Dodd, "Michigan good-guy John Beilein is just what college basketball needs"
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/2018-ncaa-tournament-…
First half of the article is posted here. Click the link for the second half. Glad Beilein is finally getting national recognition for what he has accomplished here at Michigan.
This tournament, this game, needs John Beilein.
Oh sure, there are other good guys who are likeable and have clean reputations. But their numbers are shrinking faster than the tuna population.
In both cases, there are too many sharks. Michigan's coach has walked the walk again. In a sport of charlatans and blowhards, in a sport of millennial power brokers and unrepentant millionaires, John Beilein literally rolls up his sleeves each night.
This time, he fooled us again. "Plodding Michigan" might as well had been a registered trademark. Then against Texas A&M in a West Regional semifinal he unleashed his sprinters.
Michigan took the Aggies' celebrated front line and ran it into a puddle of maroon. In short, these Wolverines can do anything. Or it seemed like it in a 99-72 win that catapulted No. 3 seed Michigan to the Elite Eight for the third time in six years.
The 99 points were the most by Michigan in an NCAA Tournament game since the Fab Five in 1992. Their efficiency was perhaps the best all season -- 62 percent shooting, 21 assists on 39 baskets.
With 5:39 left in the half, Michigan had as many 3s (eight) as it had in 16 games this season. It ended with 14.
"This felt like Madison Square Garden to us," Beilein said of the Staples Center that was 90-10 Michigan fans.
The season seems like it will never end for the Wolverines. They can play any style, winning a pair of grinders against Montana and Houston before running the Aggies off the floor.
Some might even say the bracket is opening up for a team that tied for fourth in the Big Ten. The Wolverines are the highest-seeded remaining team on the entire left side of the 68-team bracket -- thanks to first-weekend exits for Virginia, Xavier, Cincinnati, North Carolina and Tennessee. Beilein is in his 11th season at Michigan. If he wins the national championship, he'll be one of six active coaches with 800 games.
But it may it's what didn't happen this season that defined him.
Senior forward Duncan Robinson remembers getting calls from friends when news broke in September of the now-infamous FBI investigation.
"To be honest with you, it was a cool moment to be part of this program," Robinson said, "because I had some friends playing at other programs. I'll talk to them and people [were] reaching out to them. Asking questions and stuff."
One of those players was from Louisville, Robinson said, which eventually had its 2013 championship banner taken down due to NCAA sanctions. Four other schools were implicated in the FBI investigation -- Oklahoma State, USC, Auburn and Arizona.
"Nobody even reached out to me, 'cause everyone just kind of knows," Robinson continued. "It's kind of an expectation at Michigan that [Beilein] has established."
March 23rd, 2018 at 12:53 AM ^
I also noticed that they linked the CBS story showing Coach Beilein widely accepted by his peers as the 'cleanest coach in the country'. Go blue!
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/candid-coaches-who-ar…
March 23rd, 2018 at 12:59 AM ^
Here's the poll for that.
Rank |
Coach |
School |
Vote percentage |
1. |
John Beilein |
26.6 percent |
|
2. |
Mike Brey |
10.5 percent |
|
T3. |
Tony Bennett |
7.6 percent |
|
T3. |
Greg Gard |
7.6 percent |
|
5. |
Mark Few |
5.7 percent |
|
T6. |
Chris Holtmann |
4.8 percent |
|
T6. |
Tom Izzo |
4.8 percent |
|
T6. |
Bruce Weber |
4.8 percent |
- "John Beilein is a by-the-book, letter-of-the-law guy. LETTER-OF-THE-LAW. ... You get two hours to work out guys for the week. If he works out a kid and, say, they go one hour and one minute, he's going to start the next time with 59 minutes on the clock and go 59 minutes. That's the truth."
- "Personally, we've gone up against him [in recruiting] ... and there's never been any issues. You go head-to-head with some of these guys, and you know what's going on. ... But nothing has popped up that's even been in the gray area [with Michigan]."
- "If you look over the course of his programs, they have a very unique way in how they recruit players. It's a very old-school approach. He has to see them. They only offer kids if they come to campus twice. Stuff like that. His background is such, and this is way vague, but guys that typically have cheated or do things the wrong way, they live their lives at a certain level of athletics for such a long period. But John Beilein worked his way up. He's never been an assistant -- only been a head coach his entire life. He's like, 'This is the only way do it, and I'm going to continue to do it.' [Guys like him] get to a point in their careers where they've been able to operate that way for so long, why risk their job and reputation?"
I think Izzo would not be tied for 6th on that list if it were voted on today.
I smell a recount
+1.......go blue
Great articles, both of them.
puts a smile on my face reading the articles, but also hearing coach Beilein speak at the post game press conferences... Man has got to be one of the most genuine, down to earth head coaches in all of college BBall, if not all of the major P5 sports.
great run so far - hoping the ride doesn't stop for 3 more games
may end up being the saving face of college basketball; showing that its possible to be clean and successful. What a great coach.
Great article. Been seeing a lot stuff on B this week. The LA Times had a nice article a couple days ago as well. Switching gears slightly, is "shrinking faster than the tuna population" now a saying?
Slanderous to sharks, too. Pretty sure they are not the problem.
we have the best coach in the country. Some bases are apparently willing to do anything to win. We know who they are. But that's not who we are, and I'm as proud of that as our athletic performance.
Great article... but he constantly switches back and forth between "Baird" and "Blair." Still no respect for the walk-on!
I can't believe I saw Izzo on that list. I mean, even before Bridges paid back that $40, I'd have never thought Izzo would be on that list. The entire world knows he lost the bidding war for Bowen...
March 23rd, 2018 at 11:29 AM ^
Great article, but man it needs to be proof-read before publishing. Not only spelling and grammatical errors but even more mind-boggling was the interchanging of "Baird" and "Blair" when talking about the same person, CJ Baird. Great article, but man, have some pride in your work
March 23rd, 2018 at 11:35 AM ^
Good article overall, but this line is annoying:
The Wolverines had been outplayed for 39 minutes by the Cougars
We were down two points, dude. So they outplayed us by a point every 19 minutes 30 seconds, apparently.
March 23rd, 2018 at 12:17 PM ^
Blair=/=Baird and Trey hit a 3 in the regional semifinal not the national semifinal. The rest was aces.
On a separate note, wasn't Dodd the guy who didn't realize his twitter follows were public and it was filled with porn?
Happy to be rooting for a coach and team we can be proud of.
Proud to be part of a university that has teams that make us happy.