6 - Friday, March 30, 2012
BEILEIN
From Page 5
Beilein, young and full of ambi-
tion, took the job at Canisius, Tom
Niland's alma mater, in 1992. He
met a familiar face at his new gig
- Dave Niland was an assistant at
Canisius under the previous staff.
Beilein, without a staff to bring,
retained the assistants already
there.
Familiarity aside, it was a big
career move to Division I. But he
had no doubt that he was taking
his offense with him.
The issue was that the Golden
Griffins didn't have a roster like
LeMoyne, so adjustments were
necessary. But that was a good
thing. Canisius wouldn't be con-
fused with a high-major squad,
but the team was much more ath-
letic than the Dolphins, especially
atthe "five" spot.
Beilein went from Len Rauch
to a Jamaican-born Canadian
center named Michael Meeks. In
doing so, he went from a skilled,
unathletic big man to one with a
lot more bounce in his step. That
allowed Beilein to get Meeks more.
involved with movement, which
in turn allowed the guards to be
more active and saw them do more
backscreening.
It's been the same story at every
stop, Beilein tweaking his offense
to fit the players that he has. It
reveals another hallmark of his
system: flexibility.
"We're not always right, but we
keep changing to find the answer,"
Beilein said. "We're never shtis-
fied. Never."
When Beilein moved on to
Richmond in 1997, he found him-
self with a big man named Eric
Poole. Unlike Rauch and Meeks,
Poole wasn't particularly athletic.
or skilled, but he could rebound.
Once again, Beilein adapted to his
talent.

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

When he left for West Virginia
in 2002, there was an incoming
recruit named Kevin Pittsnogle
who had committed to ex-coach
Gale Catlett. An unknown at
that point, he would later take
the country by storm in the 2005
NCAA Tournament. After all, a
6-foot-11 sharpshooter is an odd-
ity - but in Beilein's ever-adapting
offense, Pittsnogle found his per-
fect niche.
For Beilein, it's all about.the
details. So even when he reached
West Virginia and the big-time Big
East, the Mountaineers constant-
ly practiced fundamentals. The
team would spend 30 or so min-
utes every practice just on shoot-
ing, and would devote about 20 to
walking through the offense.
Beilein got to Michigan in 2007,
finallyreachingthe pinnacle of his
career. By then, installing his sys-
tem was old hat. The Wolverines
were excited when they found out
Beilein would be their coach. Pret-
ty much all they knew was that
his offense meant a lot of 3-point-
ers, which was good news for the
team's many shooters.
So imagine Michigan's shock
when, during Beilein's very first
practice, the team began with
passing, layup lines and catch-
ing the ball with two feet. It was
a flashback to youth basketball in
that way.
Some Wolverines struggled
with picking up the offense at
first, such as then-walk-on Dave
Merritt, while. others thrived in
it immediately. That's the pat-
tern everywhere Beilein's been.
Despite its reputation, the offense
isn't overly complex, but every
player is different when it comes
to picking it up.
Most players on the current
Michigan team have adjusted
well, particularly point guard
Trey Burke, who amazed Beilein
with his ability to do so this sea-
son

Elsewhere, Beilein's son Pat-
rick played for him at West Vir-
ginia and was a natural in the
system, havingstudied it when his
father was coaching at Richmond.
Gansey, meanwhile, played well
immediately, but it was such an
involved offense that even in the
2006 Sweet 16 against Texas inhis
last-ever college game, Beilein had
to lay into him at halftime for not
executing properly.
The biggest alteration in the
offense to date has been the preva-
lence of the high ball screen at
Michigan. After three years of
running the system in more typi-
cal fashion in Ann Arbor, Beilein
began employing the ball screen
with Darius Morris in 2010-11
and ramped it up even more with
Burke this year.
Beilein's added it because he
can - Morris and Burke are ath-
letic enough to be able to make
plays off the pick-and-roll. It
removes the need to make mul-
tiple passes around the floor, like
LeMoyne was forced to do. Lever-
age comes much more easily.
It's a credit to Beilein that he can
integrate something so different
to his offense almost seamlessly.
But he's used to fine-tuning, hav-
ing done so at four other schools
already.
"He has done a remarkable job
at every level of getting guys to
play together," said Dave Niland,
now the head coach at Division-III
Penn State-Behrendt. "He really
understands the team game. ... It's
amazing to me how he's been able
to get guys to buy in and share the
ball."
It was a clinic.
Dec. 22, 2005 will forever live
in the minds of that West Virginia
team as the day when its offense
could absolutely not be stopped.
The Mountaineers had charged

