Breaking News
Top Headlines

Legendary Coach John Beilein Inducted Into WVU Sports Hall of Fame

By JUSTIN JACKSON 7 min read

MORGANTOWN - The unexpected phone call came out of the blue this summer. On the other end of the line was WVU athletic director Wren Baker, who informed John Beilein his time as West Virginia's men's basketball coach was about to come full circle.

"When Wren called me, it really took me by surprise," Beilein said Saturday, just prior to his enshrinement into the WVU Sports Hall of Fame. "I hate the way it ended here, but at the same time, I really love the way it's ending 19 years later."

Has it really been 19 years? Has it truly been two decades since the phrase "You just got Pittsnoggled?" became a national slogan in the month of March, since Beilein's 1-3-1 zone created a national resurgence for the program after it pulled off a monumental upset of Chris Paul and Wake Forest in the NCAA tournament?

Time has marched on. Beilein's induction inside the Caperton Indoor Practice Facility came with some of WVU's all-time greats, including Kadeisha Buchanan and Ashley Lawrence, who guided the women's soccer team to a No. 1 national ranking and an appearance in the 2016 national championship game.

The class also included former WVU football standout Dennis Fowlkes, as well as Craig Turnbull, who was the pioneer of WVU's wrestling program. Bria Holmes is one of just four women's basketball players at WVU to surpass 2,000 career points and Alex Kasich helped put the school's cross-country and track programs on the national map in the 1970s.

And then there was Beilein, who in the span of just five years in Morgantown, became one of the most beloved and then disliked people to ever be associated with WVU, as he left the school in 2007 to become the head coach at Michigan.

Time heals wounds. Beilein received a hearty ovation when he was introduced and deservedly so. His impact on the program saw him rebuild the Mountaineers from an 8-20 team the year before his arrival into a team that was seconds away from going to the 2005 Final Four.

"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," said Beilein, who came to WVU after being the head coach at Richmond for five seasons. "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."

In his five seasons, Beilein won 104 games. There was the 2005 run to the Elite Eight, which was followed up by a run to the Sweet 16 in 2006 and a NIT championship in 2007.

He rebuilt the Mountaineers while competing in a physical and athletically gifted Big East and did it in a non-Big East manner. His players were not found at the top of the recruiting charts. His style of play was finesse rather than strength, improvisation rather than in your face.

"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.

"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."

He took a 6-foot-11 center from Martinsburg in Kevin Pittsnogle and turned him into one of the school's all-time best 3-point shooters. He brought in his son, Patrick, and saw him develop into another deadly long-range shooter.

"I was a guy committed to big guys shooting and here we had Kevin Pittsnogle who was already committed to his home-state school," Beilein said. "So many things fell into place with J.D. (Collins) and Joe (Herber). I remember telling Patrick that he wouldn't have been able to play for me at Richmond, because we had a loaded team coming back, but I needed him at West Virginia. So many things fell together at the right time."

And then he left to become the head coach at Michigan, where he eventually coached in the 2013 and 2018 national championship games. Beilein admits there were other opportunities to leave WVU before that.

"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.' "

The WVU program was handed off to Bob Huggins, who guided the Mountaineers to a magical Final Four run in 2010. While Beilein may have been with the Wolverines that season, his fingerprints were still all over the WVU program.

Da'Sean Butler was recruited to WVU by Beilein, as were Joe Mazzulla, John Flowers and Wellington Smith. All of them played key roles in the 2010 Final Four run, and as it were, all of them had an unexpected run-in with Beilein while in Indianapolis.

Beilein was having dinner. As the story goes, those WVU players were walking back to their hotel when they saw their former coach. They immediately sat down with him to share some stories.

"It was painful in a way, because I had just finished my third year at Michigan and it was a terrible year. We didn't have all the things in place we needed at Michigan at that point," Beilein said. "I told myself, 'What did I do?' Plus, I owed West Virginia $1.5 million dollars (for his buyout), and I was cutting them a big check every year. It was painful, but at the same time, I was so happy for them. I was proud of how the program didn't flounder after I left, because we had spent so much time building it back up again."

While his ending at WVU was unexpected and painful in so many ways, Beilein does take great pride in that he left the program the right way. There were no more games to be played that season. He didn't take his best WVU players with him to Michigan. He even returned his school-leased automobiles with a full tank of gas.

"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. 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.

"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."

Starting at /week.