Bo Ryan Farewell Guessing Game Highlights 2015 Big Ten Media Day

ROSEMONT, Ill. — With seven Final Fours to his credit, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo may be more accomplished. With perhaps the most highly touted roster in school history, Maryland’s Mark Turgeon may have a better current team. At what one coach here called “the Kentucky of the Big Ten,” Indiana’s Tom Crean may lead a more iconic college basketball program.

It's Bo Ryan's world anyway.

In Big Ten country, no coach looms larger these days than Ryan, who rode a rock-star wave along with star player Frank Kaminsky and the rest of the Wisconsin program to the 2014 and 2015 Final Fours. For two wonderful seasons, the Badgers came, made everybody laugh and nearly always conquered.

It all started with Ryan, who is equal parts coaching genius and celebrity toastmaster—a tour de force of on-the-court acumen and at-the-dais personality that, entering year 15 of an inimitable run, could actually be coming to a permanent close.

Ryan, who will turn 68 in December, is on record that the 2015-16 campaign will be his last. Then again, what if he gets hungry?

"It’s like being at a picnic and saying, I'll have one more hamburger,'" he mused Thursday at the league’s annual gathering of coaches, top players and media. "How many people have three more?"

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Ryan has been toying, at least in public comments, with the idea of staying on beyond this season ever since Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez made clear his intention to engage in an ambitious search for Ryan’s successor. Ryan wants the job to go to his longtime assistant Greg Gard, no questions asked.

Ol' Bo has been to back-to-back Final Fours and has guided the Badgers to a preposterous 14 straight top-four finishes in the Big Ten standings, but he’s going to lose this fight to Alvarez, the revered architect of the Wisconsin football program. Unless, that is, Ryan ends up staying. That would be a win-win for everyone.

Well, save perhaps for Gard.

“I just want him to do what he wants to do. That’s it,” said Iowa’s Fran McCaffery. “If he wants to retire, retire. If he doesn’t, stay. I want him to go out on his terms. That’s what I want for all my colleagues, because, as you know, we don’t always get to do that. He has certainly won enough that he probably can.”

Turgeon’s predecessor at Maryland, Gary Williams, retired at 66 in 2011 following a 22-year run at the school that included a national championship.

“I hope he leaves when he wants to leave,” said Turgeon of Ryan, “but I do think guys stick around too long. I love what Gary did. Gary left, still had his health, has been able to play golf almost every day for the last four years. He has missed [coaching] like crazy, but I think he’s glad he did it. With Bo, it’ll be the same way. Bo’s going to be in the Hall of Fame. What else can Bo do?

“It’s hard for coaches to walk away from the limelight and everyone telling you how good you are, but I think quality of life is important, too.”

Of course, it’s all relative. Some burgers are better than others.

An MVP Approach 

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If Maryland lives up to its billing as the strong favorite in the Big Ten, Stephen Curry—whether he realizes it or not—will be due some of the credit. Influenced by Curry’s ardent, daily routine of practicing his ball-handling, some Terrapins, notably star point guard Melo Trimble and senior forward Jake Layman, now do likewise. 

Layman could really benefit from improved dribbling and passing as he makes the switch from power forward to small forward, where his thin 6'9" frame figures to fit best at the next level.

“I feel like this will be my best season,” he said.

Layman is a potential first-round pick, according to most NBA mock drafts.

Close, But Not Really

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We all appreciate it when an athlete gives it to us straight, but it could not have been easy for Michigan State senior guard Bryn Forbes to be so honest about the shortcomings of last year’s squad. 

Then again, Izzo hasn’t been shy about saying it was the least talented of his Final Four squads.

Forbes admitted Thursday that Izzo probably is right. He said Duke—loaded with 2015 first-round draft picks—was far and away more talented, and it showed as the Blue Devils erased an early deficit and coasted in the second half of their Final Four showdown.

“But we beat a lot of teams that had more talent than us last season,” Forbes said.

The Spartans' goal in 2015-16 is to learn from the experiences of losing to Duke and, earlier in the Big Ten tournament title game, to Wisconsin. The Badgers came back from 11 points down in the second half and won by 11 in overtime.

“Their poise was better than ours,” Forbes said. “Even when we were beating them, they never seemed nervous or like they thought they were going to lose. That’s the way we need to be.”

Odds and Ends

• Indiana freshman center Thomas Bryant, the No. 1 recruit in Crean’s 2015 class, has made an incredible athletic improvement—adding nine inches to his vertical leap over the course of only seven weeks.

“I’ve never had anybody make the jumps he made athletically,” Crean said. “We’ve got guys who have not gone up nine inches in four years.”

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• There’s a lot of interest in how well Purdue 7'0" senior A.J. Hammons will play this season. He was long considered to be a player who’d eventually try to leave early for the NBA draft, but he has struggled with inconsistency and had his motor questioned enough that, well, here he still is. A motivated Hammons could be the best big man in the league. 

• The media voted Trimble as the Big Ten’s preseason player of the year. He was one of four unanimous all-league selections, along with Hammons, Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes and Michigan State’s Denzel Valentine. Layman, Michigan’s Caris LeVert, Wisconsin’s Bronson Koenig, Iowa’s Jarrod Uthoff and Indiana’s James Blackmon Jr. and Yogi Ferrell also were selected.

Steve Greenberg has covered college sports for nearly 20 years, namely for the Sporting News and the Chicago Sun-Times.