They were on the same team for exactly 54 games.

Leonard Hamilton was the head coach of the 2000-'01 Washington Wizards, and Juwan Howard was the star forward, averaging 18.2 points and 7 rebounds per game.

In February of that year, Howard was traded to the Dallas Mavericks. A few months later, Hamilton was fired.

Now here they are, 20 years later, getting ready to coach against each other in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament (Sunday at 5 p.m. ET, CBS).

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"Juwan was the ultimate professional," Hamilton said this week, when asked about his one year coaching the longtime NBA veteran. "He was always dressed appropriately, he handled every little detail with the utmost focus and professionalism. He dressed like a professional, even down to what he ate, how much rest he got, how focused he was in the locker room, his unselfish spirit. He had all those high-character qualities that you love to see in a basketball player.

"That same humbleness that he operated with, the professionalism and attention to detail, is I think what's really making Michigan an outstanding team."

Howard wound up playing 19 years in the NBA and then was an assistant coach for the Miami Heat for another six. When John Beilein announced his resignation from Michigan to go coach the Cleveland Cavaliers after the 2019 season, the Wolverines turned to Howard, a former star forward for the program and a member of the famed "Fab Five" recruiting class of the early 1990s.

Soon after, Howard made the trek to Tallahassee to visit with his former coach.

He wanted to pick Hamilton's brain about what it takes to run a successful program at the college level, what the differences were between this level and the NBA, and how to build a winning culture.

"I love the man," Howard said of Hamilton. "It's special just to see what Coach Ham has done for the program, for these young men that he's been empowering for many, many years. Truly, I try to take something that I've learned from him and try to implement into myself because I'm a young coach that's striving to impact others, to be inspiring to other coaches, no matter what race it is.

"It's beautiful to see the impact Coach Ham has had on me and others. He's a great example. He's that way because he's so pure. He remembers the times when other coaches helped teach him along the way. He doesn't mind serving and giving. That's why he's so successful, and I respect that."

Howard certainly appears to be on the fast track to coaching stardom.

Last year, in his first season as a head coach at any level, Howard led the Wolverines to a 19-12 record. Not terrible. But not great either. Especially at a place like Michigan, which is used to winning at a high level.

Well, Year 2 has been a huge leap.

The Wolverines are 22-4 overall, won the Big Ten regular-season title and are the No. 1 seed in the NCAA East Region. Like Florida State, they don't depend on just one or two guys to score.

Case in point: They're in the Sweet 16 despite their best overall player, Isaiah Livers, missing the first two games with a foot injury.

Howard also made a bit of national news earlier this month when he got into an altercation with Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon during their game in the Big Ten Tournament. Howard had to be restrained by coaches during a timeout and was subsequently ejected.

There's zero chance a scene like that happens on Sunday. But FSU associate head coach Stan Jones, who was an assistant on that 2000-'01 Washington Wizards team, couldn't help but think back to a moment like that from 20 years earlier.

"I texted him after the Maryland thing," Jones said. "I put some emojis up there. And I said, 'You going after Coach Turgeon reminded me of you going after Felipe Lopez in the locker room in San Antonio back in the day.'

"He texted me back and said, 'You've got a good memory, Coach.'"

In that same text exchange Jones told Howard how proud he is of him for what he's done in such a short time at Michigan.

"He was very gracious on responding to that text," Jones said.

The longtime FSU assistant is actually the one who reached out to Howard when he got the job at Michigan, telling him that if he wanted to learn how to be a CEO -- to run a college program and to run it the right way -- there was no better person he could learn from than Hamilton.

Jones said he had told a number of young coaches that in the past, but very few actually took him up on the offer. He said Howard booked a flight almost immediately and came to Tallahassee in August 2019 to watch Hamilton and his staff work.

"He hung in our offices, and he would sit and ask questions and watch what we were doing," Jones said. "Our team wasn't even in town, so he wasn't watching practice. We weren't on a grease board doing Xs and Os. He was just looking at, How do you talk to administrators? How do you plan with your staff? How you do your scheduling?"

Jones said it was truly remarkable how Howard handled himself.

The 19-year NBA veteran, who made more than $150 million in his playing career and had been part of NBA championship teams and the most famous freshman class in college basketball history, was full of humility. He just tried to absorb as much as possible from a head coach and a staff who had proven to be one of the best in the country.

"You see so many guys come into that with such big egos that they've made a lot of mistakes," Jones said. "Because they think they know it all and they have never been in the middle of it.

"To be that humble, to want to learn and make the transition on how to run a program at the college level ... I tip my hat to him."

Hamilton sounds genuinely proud of what Howard has done at Michigan as well.

He said he was always roots for his former player -- except for this Sunday, of course. And Hamilton said he considers Howard a true friend. Not a protege or a pupil. But a real friend.

"He's one of my favorite people in the business because I know what he stands for as a person," Hamilton said. "He represents all the qualities that I think the people at Michigan can be very proud of. I think they need to sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. Because he's going to take them to maybe even higher than some of those places that Michigan basketball has been in the past."

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