John Beilein is 673-402 in 35 seasons as a college head coach
1979-82 Erie Community College 75-43
1982-83 Nazareth College 20-6
1984-92 Le Moyne College 163-94
1993-97 Canisius College 89-62
1998-2002 Richmond 100-53
2003-07 West Virginia 104-60
2008-present Michigan 122-84
Michigan’s John Beilein is more college professor than college coach. He’s got the thinning hair, a serious look, and comes across, yeah, a little boring on the dais.
“I probably sound so boring about getting a team ready,” he said during Sunday’s press conference in advance of the national championship game – and didn’t get any arguments. “This will be a normal prep.”
In this age of slick college basketball coaches with coifed, made-for-TV hair, Beilein is a throwback. His wife Kathleen still packs him lunches to take to work.
The man has coached for 35 years at just about every level possible - high school, junior college, NAIA, and Division II. He now sits atop Division I basketball, with a shot against top-seeded Louisville for his first ever national title.
He’s been a head coach throughout his career, coming up with his own ideas and making his own way. He’s nobody’s protégé. Beilein’s idea of a coaching tree? The second-to-youngest of nine children growing up in upstate New York had two uncles who were basketball coaches.
“All I wanted to do was be a coach,” said Beilein, who is from Burt, NY. “My uncles all had keys to the gym and my dad worked in a paper mill. I just wanted the keys to the gym.”
His uncle Tom Niland, hired him to coach at Le Moyne College, a Division II school in Syracuse where he had once coached. At his suggestion, Beilein went to a two-guard front to improve his team’s spacing and try to make up for its lack of athleticism.
Beilein still uses a modified two-guard front, just with ball screens and better athletes. With Wooden-award winner Trey Burke as his point guard, Michigan is running the most efficient offense in the nation. The Wolverines turns it over only 9.4 times per game, tops nationally.
Now one of the coaches whose videos Beilein used to watch to glean ideas from is admiring his work. And he’s doing it while preparing to face him in the national championship Monday night.
“A lot of teams when you watch them, you get nervous a little bit because they do so many things well,” Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. “You have fun watching Michigan play basketball. The way they pass, cut, shoot. It’s a John Beilein team. As a coach going to play them, I really enjoy watching them on film.”
Whether he was coaching at Erie Community College, Canisius, or Michigan, Beilein still breaks down his own film. And not just of games – of practices. “That is unique to any coach that I have ever worked for,” Michigan assistant coach Jeff Meyer said.
Beilein holds two meetings with his assistants each day, totaling nearly two hours, just to prepare for practice. And he regularly devotes time in practice to work on passing - using backspin so the man catching is in better position to shoot – as well as pivots and cuts.
That attention to detail doesn’t stop now, even on the cusp of the national championship game.
Beilein had freshman forward Mitch McGary spend 20 minutes after practice on Friday working on pivots in the high post. He put it to good use in Saturday’s semifinal win over Syracuse on a key 15-foot jump shot four minutes into the first half. That play helped the Wolverines establish that they had answers for Syracuse’s 2-3 zone.
Watching film of it in a session with the team Sunday morning, Beilein appreciated the play for something else.
“Coach Beilein says nothing about the shot at all,” said Michigan forward Jon Horford, brother of Atlanta Hawks Al Horford. “He turns and he says ‘Did you see the way Mitch was pivoting? Did you see how his elbows were up and you could see under his arm pits?’ It’s like ‘Dude just made a big-time jump shot.’ Coach Beilein is worried about the pivots and Mitch having his elbow at the right height.”
His players laugh. But there’s no denying the progress McGary has made throughout this NCAA tournament, and the impact Beilein’s teaching has had. McGary came into the tournament averaging only 6.2 points and 5.5 rebounds. In the past five games, he has averaged 16 points and 11.6 rebounds. He is a big reason why Michigan has a shot at its first national title since 1989.
Beilein was a coach at Le Moyne during that 1989 Final Four in Seattle, when Rumeal Robinson made his two free throws to seal Michigan’s win over Seton Hall with three seconds left. Beilein had to leave before the championship game though because his wife was pregnant with their fourth child.
He remembers how he and Kathleen heard Michigan’s band play its fight song that weekend and how much they loved it.
Before Michigan took the floor to that fight song for its semifinal game Saturday night in front of 75,000 fans at the Georgia Dome, Beilein gave his team the speech about the baskets being 10 feet tall and how the court is still 94 feet long. But once he got out there, he couldn’t help but take a look around.
“I gave in, took a little peek,” Beilein said. “I might have said something I shouldn’t say on TV at that time, like Holy Cow. It was amazing to see that.”
He fought the urge to let his players see it on his face.
“I wanted them to see a poised coach that saw this as only another game,” he said.
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