As Beilein Moves Forward, Wolverines Want to Follow

This is the seventh time that Coach John Beilein has gone through this particular process, of moving to a new school and taking over its basketball program, but that doesn't mean that it gets any easier.

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"You need lots of patience during the first year," said Beilein, who was hired by Michigan to replace the fired Tommy Amaker in April. "You take small steps every day."

The Wolverines hope that those small steps eventually lead back to the NCAA tournament, a place that Michigan has not been since 1998. Beilein, in his 30-year college coaching career, has taken three schools (Canisius, Richmond and most recently, West Virginia) to the tournament. He's won at least 20 games in a season at six schools and at four levels (junior college, NAIA, Division I and II).

"He has very good players out there," said Georgetown Coach John Thompson III, whose fifth-ranked team (1-0) hosts Michigan (2-0) tonight at Verizon Center. "He's someone that everywhere he's been, at every level, has had success, and he's going to have tremendous success out there quickly."

Beilein inherited a young team and a difficult schedule: The Wolverines have only one senior (wing Ron Coleman) and just three players who averaged more than 10 minutes a game (Coleman, guard Jerret Smith, and forward Ekpe Udoh), and they have nonconference games against Butler, Duke and UCLA. Two freshmen, guards Kelvin Grady and Manny Harris, are starting.

Thompson often said during his first season at Georgetown that he had a team of 12 freshmen, because everyone was getting used to him as a coach. Beilein likes that analogy.

"Just running a practice is a major chore when you don't have juniors or seniors" who are familiar with the coach, Beilein said. "When you're teaching juniors and seniors things that are unique to your system or to your ideals, you're starting over. . . . When you play like Georgetown or you play like we do, we do lot of things like everyone else, but there are a few things that are different, and that makes that transition a little rougher at the beginning."

High school and AAU coaches generally don't have the time to teach the kind of offenses Beilein and Thompson use, Beilein said, so few players come to the college game prepared for those systems. It takes some time for players to grasp the offense, but once they do, they can have tremendous success.

"In John's third year, they go to the Final Four. In our third year [at West Virginia], we were one basket away from the Final Four," Beilein said. "Georgetown, right now, they have their system, just their whole approach to the game, their philosophy in place. We're back behind the eight ball again."

Beilein's arrival brought other changes, such as an offseason workout program that left players "down on their knees, gasping for air," according to Grady. The Ann Arbor News compiled a list of 40 things that are different under Beilein, ranging from the mundane (Amaker drank orange Gatorade when dealing with the media, while Beilein prefers coffee) to the more substantial (Amaker's teams were prone to turning over the ball, while Beilein's at West Virginia often ranked among the Big East's best in assist-to-turnover ratio).

But the Michigan players have remarked that the biggest difference has been in Beilein's emphasis on fundamental drills and shooting. Beilein is detail-oriented and spends time on the simplest things, such as how to dribble with your right hand or how to throw a chest pass. Said Beilein, "We try to look for improvement every day."

Beilein's West Virginia teams used the three-pointer as a weapon -- recall Kevin Pittsnogle -- but the Wolverines weren't particularly prolific (14.1 attempts per game) nor proficient (34.3 percent, 4.9 makes per game) from beyond the arc last season. In their first two games this season -- victories over Radford and Brown -- Michigan took 47 shots from beyond the arc and made 19. Prior to the season, Beilein gave a test to his players: make 50 three-pointers in five minutes.

"He is about shooting -- shooting, shooting, and shooting some more," Udoh said at Michigan's media day last month. "And then when you're tired, shoot some more."

Hoyas Note: Greg Monroe, the consensus top-ranked senior in the country, plans on signing his letter of intent to play for Georgetown tomorrow morning during a ceremony at his Harvey, La., high school, according to Helen Cox Coach Tyron Mouzon.

"I just felt real comfortable with the coaching staff and the players," Monroe said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "I thought it was a place where I could excel and better my game, and fit in as a student -- and it was a place where I can win."