John Beilein will be in Indianapolis Monday night, watching his former program try to do the one thing that Beilein's teams didn't.
"We got another great chance to win it all," Beilein said Monday on 97.1 The Ticket.
Beilein's 12-year tenure as head coach marked one of the best eras in Michigan basketball history. The Wolverines won multiple conference titles and twice played in the national championship game, losing in 2013 to Louisville and in 2018 to Villanova. Michigan's last and only national title came in 1989 under Steve Fisher.
Beilein fully expects this year's team to end the drought. Michigan has ripped through the NCAA Tournament, blowing out each team in its path. Asked if he sees that trend continuing Monday night against UConn, Beilein said, "Yes. This is the best team that I’ve seen in decades. I think you have to go back to the days when teams were loaded with juniors and seniors before kids started going pro so early, at the end of my career. One of the benefits of NIL is that it gets kids to stick around, so the experience we have, is just -- oh god, I’m envious."
By Beilein's count, the top seven or eight players on Michigan's 2012-13 team had 13 years of collective college experience, "and now this team has, like, 25 years of college experience — double the experience." He wouldn't go so far as to declare this year's team the best Michigan team ever, but they've been so dominant, in Beilein's eyes, "because they have both talent and experience. I’m not going to say the other teams didn’t have the talent. They had the talent level. It was just, they hadn’t developed to this point."
"What really sticks out to me is the transfers that have come in," Beilein said. "When I saw them come in, I said, 'Big deal, another guy coming off the bench.' But these guys have developed. (Aday) Mara, (Elliot) Cadeau. I could see (Morez) Johnson Jr. was going to be this good of an athlete, I didn’t see this from Cadeau and Mara."
"(Yaxel) Lendenborg is just special. He’s changed his draft status. He would have gone 20 to 30 last year. He’s gotta be a lottery pick. And some NBA teams may do this thing: 'Well, he’s already 24.' Duncan Robinson is in his ninth year in the NBA, he was 24 when he graduated from Michigan. Think about the immediate future. That dude should walk on to any NBA team and start immediately, because he can play the 2, the 3, the 4."
The Huskies have some experience, too. Four of their five starters are either juniors or seniors, including former Michigan big man Tarris Reed Jr. Asked how UConn can possibly stop Michigan, Beilein pointed to the pace of play: "I suspect that Coach Hurley will have his team run some stuff where they end up taking a little time off the clock, looking for a good shot. They don’t have a lot of shooters. I don’t know why people don’t recruit — we had this thing, 'If they can’t shoot, don’t recruit.' And there’s so many people that don’t have shooters out there. They have more than Arizona had. At the same time, I think they’ll try to grind it that way."
Beilein said that one of Connecticut's best assets is its transition defense, which will be key against Michigan.
"The length of Michigan, when they try to shoot over Michigan, you better make the shot. Because if you don’t, they have willing outlet passers. Both Mara and Johnson will get rid of it quick, and then Lendenborg and everyone else, if they get a defensive rebound, they’re gone. And there’s so little you can do against the fast break," Beilein said. "My experience tells me that young kids, that’s the last thing they learn to do, is miss a shot or watch somebody miss a shot or see a turnover and get back and guard on defense. It’s one thing to get back. It’s (another thing) to get back and guard on defense. Connecticut will do that. I think they’ll have one of the better defensive transition teams we’ve seen, so we can’t just depend on them missing shots and getting baskets.
"But I don’t think people can score on us. It’s the length at the rim. You watch Wisconsin beat Michigan because they shot a whole bunch of threes and made 'em. That’s the only way you can beat them, I think. But I could be proven wrong tonight."
Beilein also touched on Dusty May's early success at Michigan and how the basketball landscape has changed dramatically in Ann Arbor.
"He has one of the best jobs in the country. I laughed when I saw it was rated the (seventh) best job in the country," Beilein said. "You would not believe the flak I took from people when I left West Virginia, where we had it rolling, to go to Michigan. They said, 'That program’s broken. That’s a train-wreck. That’s a football school.' And we’ve had so much great support from the administration, four AD’s, three different presidents now that have said, 'We’re going to make basketball good again, and we’re going to do it the right way.'
"Dusty has done an amazing job of using — he’s got resources now, he’s got plenty of em. I wouldn't say that was the mindset back in 2007. We couldn’t raise any money for anything. 4,000 people at our first game. It was tough, but we got it to that point and now they’ve used this NIL and the resources they have, the practice facility, they’ve done so well with just continuing to stay up with the times and it’s become one of the best jobs in the country."
