Washington State and became the head coach at Virginia where he has amassed a 136-64 record in six seasons. The Cavaliers have earned an NCAA tournament bid in three of the past four seasons and have won the ACC regular season championship in each of the past two seasons with an ACC tournament championship in 2015.

Had Ryan decided to retire a season or two ago, Bennett could easily have been the favorite to come back home and coach Wisconsin. But, with Virginia’s rise to the top of the ACC in the past few seasons, it will be tough to lure Bennett away from Charlottesville and get him back to Madison, although some have said if Bennett were to leave Virginia for any job, Wisconsin would be the one.

From a college basketball source on UVa's Tony Bennett & #Badgers: "Honestly that's probably one of the few jobs that would take him away."

— Benjamin Worgull (@TheBadgerNation) June 29, 2015

A setback to Bennett coming to Wisconsin would be the $3 million buyout he has in his contract with Virginia. Bennett signed a three-year contract extension in May which not only pays him $2.1 million per year, but upped his buyout from $1.4 million to $3 million should he leave Virginia before 2017. Would Wisconsin be willing to pay that if Bennett wants to come home? Time will tell.

Gregg Marshall (Wichita State head coach)

Should Alvarez decide not to go with Gard or Bennett, he will likely look to the mid-major level for the next Wisconsin head coach. One option could be Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall who has put Wichita State at the top of the mid-major rankings if you even consider them a mid-major school anymore.

Marshall has been the head coach of the Shockers for the past eight seasons. He has a 204-75 record at Wichita State and has sent the Shockers to the NCAA Tournament in each of the past four seasons. In 2013, Marshall and Wichita State made it to the Final Four before earning a No. 1 seed in the 2014 NCAA tournament. Marshall was named the National Coach of the Year by four different organizations in 2014 and won the Missouri Valley Coach of the Year award three times. Before Wichita State, Marshall won the Big South Tournament seven times as the head coach of Winthrop.

Top-tier schools have already come calling for Marshall, with North Carolina State, UCLA, California and Alabama all placing bids. Alabama strongly targeted him after the end of this season and Wichita State awarded Marshall with a new contract that will pay him more than $3 million a year while keeping him at the Missouri Valley Conference powerhouse. Having said no to so many top programs in the past, could Wisconsin finally be enticing enough for Marshall to take the next step?

Saul Phillips (Ohio head coach)

Another coach at the mid-major level that could be a target is Saul Phillips who is currently in his second season as head coach of Ohio University. Phillips has ties with Ryan and Wisconsin as he was an assistant coach with Gard and Ryan at UW-Milwaukee from 1999-2001 before taking over as the director of operations for Wisconsin from 2001-04. He is a Wisconsin native and played at UW-Platteville from 1991-95 and was the captain of the 1995 championship team which was coached by both Ryan and Gard.

Phillips left Wisconsin in 2004 to take a job as an assistant coach with North Dakota State before he eventually became the head coach in 2007. In seven seasons as head coach at NDSU, Phillips went 134-84 with two NCAA Tournament berths in 2009 and 2014. He was named the Summit League’s Coach of the Year in both of those seasons.

After the 2014 season, Phillips left North Dakota State for Ohio where he struggled in his first season with the Bobcats, going 10-20 with a 5-13 record in conference play. Despite his struggles last season, Phillips has had an impressive, albeit somewhat short, head coaching career. It would be a bit of a stretch to tab Phillips as the next head coach at Wisconsin but it could be worth the risk given his ties to the state and current coaching staff.

Archie Miller (Dayton head coach)

Archie Miller has only been a head coach for four seasons, which is the least amount of experience on this list if you exclude Gard who has only been an assistant coach. But, since 2004, Miller has been an assistant coach at four different “power conference” schools including North Carolina State, Arizona State, Ohio State and Arizona. From 2009-11, Miller was the associate head coach at Arizona where his brother, Sean, is the head coach.

In his short time as a head coach, Miller has found success as the top guy of the Dayton Flyers. He has gone 90-47 in four seasons and has led the Flyers to the NCAA Tournament in each of the past two seasons. In 2014, as an 11 seed, Miller guided Dayton to the Elite Eight with upset wins over Ohio State, Syracuse and Stanford. This past season, Dayton was again an 11 seed and knocked off Providence to advance to the Round of 32 for the second-straight season.

It’s been a short, but successful head coaching career for Archie Miller. Will that be enough to get Alvarez’s attention?

Rob Jeter (UW-Milwaukee head coach)

Likely a long shot for the position, but an in-state guy like Rob Jeter is always a name that will be thrown into the discussion. Jeter played under Ryan at UW-Platteville from 1987-91 and was an assistant coach with Ryan from 1994-98 at Platteville and from 1999-2005 at both UW-Milwaukee and Wisconsin. Jeter then took the job as head coach of UW-M in 2005 and has been there for the past 10 seasons. He currently is second in Division I program history with 164 wins and has led the Panthers to two NCAA tournament bids in 2006 and 2014. Under Jeter, Milwaukee has won both the Horizon League regular season championship (2006, 2011) and the Horizon League tournament (2006, 2014) twice. He was named Horizon League Coach of the Year in 2011 and could be on Alvarez’s short list of candidates to replace Ryan.