It’s important to start things off by letting you know that I believe Wisconsin Badgers head coach Greg Gard to be an imperfect college basketball coach.
While there may still be room left for growth (see, March), it’s hard to imagine him reaching elite status as Bo Ryan (eventually) did. But with that said, it’s not rationally disputable that Gard is a very good, incredibly stable, and impressively high character coach who would be extremely difficult for Wisconsin to successfully replace.
Yet there
still exists a decently sized segment of the Badger fanbase (let’s call them Fire Gard Enthusiasts) who sincerely believe that Gard is not the right person to run the Wisconsin program. And a smaller subset of this cartel is afflicted with a phenomenon I’ll call Gard Derangement Syndrome.
This is an obsessive belief that Gard has no business being Wisconsin’s coach, causing every semblance of a victim’s rational perspective on the Badger hoops program to disappear, especially when making social media/message board posts or podcast content.
Let’s explore why these lost souls are so incorrect.
Gard is Objectively Successful
Yes, the March performance has been vexing and, really, inexplicable, and Gard doesn’t get a free pass on it. But what makes a college basketball program good goes well beyond the NCAA Tournament, and by any of these measures, Gard has been really, really good.
I mean, the guy currently sits in 6th place in modern Big Ten history in winning percentage, and we’re going to pretend he’s mid?
With only two exceptions, his teams have made March Madness, and he frequently wins huge games against great teams, as he did this past season, beating national champ Michigan in Ann Arbor and twice knocking off Final Four squad Illinois away from the Kohl Center. In a wildly competitive Big Ten, Wisconsin is almost always in the top tier of the league, which is so incredibly hard to do.
Add in the fact that Gard has totally changed his team’s style of play over the last few years to modernize it and make it more attractive to recruits/transfers, and it only serves as more evidence of his success.
Gard is a Great Talent Evaluator/Developer
While his elite talent is capped by Wisconsin’s recruiting ceiling (see the next topic, below), Gard has, year after year, brought in good program fits, who he develops into really good basketball players.
Whether through the Portal or via traditional recruiting, a look at the names that have come through Madison in the last several years under Gard is impressive: Johnny Davis, Chucky Hepburn, John Tonje, Nolan Winter, Nate Reuvers, Steven Crowl, Micah Potter, Brad Davison, AJ Storr, Nick Boyd, John Blackwell, Tyler Wahl, and so many more. A massing of good players who were great fits.
No, not every player Gard brings in works out, but that’s a thing everywhere. And even some who don’t pop for the Badgers find their footing at new destinations like Daniel Freitag and Gus Yalden recently have.
Gard Has Very Tough NIL Headwinds
For those who lament things like Blackwell leaving for Duke or losing in-state prep star Donvan Davis to Iowa State, please remember that it’s one of the worst-kept secrets in college basketball that Gard doesn’t have nearly the same NIL resources as many, if not most, rivals.
So, he’s going to miss out on recruits and transfers simply because someone else can pay them more. We’ve seen ample evidence of this in recent years, so anyone blaming a clearly frustrated Gard for it rather than giving him roses for working within this disadvantageous system is way off.
Gard’s almost otherworldly recent ability to mine non-elite transfer portal guys and find gold, with Storr, Tonje, and Boyd in consecutive seasons being almost impossible, speaks to his value as a coach. The haters love to gloss over this fact, and I won’t let them.
So, while it’s fair for Wisconsin fans to expect more in March (I’m there, too), pretending that Gard isn’t a really good coach who wins year in and year out is a fool’s errand. Please come back off the ledge, Gard Deranagement Humans. We will accept you back with no hard feelings (or at least not many).
