On Thursday night, the Michigan Wolverines clinched the outright regular-season Big Ten Championship by destroying Michigan State 69-50 in a game that was not as close as the score indicated.
As you know, the Wolverines are coached by Juwan Howard, who was once a part of the Fab Five that featured himself, Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson.
You may also be familiar with the work of 97.1 The Ticket’s Mike Valenti, who as a Michigan State grad, absolutely loves to take shots at Michigan whenever he possibly can.
In fact, when the Wolverines announced that they were hiring Howard to be their next head basketball coach, Valenti went on the air and bashed the move.
Here is what Valenti had to say after news broke that Howard was hired by Michigan:
“This absolutely to me is a dud of a hire.” “You’re not gonna come into the big ten and win basketball games like this.”
“I don’t get lost in the light show, I care about what’s real, and I think this search is kind of a bust.” “What other elite program would act this way with a head coaching hire?” “You scrambled. You got caught with your pants down.”
“If there’s one thing Michigan fans love, it’s a Michigan man. They just love crawling up the ass of a good Michigan man.” “You‘ll (fans) look all of the deficiencies he has in his resume because he’s a Michigan man.”
“To me, you were better off hiring Yaklich.” “Hiring Juwan Howard to me is nothing more than a PR stunt.” “You’ve seemingly gone for the publicity. You’ve gone for the sizzle not the steak.”
“If you think Tom Izzo and Matt Painter are shaking in their boots on this one, you’re out to lunch.” “I don’t want to hear about being some secondary assistant in the NBA, I’m talking about being the guy.’”
“If you went out and hired some small college coach, you wouldn’t be able to unify this goofball fan base.” “What is this, a popularity contest? Give me a basketball coach.” “If I’m a Michigan basketball fan I’m bummed about this.”
Following Thursday’s win over the Spartans, Michigan freshman phenom Hunter Dickinson took to Twitter to troll Valenti for his comments that have turned out to be dead wrong.
😂😂😂😂😂😂 https://t.co/OBegq5Fp4X
— Hunter Dickinson (@H_Dickinson24) March 5, 2021
Now, in Valenti’s defense, he has since backtracked and admitted that the Howard hire was a good one but he will never live down his initial comments.
