“Quite honestly, when you look at it, it’s a buncha guys that probably shouldn’t be here or weren’t wanted here and, you know, whatever,” he said. “A guy like Moe (Wagner), hardly recruited; Muhammad(-Ali Abdur-Rahkman), two-star whatever; everyone wanted X to be done at Michigan; myself, I had to beg for a freakin’ scholarship. Didn’t get one out of high school. Charles, in the SEC, Kentucky, he didn’t cut it. So it’s like, when you get these personalities and these guys who have kinda been overlooked, whatever, their whole careers and kinda come together and believe in something collectively, it’s pretty special.”
This is straight from Duncan Robinson's mouth. This is the archetypal Beilein team. He finds players that no one else knows about or wants, and he puts the pieces of the puzzle together like a fictional movie character playing chess 15 moves ahead of the competition. There is, and will be, all sorts of over the top praise for Beilein this week (not unlike mine here). He deserves all of it. This roster of players and their accomplishments represent one of the best coaching jobs in modern college basketball history:
32 wins (school record), B1G tournament champions (B2B), Final 4, dominators of rivals, win with flair (Poole), win with class (Wagner), win clean (Beilein/everyone), inspirational fans (Jude Stamper, Mo's mom), ridiculous in season improvement (Z), darkhorse regional MVP (Matthews), ice in veins (MAAR - Maryland free throws), losing starting role with class and becoming B1G 6th man of year (Duncan), transfer from program as possible conference POY to backup PG who stands by his decision and is thrilled to even be in the tournament (Simmons), True freshman starter who plays hard and rarely shows up in the box score (Livers), 7 footer who went from lost boy to incredible defender playing the perfect role off of the bench (Teske) best defensive assistant in the country (Yaklich), unheralded contributor to incredible guard improvement (Haynes), humble yet efective developer of big men and coach who only wins B1G tourney championships (Washington, 2 for 2)...
Those are just a few tidbits of what make this team special.
TELL ME WHY YOU LOVE THIS TEAM...
