8 — Friday, April 17, 2015
Sports
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By JAKE LOURIM

Managing Sports Editor

John Beilein gathered his team in his suite at 

the Crowne Plaza in Albany, New York, and did 
something you don’t normally think about John 
Beilein doing. It was March 1, 1996, the day before his 
Canisius team opened the Metro-Atlantic Athletic 
Conference Tournament against Loyola (Maryland).

“And he told us, ‘We’re going to win,’ ” recalled 

Mike MacDonald, then an assistant coach at 
Canisius. “He told them to believe, and they 
believed in him.”

But no one else did.
As a No. 5 seed that hadn’t made the NCAA 

Tournament since 1957, Canisius was already a long 
shot.

Then, the Monday before the tournament, 

MacDonald was on a recruiting trip when he called 
back to Buffalo to see how things were going. He 
got even worse news: the team’s star player, Darrell 
Barley, had broken his thumb. He would miss the 
conference tournament, and the Golden Griffins had 
just become an even bigger underdog.

Still, Beilein thought they were going to win.
“We go into the tournament,” MacDonald said, 

“and it was just like, ‘Alright. This is what we got.’ ”

What they had was an unproven program with 

unproven players and an unproven coach in Beilein 
who still had never made the NCAA Tournament.

“Everybody was really down,” MacDonald 

said. “John was pretty down too. I remember 
(another assistant) Phil Seymore talking to him, 
saying, ‘Hey, we gotta rally these guys. We gotta 
get them going.’ ”

But history hadn’t been on their side. Two years 

earlier, Beilein’s Canisius team had gone into the 
conference tournament on a 15-game win streak 
but lost in the semifinals to Loyola, 88-70. The next 
year, his team won at Cincinnati and Charlotte in 
the regular season and made the NIT semifinals, but 
again lost in the conference tournament semifinals 
against Saint Peter’s, 60-56.

Still, Beilein thought he would win. He was 

determined not to let history repeat itself.

“We knew the window was getting closed, 

and we had to win,” MacDonald said by phone 
earlier this month. “And we did. It was amazing. 
Unbelievable coaching job. Classic case of taking 
the guys and putting them in position to play to 
their strengths and letting the guys go, letting 
them do their thing.”

The day after the team meeting, Canisius topped 

Loyola, 74-67, in the first round of the MAAC 
Tournament. The next day, the Golden Griffins upset 
top-seeded Iona in the final seconds, 63-62, to reach 
their first conference final. Finally, they booked 
Beilein’s first trip to the NCAA Tournament with a 
52-46 win over Fairfield in the final.

Beilein’s March magic was born.
He has since recaptured that magic at Richmond, 

at West Virginia and, most recently, at Michigan. 
But if he hadn’t made that run through the MAAC 
Tournament in 1996, there’s no telling what would 
have happened. The senior class that included Barley 
would have departed without making the NCAA 
Tournament, and Beilein might never have made it 
to Ann Arbor.

Through the years, the players have changed, 

the opponents have changed and the scheme has 
changed. But one thing remains constant: John 
Beilein.

Making the NCAA Tournament at Canisius in 

1996 started a run of success that allowed him to 
go to Richmond in 1997, West Virginia in 2002 and 
finally Michigan in 2007. But after years of changing 
locations, Beilein is the same coach.

“We start off every single year reviewing how 

to pass and catch a ball,” said Sean Lonergan, a 
sophomore on this year’s team. “Catch on two feet. 
Pass with the seams so shooters can shoot. Everybody 
gets one-on-one instruction with their jump shot to 
make sure that you’re lifting up.”

Yes, at Michigan, Beilein starts the season by 

teaching his players to catch the ball on two feet.

It was no different 19 years ago. Barley remembers 

doing the same drill for 40 minutes. Ask that team’s 
point guard, Javone Moore, what he recalls from 
Beilein’s practices, and his answer is eerily similar to 
Lonergan’s almost two decades later.

