January 4 Notebook
January 04, 2005 10:53 AM | General
January 4, 2005
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – John Beilein got a stamp of approval for the outstanding job he’s done resurrecting West Virginia’s basketball program when his 10-0 team cracked the national rankings for the first time in seven years yesterday.
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| West Virginia coach John Beilein wants his basketball team to remain the 'hunter' instead of the 'hunted.'
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks photo |
West Virginia is ranked No. 21 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 and No. 23 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll. It is the first time a Beilein-coached team has ever cracked the national rankings during Division I coaching stops at Canisius, Richmond and now West Virginia.
Beilein admits it’s a nice honor being ranked, but he isn’t going to waste a lot of brainpower thinking about it or talking about it with his team.
“We haven’t even mentioned it to them yet,” Beilein said Monday night. “We practiced from four to six and didn’t even talk about it and I probably won’t.”
Yet Beilein understands that being ranked is important in the eyes of Mountaineer basketball fans that last watched their team play in the NCAA tournament seven years ago.
“I hope people like the direction that we’re going in. If that’s a bench mark for other people to approve of the program I’m happy that they feel that way,” Beilein said. “We need more than that for this coaching staff to think we’re reaching some of the success we want to reach in the future. We need to be a consistent participant in post-season play and hopefully the NCAA more than the NIT.”
West Virginia has taken small steps toward the goal of reaching the NCAA tournament, boosting its unofficial RPI to 18 this week after back to back wins against George Washington and N.C. State. Beilein says he’s not surprised by the 10-0 start and he wouldn’t be surprised if his team was 5-5 at this point either.
“I’m not good at picking records and I refuse to do it. The only way you can be surprised is if you look at your schedule and say we look to be 8-2 at this point. Then that would be surprising. But I don’t do that. I just refuse to look past the first game,” said the coach.
It seems the challenge now is for West Virginia to remain in the rankings. The Mountaineers have a stiff test ahead at 7-1 Villanova Wednesday night. However, Beilein admits the challenge isn’t so much staying in the national rankings but rather playing good, solid basketball each time out.
“I’m going to make each game a challenge and each practice a challenge,” Beilein said. “Whenever those things happen it’s what the people read the newspapers for and it’s great but it really doesn’t have any bearing on the success of our season yet.”
When Beilein took over a struggling Mountaineer program in 2002 he said he never even envisioned his team getting nationally ranked. Therefore, he was never working on a specific time schedule.
“When we took the job we were just trying to survive and get to the next day and find enough players to have a team,” Beilein said. “I didn’t get to a point where I said here’s our plan. Our plan hopefully will be, and I don’t know if it will bear out this year, but to try and get a little better each year. To be at the status we are right now is better than we were last year. Now we’ve got to do better in the Big East than we did. If we don’t, we don’t. If we do, it’s another small step.”
Beilein also says getting into the Top 25 in no way validates his move from Richmond of the Atlantic 10 to West Virginia of the Big East.
“I’ve never looked to validate the move or do anything like that,” he said. “I do like the idea, and I believe Richmond is in this situation now that they’re in the Atlantic 10, that your RPI does not go down once you start playing in your league. So the fact that we’ve been successful thus far means it’s only good if we can win in our league; if we can be in the top half of our league.”
It’s too early for Beilein to even consider if this West Virginia team ranks among the best he’s ever had. He’ll wait and make that determination after seeing how they perform in February and March.
“I think we had some teams at both Canisius and Richmond that had some pretty impressive winning streaks in February,” Beilein said. “I think we won 16 in a row at Canisius and the one year (at Richmond) we lost just one or two league games in the CAA and really put together a great February … that’s when we can start comparing this team to some of the other teams that we had.”
Briefly:
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t know if we can put success on the system either. We ended up in a situation where we have an awful lot of good kids again who can all shoot the ball and are unselfish. We have a tremendous shot blocker and we have some kids that are dedicated and will sacrifice for their team.
“I don’t know if it is as much (the system) as it is having young men believe very much in themselves and each other. That’s the most important thing.”
“I think we really thought at one time that this was going to be a killer schedule,” he said. “When we scheduled it St. Bonaventure was coming out of the NIT, LSU had just been to the NCAA tournament and Duquesne was moving in the right direction. We caught all three of them in down years though LSU may have rebounded: Two A-10s and a Southeastern Conference. I not sure our schedule has prepared us for what we’re up against right now but our last two wins made up for some of that lack of preparation.”
“There was a fire everyday that we had to put out,” he remembered. “We had a great staff that came with me and the administration here was so supportive that we could see that maybe there was a match lit at the end of the tunnel. But there was a lot that we had to go through.
“We’re not there yet,” he added. “We haven’t met any goals yet other than some respectability. It was daunting but there are a lot of more daunting jobs right now in America, in Asia and certainly in Iraq. It’s something I do for a living and I actually enjoy the process of it.”
“I think the European trip really helped. Even though he got great numbers he had a tough time understanding all the things we do and blew up as many of our plays as he finished,” Beilein noted. “But that allowed him to work through things over there instead of doing it against St. Peter’s, Duquesne or LSU and maybe we lose some of those games.”
“I think we’re getting into a philosophy right now where it’s extremely important that they can shoot,” he said. “But we also need them to be able to pass as well. If you can pass you can see the floor and if you can see the floor you can defend. Athleticism is important but we don’t need to have 10 super athletes. We need to have enough to be competitive.”
“I was too young to appreciate how good Jerry West was as a college player and his teammates. As a pro player that’s where I watched him more. All I know is that I hear a great deal of people say they became West Virginia fans during the years of not just Jerry, but Hot Rod Hundley and Rod Thorn and many other very good players,” he said. “That’s why they’re still fans today.
“I’m just glad we can make people remember those days a little bit more and recall those days. But we’re talking about a team that went to the national championship and we’re a far cry from that. If we’re comparing ourselves to some of those records than that’s a positive.”
