As time wound down during the Michigan men’s basketball team’s 68-59 victory over Northwestern on Saturday, fifth-year senior C.J. Lee saw Wolverine coach John Beilein shaking hands with his assistant coaches.
The gesture was a bit unusual — Beilein usually walks straight to the opposing coach to shake hands. When Lee entered the locker room, administrative specialist Jeff Meyer whispered that it was Beilein’s 500th win at a four-year school. The co-captain proceeded to write a big “500” on the whiteboard.
That Lee was unaware of Beilein’s achievement speaks less to Lee’s absentmindedness and more to Beilein’s humility. The coach is a man at work, jacket off and sleeves rolled up on the sideline.
“I’ll say what every coach says and they should say,” said Beilein, who coached five college teams before landing at Michigan in 2007. “It is a great staff and great players.”
Beilein, now one of 18 active head coaches with 500 wins, was modest regarding the landmark win, but Michigan associate head coach Jerry Dunn wasn’t.
“I think in today’s game, it’s really outstanding,” Dunn said. “Because all too often, you don’t have the luxury of having the same guys for four years. The beauty of it is he’s done it everywhere he’s been, and he’s been very innovative in finding ways to win.”
Asked if he was proud of his coach’s accomplishment, sophomore Manny Harris added: “Oh yeah, oh yeah. Five hundred — that’s big-time.”
Before entering the college ranks, Beilein, 55, spent three years at Newfane Central High School in Newfane, N.Y. His first college job was at Erie Community College in Buffalo, N.Y., where he posted a 75-43 record in four years. Erie is a two-year program, and only four-year programs count towards the NCAA total.
“I think the first 75 at Erie Community College were pretty darn hard to get,” Beilein said. “You go and you do your coaching at Broom Tech, and who knows who is reffing the game? They could be directly related to the coach. And you ate at McDonalds and you drove the van. So those were pretty hard too — those first four years.”
Beilein then spent one year at Division-III Nazareth in Rochester, N.Y., compiling a 20-6 record. Next, Beilein turned Division-II Le Moyne in Syracuse, N.Y., into a competitor, winning at least 19 games in five of nine seasons.
He stayed in New York to take his first Division-I job in 1992. At Canisius in Buffalo, Beilein won at least 17 games in four of five seasons. In 1996, Canisius won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament to reach its first NCAA Tournament in almost 40 years.
Two years later, Beilein took the lead post at Richmond, where he put together a 100-53 record in five seasons.
In 2002, West Virginia hired Beilein, who quickly turned the program into a force to be reckoned with in the Big East. His Mountaineers reached the NCAA Tournament twice, including a trip to the Elite Eight in 2005. And West Virginia won the National Invitation Tournament in his last year there.
Beilein is in his 34th consecutive year as a coach and second at Michigan.
“I’m a nomad, and there’s a lot of losses in those 500, as well,” said Beilein, who is the only active college coach with 20-win seasons at four different levels (junior college, NAIA, NCAA Division II and NCAA Division I). “Kathleen (Beilein’s wife for 29 years) has been with me through every one of them, too.”
Although Lee pondered the meaning behind Beilein’s congratulatory handshakes, redshirt freshman Laval Lucas-Perry had something else on his mind.
“I was thinking of pouring a Gatorade on him during the game,” Lucas-Perry said. “But there wasn’t any time for that.”