John Beilein’s hiring within the Cleveland Cavaliers organization certainly came as a surprise, but make no mistake, it made a lot of sense for each side.
Beilein, who had been the basketball coach at the University of Michigan since 2007, left for the NBA after just over four decades in the college ranks.
His successes in basketball are far-reaching, and his career trajectory has only gone one direction — up. He’s proven himself capable of turning losing programs into consistent winners, and all without a single accusation of NCAA rule-breaking.
All was not well at the college level for Coach Beilein, though. According to reports from ESPN, he was fed up with the rampant scandals in college basketball, such as the bribery accusations being investigated by the FBI, and was also growing weary of top end players leaving early for the NBA Draft.
So with a former player, Mike Gansey (who played at WVU after transferring from St. Bonaventure), in the Cavs’ front office as well as Beilein’s relationship with Cavs’ owner Dan Gilbert (who, ironically, is a Michigan State alumnus), it’s easy to see why the Cavaliers wanted Beilein and why the coach was willing to break from the college ranks.
And, at the age of 66, this may well be his final chance at coaching at the professional level after proving himself at the collegiate level for so long.
Beilein got his start in coaching in 1975 at Newfane High School, just under an hour north of downtown Buffalo, and spent three years there before moving up to Erie Community College for the next four. After that, he broke into the NCAA with a Division III gig at Nazareth.
From there, he worked his way up the NCAA ladder with a nine-year stint at Division II Le Moyne before landing his first Division I gig at Canisius, where he spent five seasons and qualified for the NIT twice and the Big Dance once.
He left Canisius for Richmond, where he had similar successes with the Spiders. He went 100-53 over his five seasons in Virginia, reached the NIT twice, and the NCAA Tournament once, in 1998, where Richmond upset third-seed South Carolina. It was the school’s first tournament selection since 1991.
Beilein’s next move took him to Morgantown, W. Va., where he brought WVU’s basketball program back from the depths of mediocrity. The Mountaineers were fresh off of an 8-20 season that featured only one Big East Conference win in Gale Catlett’s final year.
Beilein immediately turned things around at West Virginia. In just his third season in Morgantown, the Mountaineers danced all the way to the Elite Eight. He spent two more years with WVU after the Elite Eight season and amassed a 104-60 record when it was all said and done.
And then came Michigan in 2007, where Beilein spent more than a decade and once again turned a program around. He finished his tenure in Ann Arbor with the most wins of any coach in program history, two Big Ten Tournament championships, two Final Four runs and a final record of 278-150, all with a program he inherited that was coming off of a scholarship reduction due to a rules violation and a six-year NCAA Tournament drought.
Simply put, Beilein can take teams mired in mediocrity and turn them into juggernauts, and that’s what makes this Cavaliers job all the more fitting for him.
Cleveland is coming off of a tumultuous season that culminated in a 19-63 record, and frankly, the organization has never really found its footing without LeBron James.
Beilein’s successes at college are no guarantee he’ll do well in the NBA, though. The list of coaches who’ve made that transition and done well is short, while the list of coaches who jumped to the NBA and failed is long.
But with the right amount of time and patience, he might turn the Cavaliers around — just like he has at every other stop of his career.
(Joel Whetzel, a sports reporter at the Bradford Era, can be reached at jwhetzel@bradfordera.com.)
