Anything for another day
 
Former managing sports 
editor Kevin Santo 
reminisces about his time 
with The Daily.

 » Page 2B

One of the girls

Former managing sports 
editor Betelhem Ashame 
reflects on the friendships 
she found at The Daily.
» Page 2B

SPORTSMONDAY

The Michigan Daily | michigandaily.com | April 16, 2018
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Design by Jack Silberman
Katelyn Mulcahy / Daily

Just months after Michigan fired Tommy 

Amaker and hired some coach from West Virginia 

in April of 2007, the men’s basketball team opened 

offseason workouts. It was a directionless program, 

desperate for national relevance and one — just one 

— NCAA Tournament berth.

It was day one of the John Beilein era. And, little 

did anyone know, day one of perhaps the greatest 

sustained period of success in Michigan basketball 

history.

At the beginning of the workout, then-assistant 

coach John Mahoney barged into the weight room, 

hooting and hollering.

“We’re trying to win a motherf-ing national 

championship,” he yelped. “And that’s why we’re 

here.”

Guard Jevohn Shepherd gave his teammate 

Anthony Wright a glance. Wright still recalls what 

Shepherd said next.

“Man, this guy has to calm down.”

***

John Beilein was plenty calm.

He looked down, then at the clock, then back 

up. He took five steps to his right and shook Jay 

Wright’s hand with a smile, walking off the court 

40 minutes short of immortality once again.

For the second time in six seasons, he and his 

team had fallen one game shy of fulfilling that brash 

weight room proclamation 10 years ago. Maybe it’ll 

happen one day. Maybe not.

But there’s a pit that still lingers in fans’ stomachs, 

a laundry list of “what-ifs” that will live forever. It’s 

an emotion bred from a program-wide attitude 

change, cultivated through day-to-day, incremental 

improvement. There’s one guy responsible for that. 

That same coach from West Virginia has now 

qualified for the NCAA Tournament seven times 

in the last eight seasons, made the Elite Eight three 

times and the championship game twice. His 

resume vaults him alongside the premier coaches 

in college basketball; he directs a program that is 

now a model of consistency.

It’s not a change that happened overnight or 

without its fair share of trial and error.

But to fully understand the Beilein-led 

transformation, take a dive into a desperate 

timeout, a huddle at the Big Ten Tournament in 

2009. 

A glimpse into a fledgling program learning 

what it really takes to win.

***

He had to call timeout to get something out in 

the open. After all, a potential NCAA Tournament 

bid for the first time in 10 years — and the entire 

trajectory of the program — hung in the balance.

It was the second round of the Big Ten 

Tournament, and Beilein’s squad trailed Illinois by 

20 late in the second half. Beilein and his team had 

all but conceded hope of a comeback.

If this team — sitting at .500 in conference play 

— came short of the NCAA Tournament, murmurs 

asking for his job would only amplify. It would’ve 

been 11 years and counting without a tournament 

bid, three under Beilein. In a candid moment, he 

warned his team of what a blowout loss might 

mean. For the team. For the school. For him.

“Beilein called timeout just to say, ‘Look the 

committee is watching this game,’” Wright, a 

Michigan forward from 2006-10, recalled. “‘If we 

get blown out this could hurt us.’ He literally said 

that during the timeout. He said, ‘We’ve got to get 

this as close as possible.’ It wasn’t ‘win the game,’ 

just ‘keep it close.’”

The timeout was a blunt reality, a mark of 

tempered expectations. That coveted leap to 

prominence doesn’t come without putting one foot 

in front of the other, taking one small step after 

another.

Michigan trimmed its deficit, losing by a 

respectable 10 points. It would later be selected as 

a 10-seed in the NCAA Tournament, where it fell 

to the Blake Griffin-led Oklahoma Sooners in the 

second round. Still, there’s no way to see the 2008-

2009 season as anything other than an unmitigated 

success.

In the first season free of scholarship limitations 

due to the Ed Martin payment scandal, the 

Wolverines made the NCAA Tournament for the 

first time in 11 seasons.