“I remember every single thing he’s ever taught 

us,” Moore said. “When you’re passing the ball, 
pass with two hands. When you’re catching the 
ball, give the guy a target with your outside hand 
so the guy can’t steal it.”

When Barley and Moore get a chance to watch 

Michigan practice today, they still recognize the 
drills they did almost two decades ago. The same 
process earned Beilein his first NCAA Tournament 
at Canisius in 1996, and it has brought his Michigan 
program to the highest level of college basketball 
today.

He has his way. And he won’t give in to outsiders 

who want him to deviate from it.

“You’ve got to have your beliefs as a coach,” 

MacDonald said. “He has a reason for it, and he 
does it. They’ve worked over time. He’s won a hell 
of a lot more than he’s lost.”

That’s not to say Beilein is stubborn. He adjusts 

his scheme and tweaks concepts to fit his players. 
Barley doesn’t ever remember playing zone defense 
in 1996, while Beilein’s teams have used it on and 
off since then.

But the basic tenets, both broad and subtle, 

remain constant. He won’t leave a player in with 
two fouls in the first half. He won’t foul up by three 
points in the closing seconds of the game. And 
he won’t rush a team’s development, sacrificing 
future wins for an extra one this year, no matter 
how much people want him to.

That would mean abandoning the process that 

has gotten him here.

Two weeks before Canisius began the MAAC 

Tournament in 1996, the Golden Griffins faced 
Loyola, their eventual first-round opponent. That 
night, they lost 64-63 after senior Mickey Frazier 
missed a shot in the final seconds.

That kicked off a three-game losing streak to 

end the regular season that sent Canisius down to 
the middle of the conference.

“Mickey was a kid who at the beginning of the 

season had said he wanted to sit on top of the rim,” 
MacDonald recalled.

Two years earlier, it had been a Loyola player 

who did it after winning the conference title. Now, 
Frazier wanted it to be his turn.

The following week, Canisius played at Manhattan 

to cap the regular season. Frazier had been struggling 
down the stretch. Beilein was determined to reverse 
that, no matter how crazy his methods were.

Early in the first half, Frazier hit a 3-pointer. Then, 

Beilein did the unthinkable: He sat a senior for the 
rest of the night so he would go into the conference 
tournament on a high note.

A week after that, Frazier was sitting on top of 

the rim as a champion.

Beilein’s confidence in his players has never 

wavered through the years. He has used it to bring 
the best out of players from Canisius to Richmond 
to West Virginia to Ann Arbor.

This season, days after Michigan upset Ohio 

State to snap a tough five-game losing streak, 
Beilein maintained that confidence despite the 
circumstances.

“You recruit high-character kids, and they get 

better and they don’t point fingers at each other — 
we’ve been united through the whole thing,” Beilein 
said on Feb. 27. “When you see other teams, locker 
rooms get torn apart mentally because of stretches 
like that. We’ve had none of that.

“They understand we’re not good enough yet — 

we’ve got to keep working, we’ve got to keep working. 
Just reinforce that idea: There may be great players 
out there, but you can still accomplish something 
and keep the foundation going if you have the right 
people on the bus.”

Moore couldn’t recall having any off-the-court 

issues on the 1996 team. Yes, that team was on a 
losing streak. Yes, its star player was injured. Yes, it 
had struggled in the conference tournament in the 
past. But at the end of that weekend, Mickey Frazier 
was the one sitting on top of the rim.

After 18 years, Javone Moore 

can still hear John Beilein’s voice 
in his head.

“ ‘You can never get in trouble 

for being early,’ ” Moore recalled 
his old coach saying. “The things 
he teaches you basketball-wise 
are things you carry over into life. 
Little things like being on time 
and valuing someone’s time are 
very important.”

There was another part of 

Barley’s career that he never forgot: 
He started his last three years and 
parts of his freshman year, injuries 
and all, just as Beilein promised he 
eventually would.

