John Beilein and his future wife, Kathleen Griffin, in 1978. 9

Kathleen Beilein has hung the same sign in her kitchen for over 30 years.

THIS MARRIAGE IS INTERRUPTED FOR BASKETBALL SEASON.

"All we've ever known is dad as a coach," says Seana Beilein, the oldest of John's four children.

Seana was born in 1979. A few years later came Patrick. Then Mark. In 1990, Andrew, the youngest, came around.

Living in a small home in the Eastwood section of Syracuse, John Beilein learned the realities of the coaching life. Being a father, a husband and a college coach is like juggling an apple, an orange and an elephant. Nights on the road are spent travelling to games and chasing recruits. Nights at home are spent watching film and calling recruits.

Somewhere in between, the children are raised and the bills are paid.

Holding everything in place - the family's gravitational pull - is the coach's wife.

"She's the captain," says Patrick, 31, now a coach himself. "I don't know how she's done it because it wasn't easy in the beginning. When anyone thinks anything is tough now, she's the one who puts it back into reality and reminds everyone what they had to deal with back then."

Raising a family in Syracuse on one meager salary paled in comparison to the years beforehand. John and Kathleen went on their first date on a warm summer night in 1977. They saw "The Other Side of Midnight," a drama about two young lovers torn apart by distance, then landed at Brennan's, a local bar, eating chicken wings and talking till the wee hours.

"It was almost like we had known each other for a long time, if you've ever had that opportunity to meet that someone," Kathleen says. "It just seemed like, wow. How did ... ? What ... ? What just happened? It was what you wanted it to be."



Kathleen was a teacher at the time, working with special-needs children. She dated John from August through March before landing a job with United Airlines and being transferred to Chicago.

They survived thanks to the jump seat back to Buffalo.

As a flight attendant, Kathleen would hop aboard planes heading to upstate New York for a free ride home on her off days. John visited when he could, but in the year they were apart, he transitioned from a teaching and coaching job at Newfane High School to a full-time coaching job at ECC. He didn't have much time or money. He was up against it.

Much can go wrong when separate lives slice a relationship. New people are met. Good times are forgotten. Agendas change.

That didn't happen here.

A little over a year after their first date, looking predicament in the eye, John stuck a ring in his pocket and flew to Chicago.

Kathleen won't tell the story of how he proposed.

"I'll keep that for me."

Soon after, United transferred Kathleen home to Buffalo. They married. They started a family.

The years living in Syracuse with kids, a mortgage and a coaching career ended up as the groundwork for something more. This was where Beilein bent the future to his ends.

At Le Moyne, he went from being a former high school coach to a future Division I coach. His now famed two-guard offense was born from a meeting with Uncle Tommy, the AD. When Beilein complained he didn't have good enough point guard play, the old coach in Tommy responded, "Oh, really? Well why don't we just pack it up and fold the whole damn program." Instead of doing that, Beilein decided to change his system.

Having spent time watching various offenses based on spacing, cutting and flow, Beilein realized the power of film study. Seana would dart around the family living room as her father sat, knees pressed together a VCR on his lap, thumbs manning the PLAY and REWIND buttons.

The results: Beilein won 163 games and lost 94 in nine years. In 1987-88, Le Moyne won a school-record 24 games, was crowned Mideast Conference champion and earned a berth in the Division II tournament.

_____________________

John Beilein thought he'd stay at Le Moyne as long as the school let him.

Then he kept winning.

And winning.

Soon, that early dream - coaching Division I basketball, climbing higher, taking his unique offense and beating the best with it, all the stuff he told Kathleen he'd do - wasn't reserved for the imagination. He decided he wanted to do more than beat the likes of Sacred Heart, Quinnipiac, Gannon College, Cheyney State, CW Post and Philadelphia Textile.

In 1987, the job at Canisius came open. Between his Buffalo-area roots, his Niland lineage and the success at Le Moyne, Beilein, at 34, was an obvious choice. Marty Marbach, an assistant to Villanova's Rollie Massimino, was offered the job instead.

