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