“One thing about (Beilein),” 

Barley said, “he was from the old 
school. If he tells you something, 
he’s going to do it. And that’s what I 
always respected about him.”

For Beilein’s way to work, he 

needs players who will buy in — 
guys who will show up on time, 
who will put up with passing 
and catching on the first day of 
practice, who will appreciate the 
process of getting better.

He needs the right people on 

the bus.

“You can see it in each player 

that he recruits that they have 
similar things in common,” Moore 
said. “They’ve probably all been 
winners at their high school. He 
recruits winners. They’re good 
in the classroom. They’re all 
coachable. They can shoot. He 
knows what each individual needs 
by the time he steps on campus, 
and when he gets there, that’s what 
they’re going to be working on.”

Throughout his career, Beilein 

has been well-known for winning 
with 
unheralded 
recruits. 
But 

MacDonald contests the notion 
that Beilein “does more with less.” 
Rather, he does more with the right 
guys. If those guys are top recruits 
and Mr. Basketball finalists, that’s 
great. If not, he’ll take them anyway.

“He’ll see something in a guy 

that others may not see,” Barley 
said. “I don’t think he falls into 
that ‘I need to have this five-star 
guy.’ I think he would rather have 
a four-star or a three-star and 
mold them into an NBA player or 
mold them into an All-American.”

Beilein enjoys not only the 

winning that comes with having 
great teams, but also the process of 
forming them. He enjoys molding 
players like Trey Burke and Nik 
Stauskas at Michigan just as much 
as he did Darrell Barley at Canisius.

“He knows college basketball 

isn’t a one-year thing,” Lonergan 
said. 
“You 
always 
have 
the 

opportunity to grow, and there’s 
always going to be teams that 
are older and more experienced, 
stronger, faster, whatever it may 
be.”

Beilein 
may 
think 
college 

basketball isn’t a one-year thing, 
but many of his counterparts think 
it is. He doesn’t have 7-foot first-
round NBA draft picks. He’s playing 

a different game 
than 
everyone 

else at the elite level. 
In many ways, he’s 
playing 
the 
same 

game he played at 
Canisius in 1996.

Nineteen 
years, 

three stops and hundreds of wins 
later, at a higher level with more 
pressure and better competition, 
Beilein faced an even tougher 
situation in 2014-15. More than half 
of his team missed at least one game 
with an injury or illness.

The Wolverines — none of 

whom had ever missed the NCAA 
Tournament — suffered loss after 
devastating loss in January and 
February, yet they never hung their 
heads, a product of their even-keel 
coach.

“The biggest thing is the coaches 

just sticking with everybody and 
realizing it might not come as 
easy as it has in the past, because 
the older guys have just had more 
opportunities and more reps at it,” 
Lonergan said. “We’re just going to 
keep working and get there.”

But 19-year-olds can’t always 

have the same perspective as 
a 62-year-old veteran who had 
to lose twice in the MAAC 
semifinals before making his first 
NCAA Tournament.

Lonergan is asked if Beilein’s 

mindset trickles down to his team. 
He pauses. He’s honest.

“Yeah, it’s tough,” Lonergan said. 

“Situations like that are tough. … It’s 
really easy to put your head down 
and be like, ‘We’re still not there.’ 
But those little things are what you 
really have to realize the team’s 
going to grow on.”

The team did grow, to the 

point where it lost to Wisconsin 
in overtime on Jan. 24, then at 
Michigan State in overtime a 
week later, then at Indiana at the 
buzzer a week later, then at Illinois 
in overtime four days later. Four 
essentially one-possession losses 
in three weeks, yet the Wolverines 
kept coming back.

Reflecting 
on 
this 
year, 

MacDonald recalled a conversation 
he had with Beilein in the middle of 
this season.

“Sometimes you do your best 

coaching in years like this,” Beilein 
told MacDonald. “You go to the 
National 
Championship 
Game, 

everyone thinks you’re a great 
coach, but sometimes you’re letting 
Trey Burke do his thing and you’re 
not coaching as much.

