As we reported earlier, Greg Gard was promoted to associate head coach of the UW men's basketball team. What does this mean? It officially establishes him as Bo Ryan's right-hand man on the coaching staff and is a nice title. That, and it probably comes with a decent raise. Given his ties to the highly-successful Ryan — Gard has been with Ryan for the past 15 seasons — his name has come up in recent years as a future head coach somewhere in Division I. Just this past offseason, Gard was rumored to be a frontrunner for the open head coaching position for the Toledo job before he removed his name from consideration. Wisconsin last had an associate head coach from 2001-2005, when former Ryan player and longtime assistant Rob Jeter held the title. Jeter is now entering his third season as head coach at UW-Milwaukee. Bielema to Happy Valley? I wrote last week about how Joe Paterno has no immediate plans to leave Penn State. But between a rash of legal problems for his program and the fact he is 80-freaking-1 years old (!) there's been increased speculation about who will lead the Nittany Lions after Joe Pa steps down (or is asked kindly by the Penn State administration to read back-copies of Readers Digest and play chess in the park). Matt Hayes at The Sporting News offers up five names to consider. Number four on that list: UW's Bret Bielema. Hayes cites Bielema's success as a head coach (21-5 record in two seasons) and experience in taking over the reins from a legendary coach (Barry Alvarez) as a reason why Penn State could be interested in him. That said, I don't think that's a very likely scenario. While Penn State has a rich tradition, at this point it would be more or less a lateral move for Bielema in terms of where both the UW and PSU programs currently are on the field. On top of that, Penn State would have to come with a fat check for Bielema to consider it. He's signed for a reported $1.4 million this season, which is only slightly less ($100,000) than PSU is paying a guy that's been there for 46 years. I could see Bielema leaving at some point in the future, but it would have to be for an elite program such as Texas, Oklahoma, Miami, etc. Right now, that's not happening.