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Why John Beilein Is The Truest Coach In College Basketball

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This article is more than 7 years old.

One crash. Four days. Four wins.

That’s my attempt to write a story in six words, something that Ernest Hemingway once did in response to being challenged to write a short-short story. (For his answer see below.)

But no writer, even Papa himself, could come up with a better story than what’s behind the six words I just wrote. On Wednesday March 8 a plane carrying 109 passengers aborted takeoff from Willow Run Airport. On board were University of Michigan basketball players, coaches, spouses and even members of the Michigan band on route to Washington D.C. to play in the Big 10 Tournament. Gutsy winds forced the pilot to abandon takeoff and the plane skid 400 yards off the runway.

Coach John Beilein and wife Kathleen exited the plane and took off running. According to reporting by Brendan Quinn of M-Live, Beilein noticed that the inflatable exit chute was blowing untethered preventing passengers from sliding down to safety. Beilein told his wife to keep running and he went back to hold the chute down in the gusty winds. Jet fuel fumes were in the air and the engine was still hot.

Everyone made it out safely. Later  after telling his players to call their parents and let them know they were okay  Beilein gathered his players and asked them if they wanted to travel to Washington or to forfeit the tournament. The players made their choice and next morning the team headed to D.C. making it to the Verizon Center less than hours before noontime tip-off. They wore their practice uniforms; game uniforms were still in the luggage hold of the plane.

Everyone  including this Michigan fan  wondered how the players would respond. Fans need not have worried. While they may have been late to the tourney, they crashed the party and won four consecutive games knocking off No. 1 seed Purdue and No. 2 seed Wisconsin to claim the tourney title.

Captain Derrick Walton  who had promised Coach Beilein that the team would win the tournament  was the tourney MVP. His performance provided steady hand the team needed. And it could not have been easy for Walton initially. After the crash he had voted for the team to stay in Ann Arbor but he respected the majority vote of his teammates and willed himself on to the plane the next day.

It’s a good story even if you don’t like college basketball and it’s another chapter in the long coaching career of John Beilein who is the only major college coach never to have served as an assistant. He started coaching high school basketball in 1975 and then coached at the community college and Division III level before landing at West Virginia and the ending up on Ann Arbor.

In an era where big money has infiltrated  and some say corrupted collegiate athletics  John Beilein is an anachronism. Beilein is really a coach who never left high school… in spirit. That is a compliment not a knock. He is a relentless preparer and a terrific strategist and tactician. Above all, however, he is a teacher.

Watching him on the sidelines is to watch a coach who sees the big picture and communicates it with words and gestures throughout the game. He has a way of putting things into immediate perspective so that his players can see what is expected of them and do their best in turn to deliver.

Until the Big 10 tournament run, Michigan’s season was something of a disappointment. Injuries had hampered the team so much so they were in danger of being eliminated from consideration for a ticket to the “Big Dance,” the NCAA tournament. Then in February the team went on a tear winning nine of eleven games to close out the season. Coach Beilein had once again held his team together.

But what happened in this tournament may have been one of his best coaching efforts of his forty year career. In the third game versus Minnesota, Michigan players were losing their edge. They were tied at the half, after blowing a 16-point lead. As Brendan Quinn reports, “The Michigan players looked up from lowered brows, stewing with anger… The Wolverines were starting to crack. It seemed the week had caught up with them.”

Not quite. Beilein huddled the team and spoke from the heart. No clipboard. No chalk talk. “It was about life,” said assistant coach Jeff Meyer. As Quinn reported, “It was about where they’d been… and about playing for each other.” In the second half the team caught its second wind and rolled to its third victory in three days. The tournament game almost seemed anticlimactic. They beat Wisconsin by 15 points.

Beilein did what all good leaders do: bring people together for common cause. And he did it because he and his assistants had found the right players, molded them in the expectation of excellence, and allowed them to use their talents to win as one team. One for all and all for one.

And so let me close with another six-word story.

One coach. One team. One title.

NOTE: Hemingway’s response to the short-short story challenge was this: “For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.”

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