In 1989, Beilein applied for the head coaching position at Colgate, a fledgling Division I program coming off a 1-24 season. He was sure he'd get it. Jack Bruen, the head coach at Catholic University, landed the job.

"A devastating time," Beilein says.

Then came 1992. Marbach flopped at Canisius, going 49-94 over five years, and was fired.

CANISIUS COLLEGE Buffalo, N.Y.

Years:

1992-97

Record:

89-62 Buffalo, N.Y.1992-9789-62

Beilein applied.

The five other candidates were Maine coach Rudy Keeling, Vermont coach Tom Brennan, Delaware coach Steve Steinwedel, Buffalo State coach Dick Bihr and Niagara assistant coach Bob MacKinnon Jr.

Finally, history pivoted. Canisius called the Le Moyne coach.

Late in the spring of 1992, at 39 years old, John Beilein became a Division I basketball coach for the first time.

He hurried home to Buffalo to tell his parents. Time was running out.

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Arthur Beilein outlived four pacemakers. To this day, his children aren't sure how many heart attacks he had. They were as commonplace as Sunday Mass - Art would get rushed to the emergency room as the family waited with silent prayers. Once John had to rush home from Wheeling, hitchhiking from the Buffalo airport to get back to Newfane.

But Art always pulled through. Then he'd hop right back on his ladder, picking apples or painting the house, ignoring doctors' orders.

That was Art. He worked 35 years at a box factory in Tonawanda, climbing from laborer to plant supervisor. Those who knew him describe a gentleman - starched shirts and a congenital politeness that seemed hackneyed, but was genuine.

Might sound familiar.

Art was in the hospital for the first week of April 1992. His heart was failing again; this time for good. On one of the final visits, John told his father that he'd been named head coach at Canisius, one of the schools Art took his son to see at Buffalo Memorial Auditorium some 30 years earlier.

John is asked about the moment. He begins, catches himself, then veers off-subject. He tries to talk basketball, hopping over the lump in his throat, and is asked again.

"Look, I mean, I learned a lot from him. I learned that you've got to grind. There are no shortcuts. Just go to work every day."

Josephine lived eight more years after Art passed. In her later days, she focused on her grandchildren and a love of politics born from John F. Kennedy's rise to the presidency. For decades, the housewife moonlighted as a Democratic Party committeewoman, worked as an election inspector and served two terms as a town board member. The week she died, on Saint Patrick's Day in 2000, Josephine was busy gathering petition signatures for Bill Bradley's presidential campaign. She was 84.

The Beileins say Josephine gave John his confidence and competitive fire.

"Just because she devoted herself to being a mom, didn't mean that she didn't want to use her intelligence," Beilein says.

Today in Newfane, a bit of Michigan sits between Arthur and Josephine.

Driving a few hundred yards back into St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery, John Beilein's parents lay side by side. They have simple headstones, "MOTHER" and "FATHER," and are kept company by a small maize stone, painted like a basketball, with Michigan's block "M" atop it.

"It just showed up during the Final Four," John's sister Molly says, standing above an out-of-place ornament gleaming in the crab grass. "We found out it was from one of his former players. We decided to leave it."

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Toward the end of "The Other Side of Midnight," Raf Vallone's character, Constantin Demeris, notes, "I learned to quickly estimate the odds against me, and then I beat them. Some people encouraged me along the way."

In John Beilein's 37-year march from his first date with Kathleen to fulfilling his promise to be a big-time coach, there has been encouragement - the kind that stems from a nobody becoming a somebody.

They like to congregate at Danny Sheehan's Steak House in Lockport, New York. This gang - a freewheeling, bus-riding collection of 30 or 40 high school buddies -has been an ever-present cheering section for a kid from Burt who beat every odd in the book.

When Beilein was hired at Canisius, they thought it was the biggest news since the moon landing. Those drives across the state to Le Moyne weren't necessary anymore. John was coaching right there in Buffalo.

"Canisius? Crazy. We thought that was crazy," says Mike Ennis, who bought Danny Sheehan's years ago but never got around to changing the name.

