Phil Martelli wasn't short on options.
The legendary Philadelphia basketball coach, who was dismissed from St. Joseph's back in 2019 after leading the program to seven NCAA tournament appearances across 23 seasons, pondered a new career in television as a college hoops analyst, and caught a glimpse of what the NBA offers while serving as a special advisor to the 76ers during their playoff run two years ago.
But the idea of joining a coaching staff in one of the Power Five conferences intrigued Martelli the most. And with some help from one of his friends, Kentucky head coach John Calipari, Martelli was put in touch with Juwan Howard, who had yet to even interview for the job at Michigan.
It was during that early conversation with Howard when Martelli realized the former Wolverine had described a program he wanted to be a part of.
"Literally in the first couple of sentences, I recognized he had great love of family, he had great love of what the university had done for him, and there was a vision and a passion," Martelli said of Howard while on The Zach Gelb Show on Thursday. "I wanted to be in a locker room to pick a kid up on the hardest night of that kid's life, and I also wanted to be celebrating in a locker room. I thought I had more to give. The challenge, obviously, was leaving Philadelphia for the first time in 64 years... But the reason I came to Michigan was because of Juwan Howard."
In his second year as head coach of the Wolverines, Howard has led the program to its first Sweet Sixteen appearance as a No. 1 seed since 1993. On Sunday, the team will face No. 4 seed Florida State in a East region matchup at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.
The last time Michigan won a national title was back in 1989, two years before Howard and the school's "Fab Five" teams became a cultural phenomenon.
Will this be the year the Wolverines put an end to their long championship drought?
Martelli believes so.
"I'd put our playbook up against anybody in the country," Martelli said. "Now, credit to [former Michigan coach] John Beilein, because he had the older players in this program. High IQ's. And then our recruiting, high IQ's. [Starting center] Hunter Dickinson is not a typical freshman, and his high IQ allows him to pick up all of the nuances, both offensively and defensively. I would say we have as big a playbook as anybody in the country, and it's from the end of the hall -- that [coaches'] office generates all the ideas...
"Having this taste of everybody at Michigan pursues a championship every day -- the guy in charge of the phones, the nutritionists, the athletic trainers -- everybody gets up with the idea of pursuit of a championship... don't know that I could [coach somewhere else] and that not be at the top..."
The entire conversation between Martelli and Gelb can be accessed in the audio player above.
You can follow The Zach Gelb Show on Twitter @ZachGelb and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.