KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s the ending to a story many have been waiting more than decade to tell.

It doesn’t conclude during the National Invitation Tournament or the Big Ten Tournament.

It ends at the NCAA Tournament second-round postgame press conference with Michigan men’s basketball coach John Beilein looking slightly choked up and red in the eyes.

It ends with Beilein laying a reassuring right hand on the back of junior forward DeShawn Sims as his go-to big man made sense of everything.

“We were a win away from the Sweet 16,” Sims said after No. 10 seed Michigan’s 73-63 loss to No. 2 seed Oklahoma on Saturday. “It doesn't get no sweeter than that for a team that finished 10-22 last year.”

Actually, it didn’t get any sweeter for many of last season’s teams with 20 or more losses.

Of this year’s 65 tournament teams, Michigan had the worst record last season. And just one other 20-plus-loss team last season — Radford — made this year’s Big Dance.

It’s a turnaround no one outside the Michigan locker room expected, but it can be the start of something bigger.

With their first tournament bid since 1998, the Wolverines have set the bar high. In the next few seasons, this team has a special opportunity: to keep it there.

It’s been so long since Michigan was a tournament regular. From 1985 to 1998, the Wolverines missed the NCAA Tournament just twice. And this is the first decade since the 1960s Michigan hasn’t reached the Final Four.

In 1999, few made a fuss that former Michigan coach Brian Ellerbe’s team, which went 25-9 the previous season, finished a dismal 12-19.

"I'm more than satisfied with the job Brian has done," then-Athletic Director Tom Goss told the Detroit Free Press in March 1999. "I've seen the kids' skills develop, and he's gotten them to play hard every night. Brian's going to be a good coach over time. In my view, he's going to be one of the finest coaches we have here at Michigan."

But the Ellerbe era proved to be disastrous. A four-year record of 62-60 and 26-38 in the Big Ten, and he was gone.

Tommy Amaker did better, taking two teams to the NIT finals and winning in 2004, but he still never reached the NCAA Tournament in his six seasons.

Postseason aspirations were high then, but they’re even higher now that Beilein led Michigan to the Big Dance in just his second year.

Now, it’s not necessarily a question of just getting there but it’s how far the Wolverines can go.

“Satisfaction,” Beilein said when asked what he will savor about this season. “It's nice to feel you accomplished something, but we want to continue the hunger for us to get Michigan past this stage.”

From his first day in Ann Arbor, Beilein wanted to build a new culture. Sims noted on Selection Sunday how Beilein taught the Wolverines to believe, something that had been missing in the years of tournament misses.

This successful season can be a springboard if the Wolverines continue to grow and develop within the coach’s system. Beilein came to Ann Arbor with a winner’s résumé: 26 winning seasons and trips to the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight. He has shown he can turn a program around.

Although losing vocal fifth-year senior captains C.J. Lee and David Merritt to graduation might hinder that process, the Wolverines could continue to lay the foundation necessary to bring the program back to prominence.

Look at the nucleus Sims and sophomore forward Manny Harris provide. The duo has improved within Beilein’s system and led Michigan in some of its biggest wins.

Harris unequivocally said he’ll be back next season. And Michigan’s crop of sharpshooting freshmen — Stu Douglass, Zack Novak and Laval Lucas-Perry — hit plenty of game-changing 3-pointers this season.

With just a taste of the NCAA Tournament, how could they not want more?

After every practice this season, the Wolverines broke with the chant of their ultimate goal: “NCAA.”

What should they say now?

“When they break on that next year, it's going to have a totally different meaning because we've achieved that goal, and it's time to push forward and just get better in this tournament,” Lee said.

It’ll be a new meaning, but if the team reaches its potential, it would be a program expectation.

— Lincoln can be reached at lincolnr@umich.edu.