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The Athletic Profiles the Michigan Men’s Basketball Search: Juwan Howard

March 18, 2021. The Athletic’s Brendan Quinn sat down with TurnkeyZRG Chairman and CEO, Len Perna, University of Michigan Director of Athletics, Warde Manuel, and Michigan Athletics Chief of Staff, Doug Gnodtke, for an in-depth profile of the ten day search that netted Juwan Howard. Below are some snippets from the article:

Warde Manuel and Doug Gnodtke were having a pleasant Monday morning. Driving to Detroit Metro Airport, they discussed the upcoming Big Ten joint group meetings in Chicago. That’s when Manuel’s phone rang. “Hello, John,” he said. It was May 13, 2019. The day just got interesting. Manuel, the University of Michigan athletic director, got off the call and looked at Gnodtke, his executive associate AD and chief of staff. “Well …” He scrolled through his phone, pulling up university president Mark Schlissel, and delivered the news. Then Manuel called Len Perna, the CEO of TurnkeyZRG, “I need ya to help me with this basketball search.” “What basketball search?” Perna said.

Perna reached out to Grant Hill, who, like Howard, had spent the last quarter-century in and around the highest levels of the NBA. Hill raved about Howard. He said, “It’s a call you’ve gotta make,” and he gave Perna a cell phone number for Howard. “Grant was effusive, absolutely effusive about Juwan’s leadership ability, his ability to connect with people, his authenticity,” Perna says. Perna dialed up Howard, marking Michigan’s first contact. The only problem? Howard was climbing aboard a plane bound for Minnesota. The call was brief. Howard told Perna he didn’t have time to speak and that he was solely focused on his job interview with the Timberwolves. He was up against Ryan Saunders, Darvin Ham, Chris Finch and David Vanterpool for the gig. Perna told Howard: “Good luck, but please don’t agree to anything until you talk to us about Michigan. Don’t sign anything.”

“The more we talked about it, the more excited he got, and the more excited we got,” Perna says. “As we went through the process, I think it became clear to Juwan and it certainly became clear to everyone at Michigan, Warde, in particular, what a quality person Juwan Howard is. It became clear he was a pretty perfect fit.” However, “Juwan was also very realistic,” Perna says, “understanding that there hadn’t been a lot of people who had come down from the NBA and successfully been head coaches at the college level. I think he was probably thinking that Michigan wouldn’t view him as a top candidate.”

It is March 4, 2021, and Juwan Howard is at center court in Crisler Center celebrating an outright Big Ten championship. He is the first Michigan men’s basketball coach to win a conference title in his first two seasons since Osborne Cowles did so in 1947-48. None of the other coaches in program lore — Dave Strack, Johnny Orr, Bill Frieder, Fisher, Beilein — did this. He would be honored as the Big Ten Coach of the Year.

To read the full article See HERE

For more great articles like this one, check out The Athletic and follow Brendan Quinn.

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Founded in 1996, TurnkeyZRG is a highly specialized talent recruitment/executive search firm filling C-level, senior-level and mid-management level positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. Over the past 25 years, TurnkeyZRG has filled more than 1,400 positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. TurnkeyZRG helps teams, leagues, stadiums, arenas, theaters, college athletic departments, events, sponsors, agencies, media companies, private equity companies and other clients identify, recruit and hire the very best management talent. Turnkey now benefits from ZRG’s global footprint, full array of industry practice groups, data-driven, analytical search tools, and technology investment in changing the way executive search/talent recruiting is done. TurnkeyZRG becomes a tech-enabled disrupter of the prior executive search model. For more information about TurnkeyZRG, visit www.turnkeyzrg.com.