Making a Beilein to mediocrity-plus

So the hiring of John Beilein is probably a pretty good thing for the Michigan basketball team. The guy sounds like he'll be a great leader on the court and run a clean program off the court. Incidently, West Virginia just went from the cleanest recruiting program in major D-I basketball to the the dirtiest overnight. I don't know a single player on their roster, but I'm sure they already failed out of school upon Bob Huggins being named head coach. Some of them also threw up in their car on the way home from the bar. But I digress...

Anyway, the guy (Beilein) runs a clean program and is obviously a great X's and O's coach. Tommy Amaker was clearly only good at the former. I'm not sure if UM set the record for shot clock violations/forced off-balanced 3-pointers out of timeouts...but they were relatively close. This was not good. Second, every player on that roster got worse. The exception to this was Brent Petway who couldn't possibly have gotten any worse than he was his freshman year. Any worse for Petway would have made him a marginally effective center for his hall in South Quad in the IM tournament. Chuck Goss probably would have dominated him.

In any event, Beilein has a reputation for "getting the best out of his players" which has become code for "does a lot with little talent" and apparently also translates into "can't recruit jack shit". Reasons for not worrying about this are two-fold:

1) Wisconsin. Best example of a program that doesnt recruit MacDonald's All-Americans but finishes in the top three of the Big Ten every year and goes to the Dance. Bo Ryan recruits for his system and probably does it better than anyone else. If Beilein can do the same, and the precedent has already been set, there shouldn't be any reason UM can't be slightly above average in "The Ten" and get the NCAA tourney regularly. I'm fine with that.

2) Getting the best out of the talent you have doesnt necesarly mean that you can't recruit. Further, how about getting the best out of good talent? West Virginia isnt exactlty a hot bed of high school basketball (with apologies to Jason Williams and Randy Moss). Nor are a pipeline of recruits coming into WVU from the surrounding region. West Virginia is particulary good at producing poverty, teen pregnancy and meth labs...none of which are very helpful with running the 1-3-1. Anyway, Beilein has much better access to good talent in Michigan and it should be interesting to see what he does with a higher level of talent.

That about all I have for now - Dominic Ingerson