Why was Phil Martelli the head coach for the end of Michigan’s game? | Mike Jensen

If you tuned in late to Friday afternoon’s Big Ten quarterfinal between Michigan and Maryland in Indianapolis, missed all the drama, you’d have said, wait, Michigan’s head coach is … Phil Martelli?

For 10 minutes and 44 seconds, a true fact.

That’s the Philly spin on things … Hey, Martelli’s coaching. (I was getting texts.)

“Does the old dog get half a win?” Michigan’s star freshman center Hunter Dickinson asked in the locker room afterward.

Or maybe it was old head, Martelli, Michigan’s second-year associate head coach, said later. Made him laugh. (Dickinson frequently makes him laugh.)

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No chuckles out on the court earlier. It got a little tense. Martelli taking over will be a footnote to the whole thing, after the Wolverines dispatched Maryland in a game that will be remembered as the time Juwan Howard had to remind people he was raised on the South Side of Chicago and when somebody charges at you -- in this case, the head coach of the University of the Maryland -- you react accordingly.

Howard got ejected, accordingly.

It took a few moments for Martelli to realize what was going on. A little different spin on March Madness. Double technical, Howard out. The last time Martelli was a head coach, he was in charge of the St. Joseph’s Hawks in the 2019 Atlantic 10 tournament.

Did it feel like old times or no?

Maybe yes, and a little no.

“Well, I thought, maybe in a millisecond, I still have to be me,” Martelli said over the phone after he’d gotten back to the hotel. “Standing with your hands crossed. That’s what I do.”

Martelli said nothing much actually changed. Yes, he was the guy standing there, but the Wolverines’ Howard Eisley was still in charge of the offense and Saddi Washington in charge of the defense.

Sure, Martelli had work to do. He just tried to manage the game.

“I’m always thinking of the game in segments,” Martelli said. “OK, let’s get to the four-minute mark.”

Interactions with refs?

“I was just thinking about that -- there was no interaction at all,” Martelli said.

Probably purposeful.

“I think probably from both sides,” Martelli said.

If you’ve paid attention at all, you know this season has been something special out in Ann Arbor. Whatever happens the next couple of days, the Wolverines have to be guaranteed a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Martelli has packed for 28 days, snacks included, since the Wolverines don’t even have to move.

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If you’ve paid attention, you probably know what Martelli has thought of Howard from the start, how his boss is the real deal.

“He doesn’t go off,” Martelli said Friday. “Maybe the second or third time. I’m not talking about in a game -- in practice or whenever.”

But …

“I’ve always said tongue-in-cheek with the other guys, look when he goes, I’ve got nothing to do with it,” Martelli said. “I can’t get there in time.”

Martelli, for the record, has gone off more than once in his own time. He recognizes the symptoms.

The issue here, as Howard himself explained later – “My version, because there’s going to be so many versions …”

He disagreed with a call on a ball out of bounds.

“I was out of the coaching box and I went down to explain exactly that it was off Smith,” Howard said.

That would be Philly’s own Donta Smith, Imhotep Charter graduate.

“It’s tough to communicate when it’s loud and you also have masks on,” Howard said. “Turg saw that I was out of the box.”

That would be Terps coach Mark Turgeon.

“He was telling the referee to look at my feet and I’m out of the box,” Howard said. “I’m like, ‘Come on, man. This is what we’re doing today? We’re worried about my feet out of the box?’ "

Howard’s version, Turgeon said, was Howard was not going to talk to him, “you don’t talk to me ever again.”

That’s probably about where Martelli said, “It got lit at that point.”

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“When guys charge you, that’s when it’s time to defend yourself,” Howard said, mentioning the part about being raised on the South Side. “Especially when a grown man charges you. That, right there, I went into defense mode, and forgetting exactly where I’m at.”

“I stood up for my team,” Turgeon said. “I stood up for me.”

“I was raised by Chicago,” Howard said. “When guys charge you, it’s time to defend yourself.”

Enough people got in the way that it simmered down from there, but Howard, who looked the aggressor, was out. Martelli said he told his guys what calls the refs would be looking to make, where they could expect to see calls come from, with everyone on edge.

“Ironically, it was my scout,” Martelli said of this game, meaning he was in charge of the scouting report, although he couldn’t have quite come up with hypotheticals for how this played out.

Howard listens to his players on when they need a break, so Martelli held to that. Isaiah Livers, usually out there, had hurt his foot so the rotation was a bit different.

Did Howard say anything to him afterward?

“He thanked all of us,” Martelli said. “And we went about our business getting ready for the next game.”

If Dickinson wants to give Martelli credit for a quarter of a win, sure, why not? Michigan took the 10-point lead and won by 13. Just a little footnote for a game that even in Martelli’s estimation “there wasn’t a whole lot going on,” until suddenly there was, making it into Big Ten lore.