Beilein takes trip down memory lane before HOF ceremony
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MORGANTOWN, W. Va. – Here’s a little tale John Beilein told on Saturday before his induction ceremony into the West Virginia University Sports Hall of Fame, a little look inside the man who saved the program and in five years took it from nowhere to the doorstep of the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four
He’d reached the moment when it was time to say goodbye, a moment filled with far more emotion than he ever thought there would be on the day he arrived.
“I hated the way it ended,” Beilein said. “I cried when I came here, because it was so bad. I also cried when I left, because it was so good. I’ll probably be crying again today, because of all the memories. I didn’t like any part of it, but there were some things going on and an opportunity to be at the University of Michigan. I had several opportunities to leave earlier, but my thinking was, ‘No, I just got here. I’ve got to coach five years here before I even look at another opportunity.’ ”
He was a man with class, a man filled with character, a New Yorker by birth but a West Virginian by heart. No one had ever accused him of doing it the easy way -- or, for that matter of doing it any way other than his own way. He’d coached at every level you can find in basketball, from the lowest to the highest, and at each stop he was the head coach, never an assistant.
He was building his brand of basketball from the start.
He’d joined a program finally at WVU with a long, proud history at the top of the heap after he had coached at Richmond, but one suspects that Richmond team he had then could have beaten the team Gale Catlett had let decay on the vine, one that went 8-20 and 1-15 in Big East play.
“These five years here were just remarkable in that I thought I made the biggest mistake in my life in 2002 when I came here,” Beilein said. “I inherited a 1-15 Big East team that was broken. I remember being told by someone in the administration, ‘I don’t know if you’ll have two or three players eligible next year.’ Somehow, we got really lucky.”
Luck had nothing to do with it. Beilein dove head first into building a program, putting together a special group that would break even the first year then as Kevin Pittsnogle developed and Mike Gansey was added poked its nose into the national picture.
The first year was a 13-13 developmental project, then came some of the most memorable basketball since the Jerry West days. Catlett wasn’t longed for, despite some wonderful seasons, and this team played precision offense upon the strength of the 3-point shot and used a 1-3-1 zone on defense as a puzzling change for opponents.
“When I was at Le Moyne College in the 1980s, we ran into a similar situation,” Beilein said. “We had certain constraints on admissions that kept us from being an athletic team. So, we had to find new ways to play. As a result, I always thought that if I could ever get some athletes – we didn’t need a lot – that I was going to continue to play the same way, because our system was an equalizer.”
WVU wasn’t Le Moyne and the athletes began following those country roads to Morgantown.
“Sure enough, now you get Tyrone Sally and Mike Gansey and D’Or Fischer and these guys and all of a sudden, we could find a way. The 1-3-1 zone was an equalizer. We just had to try things and do things differently and not try and go smash mouth.”
WVU looked to be on the edge of a major breakthrough, but Beilein would not be there for it. He’d done what he’d been hired to do: fix a broken program, and while doing it he had elevated himself to a position where one of the major majors wanted him.
Michigan called. The same Michigan that would take Rich Rodriguez away from West Virginia at the height of his success.
It was an opportunity you don’t say no to and he didn’t, but there was a huge twist to the way he handled matters, especially when you consider how the world in general and the world of collegiate sports have changed.
“To me, Michigan was a special opportunity,” Beilein said. “I was very transparent. Mike Parsons (former WVU Deputy Director of Athletics) knew where I was at every step of the way.”
So it wasn’t a surprise when he left, but it may have been a surprise the way he left.
“I had two cars while I was at West Virginia. I remember filling them up with gas, getting them washed and leaving them in the parking lot with the keys. I wanted to leave the right way and I think most can agree that happened.”
One suspects Catlett, Darian DeVries, and Huggins didn’t leave that way. With gas prices today, not sure anyone would fill up two cars and have them washed, but that was Beilein.
A better person than he was even a coach.
“And, I sat in that locker room and I told everyone, ‘You guys are going to stay.’ They came to West Virginia to be at West Virginia. They didn’t come here to play for John Beilein. Several of them reached out to me and I told them no. I wasn’t going to leave the program decimated when it took so much work to get it where it was.”