John Beilein reflects on career after being inducted into National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame

Nov 21, 2022 - 11:00 PM

John Beilein, the winningest coach in Michigan men’s basketball history, was one of nine players and coaches to be part of the 2022 class inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball (NABC) Hall of Fame.

In his coaching career at Erie Community College, Nazareth, Le Moyne, Canisius, Richmond, West Virginia and Michigan, Beilein has complied a career record of 829-468. In his 12 years in Ann Arbor, he helped turn U-M into a premiere program college basketball.

He guided Michigan to two National Championship appearances in 2013 and 2018, along with two Big Ten regular season and two Big Ten Tournament titles. He racked up numerous coaching awards and helped nine players reach the NBA.

Beilein took some time to speak to the media Monday morning, and we asked him to reflect on his time at Michigan and if any former players and coaches have reached out to congratulate him.

“Spike Albrecht hit a lot of the players this morning with a tweet about it, and so I’ve been hearing from them all day long,” Beilein said. “Michigan, obviously, (there’s a) tremendous amount of good players there that I have such great respect for because of the way they’ve conducted themselves and graduated, all those things.”

Beilein also said he’s heard from tons of players and coaches from his previous stops. The man is a class act and prioritized the bonds he was able to form with people over winning games and earning accolades.

“It’s not about those trophies and cutting down nets, although that’s an important part of it, it’s about the relationships you build,” Beilein said. “They had great affects on me, and hopefully our coaching staff always gave them positive feedback and positive lessons about life that they’re using today.”

Beilein has been all over the map as a coach, and he was clearly thankful to have a loving family by his side through his coaching journey.

“There was a plan, but that wasn’t the plan to have the opportunity to coach at every level,” Beilein said. “It was amazing how it would go along the way, and then you got to have a family that’s willing to move. As I said last night, Kathleen and I moved seven times, bought and sold nine houses, all four children graduated from four different (high) schools in four different states. It’s amazing that we could hold it together that long. Every time I thought ‘I think it’s going the other way, I think we might get fired here, this might be our last year,’ and then something would happen to turn it around and we ended up having some success.”

If you’d like to watch the replay of Beilein being inducted into the Hall of Fame, click here.