Every tidal wave begins with a ripple. That 

rag-tag group in 2009 laid the foundation for what 

came next.

***

“Culture shift” is a phrase that gets thrown 

around in sports, when change wants to be 

sugarcoated with a smile. It can often be 

meaningless and exaggerated in its tone. There are 

countless examples of failed attempts at culture 

shifts in sports because culture, as it turns out, is 

hard to shift.

This isn’t one of those stories.

As with everything John Beilein does, this 

change took time, and it was a process. But the 

results have been on display for nine years now. 

The national runner-up Wolverines are a shining 

beacon of a college basketball program, and it’s easy 

to forget it hasn’t always been that way.

“When he first started recruiting me in 2007, 

the program … was obviously not in a good place,” 

said center Jordan Morgan, a member of the 

Wolverines from 2011-14. “At that point in my life, 

Michigan going to Final Fours and winning Big Ten 

Championships, it was a little bit hard to fathom at 

the time just because of where Michigan was at.”

At the start of Beilein’s tenure, “where Michigan 

was at” could only be classified as oblivion. It hadn’t 

made the NCAA Tournament since 1998, and at a 

school in the heart of the Lloyd Carr era in football, 

the basketball team toiled with mediocrity more 

than disaster.

Well removed from the Fab Five era, with the 

1989 national title a faint memory, Michigan had 

yet to turn a page on the court.

Final Fours? This team just wanted to make the 

damn tournament.

It was stuck with the only thing worse than 

failure: Irrelevance.

Hiring John Beilein, a little-known Jesuit coach 

with a measured attitude and a sunny disposition, 

did little to change that reputation overnight.

Internally, though, the overhaul began 

immediately.

“I’m not sure I really knew what ‘rebuild 

that program’ meant,” Morgan said. “But 

from the minute that I met him, he used to 

talk to me about rebuilding. Rebuilding 

a program. Building something special. 

Being a part of rebuilding that. And that 

was what made me want to go to Michigan 

in the first place.”

Before practices even began, Beilein 

and his staff instituted a number of 

tests — tests of skill and of athleticism — 

that each player needed to accomplish 

before he could even step on the 

practice court.

They ranged from conditioning 

requirements, like running a mile in 

5:30 or less, to skill-based measures, 

like making 50 threes in five 

minutes.

Couldn’t do it? No practice. No 

games. No exceptions.

Those tests still exist today, 

though they’ve evolved with 

more focus on skill than the mile 

run, for example. The best of 

the best can now peak at 70 or 

even 80 threes in that same 

timeframe.

“If you could do those 

tests, it didn’t necessarily 

mean you were gonna be a 

better basketball player. It 

was testing your mental 

toughness, I think,” 

said 
guard 
Zack 

Novak, a Michigan 

forward from 2008-

12. “He was coming in, 

saying, ‘I’m going to get 

you as tired as you can be, 

and you’re not allowed to 

practice until you show 

me that you can get 

through that and win 

these drills.’ ”

And 
once 
you 

made it into practice, 

each drill had a 

winner and a loser, 

with 
punishment 

doled out to the 

latter.

“You 
have 
to 

learn how to win,” 

Novak said. “That’s 

a real thing. Just 

the way that we 

competed in practice, 

every drill. … He just 

had us learning how 

to win, how to execute 

when the pressure was on.”

But learning how to win doesn’t automatically 

translate into winning.

The players struggled to grasp the complexity of 

an offense that has since come to be accepted as one 

of the most efficient in the country.

At the time, its genius was also its biggest flaw.

“There are so many plays, and there are always 

plays within the plays,” Wright said. “And there are 

always counters of the plays within the play that 

can change just by someone doing an action.”

Confused?

You wouldn’t be alone. Bewildered players asked 

questions that often took 30 minutes for Beilein to 

explain before his team could execute it all.

MAX MARCOVITCH
Daily Sports Editor

John Beilein leads the way

Read more online at michigandaily.com