“It’s years like this when you 

really earn it.”

Beilein had gone through the 

same process with this team as he 
has with any other. He started the 
season with tireless attention to the 
fundamentals, prepared for each 
game with exhaustive scouting 
reports and kept his team improving 
all season.

In the last few weeks of the 

regular season, freshman guard 
Aubrey Dawkins, one of the best 
athletes on the team, had thrown 
down thunderous dunks but also 
missed some. Beilein had talked 
with him about going up for an easy 
layup rather than a highlight-reel 
slam, the fundamental play rather 
than the flashy one.

Finally, almost eight minutes into 

Michigan’s Big Ten Tournament 
opener, Dawkins stole the ball and 
sprinted down the court with an 
easy look at the basket.

That time, he drove to the hoop 

for a layup — and it rimmed out.

But then Beilein did what no 

coach in college basketball ever does 
after a missed layup: He turned 
around to his bench and yelled, 
“That’s good, though!”

He was still yelling “Great job, 

Aubrey!” when the Wolverines 
came back on defense.

The comment seemed odd: The 

way Michigan’s season went, that 
miss easily could have been the 
difference between moving on to 
play No. 1 seed Wisconsin and going 
home for the offseason.

But Beilein saw positives, even if 

he didn’t see results.

A day later, Dawkins — sitting 

at his locker, head down, after a 
season-ending loss to the Badgers — 
took a minute to reflect on the play.

“He wants us to grow and keep 

being aggressive,” he said. “That’s 
all we gotta do. You can’t make 
every shot. That’s just basketball. 
But the fact that we’re making the 
play still, it shows our ability to see 
the game and just grow.”

When 
told 
about 
Beilein’s 

reaction 
to 
a 
missed 
layup, 

MacDonald saw the same coach he 
worked for in 1996.

“That’s what a good teacher 

does,” he said. “You’re a little kid 
and you’re learning how to ride a 
bike, and you pedal once or twice 
and then you fall over. What did 
your mom and dad do? They didn’t 
yell at you. (They said), ‘Good job, 
good try, you’re learning.’ ”

“It’s the same thing. (Beilein) is 

a persistent teacher. He really will 
zero in on what guys need to do.”

Before he hangs up the phone, 

MacDonald has one more story to 
tell about 1996.

When Canisius finally won the 

MAAC Tournament, cut down 
the net and reached the NCAA 
Tournament, its first matchup was 
No. 3 seed Utah. The Utes were 
coached by the late Rick Majerus 
and led on the floor by Keith Van 
Horn, Michael Doleac and Andre 
Miller, all future NBA players. 
There were some challenges that 
Beilein’s four-year plan couldn’t 
yet meet.

“We 
got 
freaking 
drilled,” 

MacDonald said. “They killed us.”

The game was, however, at the 

same time as a 14 vs. 3 upset that 
did end up happening — Princeton 
vs. UCLA. Canisius’ magic ran out, 
so the nation stopped watching.

“The 
entire 
country, 
even 

Buffalo, got switched off our game, 
we were getting killed by so much, 
and (they) went to the Princeton-
UCLA game,” MacDonald said.

“The bubble pops sometimes.”
That happened again this year. 

Beilein went through the same 
process that has brought him 
to the top of college basketball 
before. He just ran out of magic.

But as Lonergan said, Beilein 

knows college basketball isn’t a 
one-year thing. He’ll get his guys 
back in the gym again next year, 
passing, dribbling and catching 
just like always. He’ll give his team 
a chance in the end.

That will be enough. It always 

has been.

John Beilein has found success at Michigan with the same methods he has used throughout his entire coaching career.

still the same

A

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JAMES COLLER/Daily

ALLISON FARRAND/Daily
COURTESY OF THE CANISIUS GRIFFIN

ALLISON FARRAND/Daily

COURTESY OF THE 
CANISIUS GRIFFIN