These guys laugh more than they talk.

"I told Mike the other night how well this place will do once they get real beef in the house," says Mike White.

"Apparently that horse farm hasn't closed yet," says Dave Farrugia, blocking his smile with a pint of Guinness.

"What can I say," Ennis concludes, "we specialize in cold, tasteless food."

Left to right: Mike Ennis, Mike White and Dave Farrugia talk over drinks at Danny Sheehan's Steak House in Lockport, N.Y. 11

If not for John Beilein being wildly famous and in Ann Arbor, he'd probably be right here, cheap-shotting his friends.

Twenty years ago, they were all still together. Beilein's boys went to every Canisius game, watching a 10-18 team in his first season turn into a 22-7 team the following year. That group earned a MAAC regular-season championship and a trip to the NIT.

Then, two years later, despite going 7-7 in league play, the Griffs stole fire from the sky and won the conference tournament. Beilein and his merry band of backers were going to the 1996 NCAA tournament. It was the school's first trip since 1957 and was, they all thought, a trip of destiny. Thirteenth-seeded seeded Canisius was a heavy underdog to fourth-seeded Utah, but on the eve of tipoff, word spread in the team's Dallas hotel that the Utes' star, future pro Keith Van Horn, caught the flu and would miss the game.

"We immediately drank ourselves into believing Beilein could win," Ennis laughs.

Utah rolled, 72-43. The Griffs' tournament run, however, officially made Beilein a big deal in Buffalo. The outside took notice.

One year after the loss, he was hired as the University of Richmond's head coach. Beilein had previously turned down an offer from George Mason, but Richmond was too good to pass up. A healthy raise was offered and the school's athletic director flew to upstate New York to invite him to campus. With that, for the second time in his 45 years, John moved south.

He'd win there, too, and at least once a year, Ennis and company would bus down from Buffalo to see him. In five seasons, Beilein went 100-53 at Richmond. In his first season, the 14th-seeded Spiders defeated third-seeded South Carolina 62-61 in the 1998 NCAA tournament.

UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND Richmond, Va.

Years:

1997-2002

Record:

100-53 WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY Morgantown, W.Va.

Years:

2002-07

Record:

104-60 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Ann Arbor, Mich.

Years:

2007- present

Record:

150-94 Richmond, Va.1997-2002100-53Morgantown, W.Va.2002-07104-60Ann Arbor, Mich.2007- present150-94

Then the bus trip went to West Virginia University. Beilein moved to Morgantown in 2002, setting off a five-year thunderclap. It only took three seasons for the Mountaineers to ride his system to a Sweet 16 matchup with Texas Tech. In a preview story for the game, USA Today had to provide a phonetic spelling (BEE-line) for readers. The other coach's name was easy.

Bob Knight.

The final? West Virginia 65, Texas Tech 60.

Following that 2005 appearance in the Elite Eight, the Fightin' BEE-lines appeared in the 2006 Sweet 16 and won the 2007 NIT championship. Patrick, the oldest son, had a great view for those runs. He was a junior and senior on the Elite Eight and Sweet 16 teams and didn't sit on the bench like dad at Wheeling. Born to play the system, he scored 1,001 career points.

That spring, in March 2007, John Beilein received a phone call from Michigan athletic director Bill Martin.

"We couldn't believe we were going to Michigan," Ennis says.

We?

"We identify with him. Him making it is like one of us making it," he says.

Ennis claims Beilein has a 13-1 record with the bus trip in attendance. Irish embellishment? Who cares.

"Sometimes I personally break down in tears knowing that one of us has made it," White adds. "The thing that makes John Beilein special is regardless of the level that he went to and how successful he's become, he's never forgotten his roots and he's still the same person. He represents us."

"OK. Relax," Ennis says.

Emotions are getting the best of the boys at Sheehan's. Leaning on the bar, Ennis points across the room to the opposite wall.

"See, there's John's picture over there. We hung it next to the bathroom."

There's more laughter. They reach for their drinks.

_____________________