After the Michigan men's basketball team's mediocre 15-17 record this past season, coach John Beilein recently added two new assistant coaches to assist second-year assistant coach, Jeff Meyer.

With the recent appointment of Bacari Alexander and LaVall Jordan, the team hopes to have a fresh, new direction as it looks to bounce back from a lackluster season, a year following the Wolverines' first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1998.

In Jordan’s first year as assistant coach with Butler in 2004, the Bulldogs were 13-15 overall and 7-9 in the Horizon League. But by the time Jordan left the Bulldogs in 2007, Butler finished the season 29-7 and made it to the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Originally from Albion, Jordan played basketball at Butler where he was a standout guard, helping the Bulldogs to four post-season appearances, three NCAA Tournaments and one NIT Tournament.

After college, Jordan played overseas and in the National Basketball Developmental League but saw significant differences between the college game and the professional playing field.

“Something I loved as a player was just the details of the game and I wanted to go on and play as long as I could,” Jordan said. "Once you get into that, it’s a little more individualized, it’s a little more about you.

“For me, that wasn’t as much fun as enjoying the team and the teammates and coming together and winning at a high level, so that was something I enjoyed and wanted to get back to.”

Jordan returned to Butler to work as Coordinator of Basketball Operations in 2003. After just one season, he was promoted to assistant coach where he stayed for three seasons before moving to Iowa with Butler head coach Todd Licklite. For three seasons he worked as an assistant coach with the Hawkeyes before trading in his old gold for maize.

“This thing isn’t about us,” Jordan said. “We have our part and our job is to put our signature on our little chapter of the entire Michigan story, so that’s how I look at it. Because of the tradition, because of the history, because of the standard that’s been set before us, for us to recapture it and carry on what others have done.”

Along with Jordan, Alexander will also hope to bring his past playing and coaching experience to Ann Arbor, with aspirations of placing the program in the national spotlight once again.

Alexander, a Detroit native, got his first taste of coaching in clinics and camps while playing in college at the University of Detroit Mercy. From there, he briefly worked as Players Programs Coordinator with the Detroit Pistons before returning to the court with the Harlem Globetrotters. But after 498 shows, Alexander retired and went back to coaching, first at his alma mater and then at Ohio University and Western Michigan University before being hired by Beilein.

He will mainly be working with the post players, a very young group for the Wolverines without a single player boasting significant floor experience. But Alexander is confident in his ability to forge relationships with the young Michigan squad and looking forward to doing so.

“What basketball has really done for me is that it’s opened up doors to build long lasting and meaningful relationships with people from all walks of life,” Alexander said. “And that also is the essence of sports in general. It brings people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, belief systems and mesh(es) them all together.”

In 1999, Alexander received UDM’s most outstanding senior student-athlete award, an award demonstrating how he holds in high regard the value of a quality education. He sees himself as an educator of the young men he coaches and sees a deep connection between the relationships a coach has and the influence a coach has on its players, which is what has drawn him to every school and coach he has coached with.

“They’re all educators first,” Alexander said of the coaches he has worked under. “I always have taken great interest in being associated with people that are educators first. The common denominator academically for all of those coaches is that they’ve graduated in the 98th percentile of their players, which is very, very important to me.