MADISON – Shawn Eichorst and Greg Gard have a few things in common.
Eichorst is from Lone Rock. Gard is from Cobb in neighboring Iowa County.
Eichorst spent time at the Division III level as a football player and later athletic director at UW-Whitewater. Gard, of course, is a UW-Platteville alum and former assistant coach there under Bo Ryan.
“There’s a little bit of familiarity,” Eichorst said.
That might be a little bit of an understatement as Eichorst and Gard – now athletic director and head men’s basketball coach, respectively, for the Wisconsin Badgers – begin a new chapter in their relationship with plenty of respect.
As much as their backgrounds unite Eichorst and Gard, their past time together in Madison might be more telling. Eichorst was UW’s sport administrator for men’s basketball during his 2006-11 stint, which was during Gard’s long tenure as Ryan’s associate head coach.
“He’s somebody that I gravitated to early on because of the way he thinks about analytics and some of the things that I think about relative to the game,” Eichorst said of Gard.
Gard – and Ryan for that matter – helped Eichorst figure out one of his most successful coaching hires as well. He hired basketball coach Jim Larranaga at Miami. Larranaga eventually became the program’s all-time winningest coach and took the Hurricanes to their first Elite Eight in 2022 and first Final Four in 2023.
“When I had an opportunity to go to Miami, I spent a lot of time with Bo and Greg about what a coach would look like at a place like Miami, and we hit a home run with Jim Larranaga. Jim hit the highs. A lot of folks tried to move Jim – Final Four, mid-major – and we were able to get him in Coral Gables.”
In the 15 years since then, Eichorst went on to be athletic director at Nebraska following his quick tenure at Miami. After his ouster at Nebraska amid underwhelming football results, he spent eight years as the deputy AD at Texas until the UW opportunity arose.
“Shawn brings the perfect combination of understanding what it means to be successful at Wisconsin while adding experience and wisdom from other top collegiate programs,” Gard said in the news release announcing Eichorst’s hiring.
Gard, meanwhile, moved one spot on the bench to head coach after Ryan’s retirement and now holds more top-10 wins than any other head coach in program history. He has reached the NCAA Tournament in all but two seasons although the current Sweet 16 drought has caused agony for fans.
“I still have a lot of the same notes that we hammered out over at the Main Depot over a beer and a burger, so I have great admiration for him,” Eichorst said. “I’ve loved watching him grow. I think you all have. He’s a great ball coach.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How Greg Gard earned new Wisconsin AD Shawn Eichorst’s respect long ago
Reporting by John Steppe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By John Steppe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