their way to the Elite 8 the year
before, but they were unranked
and a 7.5-point underdog going
into the nightcap of the All-Col-
lege Classic against No. 8 Okla-
homa. The Sooners, coached by
Kelvin Sampson and led by Taj
Gray, Kevin Bookout and Terrell
Everett, were essentially playing
at home with the game in Okla-
homa City.
"We had no business winning
thatgame," Patrick Beilein said.
But like it had done so many
times before - like it was built to
do - the offense made up for West
Virginia's athleticism deficiency,
and then some. The Sooners tried
to take away the Mountaineers'
3-point shooting by pressuring
them.
Beilein, Gansey, Pittsnogle
and company responded by back-
cutting Oklahoma to death, and
with ease. It was almost comical
how many times 'a simple back-
screen would result in an uncon-
tested layup for West Virginia.
The Mountaineers were running
circles around the Sooners.
"They were just dumbfounded,"
Gansey said.
West Virginia won, 92-68, and
went 32-for-48 from the field. At
66.7 percent, it stands as the sec-
ond-best shooting performance in
program history.
If this was the offense at its
best, the question becomes, how
do you stop it?
The easy answer is to hope
Beilein's team isn't making its
3-pointers. Critics say that the
offense is too reliant on the out-
side shot, that if the system lives
by the three and dies by the three,
it too often dies.
Players vouch for the system
by pointing out that 3-pointers
allowed them to spring plenty of
upsets, and if they were missing in
a game, they at least weren't turn-
ing the ball over, allowing them to
stay in it even if open shots weren't

falling.
Aside from that, the key to
slowing down the Beilein offense
seems to be disruption. Get the
team out of its rhythm. Don't allow
it to get comfortable. Overwhelm
the traditional Beilein player with
your superior length and athleti-
cism.
"You want to be extremely
physical and you want to try to
crash the glass, limit Michigan's
opportunities to score," Merritt
said. "If I was an opposing coach,
I would also try to take away the
sideline passes."
Gansey always struggled
against Pittsburgh because
guards like Ronald Ramon and
Carl Krauser weren't afraid to get
physical. Theybumped him off his
cutting paths, and even a slight
alteration like that is enough to
confound an offense that rests so
much on precision.
But stopping the offense is
easier said than done because it
is extremely hard to prepare for.
Michigan assistant coach LaVall
Jordan knows that firsthand,
having spent three years trying
to prep for the system while on
Iowa's staff.
"They're really tough to scout
because a lot of their plays are
based on what you do defensively,
not necessarily set plays," said for-
mer Maryland coach Gary Wil-
liams, whose team played against
Beilein in the 2009 ACC/Big Ten
Challenge. "They take good shots
and they're not afraid to make the
extra pass to get a guy the best
shot."
John Beilein's mind is always
working. You get the sense that
there hasn't been a moment in
which he wasn't thinking about
basketball since the day he was
hired as coach at Newfane High
School in western New York in
1975.
with a roster full of players with
bounce, so long as they still have
the necessary skill and smarts.
The cavalry begins to arrive
next season with forward Mitch
McGary and wings Glenn Rob-
inson III and Nick Stauskas. Add
that trio to Hardaway Jr. and Mor-
gan, and as long as Burke stays in
school, Beilein will have the kind
of athletic riches he's wanted for
so long. The ability to recruit such
players is one of the chief reasons
he came to Michigan.
"I can only imagine (how the
offense will perform)," Patrick
said. "I think it will take off. He's
dreamed about having these type
of athletes within the offense. ... I
think he's very excited"
McGary's arrival is especially
intriguingsince Morgan is already
entrenched at center. Can the two
play together? It would go against

the way the offense has operated
before, but if history holds true,
Beilein will find a way to make
it work. Len Rauch has a son
named Jack, a freshman in high
school who Len hopes will have
all the same basketball opportu-
nities he once did. Like Beilein,
Rauch now has the mind of a
coach. He helps out the varsity at
his alma mater, Bishop Ludden,
in Syracuse, and coaches a sum-
mer AAU team.
He watches Michigan games
with Jack, and for Len, it's like
watching himself back at LeM-
oyne. The system has changed, *
but much of it is the same, and
Len knows his old coach's offense
so well that he'll tell Jack what's
about to happen before it does.
Len knows it because'he lived it.
Every former playerreached for
this story watches their old coach
and his new team now, able to rat-
tle off the strengths of each player.
They say "we" or "us" when talk-
ing about Michigan, before cor-
recting themselves.
But you can't blame them. The
faces and the uniforms are differ-
ent, but the offense is so familiar.
"I think (Beilein .is) underap-
preciated to some degree, but the
people that are basketball minds
in the game out there today rec-
ognize his ability," Rauch said.
"(When Beilein was hired at Mich-
igan), I said to one of my friends
and fellow players, 'it's going to be
a matter of time before they're in
contention for the Big Ten.'
"It won't be that long. He just
needed to getrsome of those kids in
that system."
Five seasons in, Beilein has
proven Rauch a prophet. With
more and more talent knocking on
the door, Beilein finally has what
he dreamed of as he navigated
those bitter Syracuse winters
behind the wheel of the LeMoyne
team van.
The offense has been modified
plenty already, with Beilein tun-
ing it at every possible moment. It
is impossible to know what it may
look like in the future, but you can
count on a few new wrinkles -
they're constantly being added.
Beilein's offense hums along at
Michigan now. More tweaks may
be made; more players may thrive;
more championships maybe won.
But the foundation was set 25
years ago by a young coach search-
ing for a way to get ahead in Divi-
sion-I.
They will not know this, but if
the Wolverines ascend any podi-
ums in the future, they will be
standing on the shoulders of Len
Rauch and Scott Hicks, of Dave
Niland and Russell Barnes, of
Michael Meeks and Eric Poole,
of Kevin Pittsnogle and Patrick
Beilein and Mike Gansey.
They will not know this, but
John Beilein will.

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