Richmond Coach Took The Long-Shot Road
John Beilein is old school among a stream of Generation X players. The Richmond coach is described as a drill sergeant who doesn’t allow players to wear earrings or tattoos. And his players adore him.
“He’s real positive with us,” said senior Jarod Stevenson. “(Previous) coach (Bill) Dooley used negative reinforcement. Coach Beilein uses positive reinforcement.”
Beilein, 45, took a rather unconventional route to become a Division I coach.
Instead of making contacts through established means, like the summer camp circuit, he started coaching on the high school junior varsity level. Then varsity. Then junior college.
He has never been an assistant on any level.
“I didn’t take the road that was suggested to me because I was hard-headed a little bit,” he said. “I wouldn’t advise anyone in the world to take that route because I was flat-out lucky.”
During stints at Erie Community College, Nazareth and LeMoyne - all schools located in upstate New York - Beilein drove the vans to games, cooked and cleaned laundry. He also tried to convince his wife Kathleen, who took care of three screaming babies while he coached, that it would all work out some day. His first Division I job was Canisius in Buffalo.
“Now we stay in Marriott, nice hotels,” he said. “You learn a lot by mistakes. Failure is the best fertilizer.”
He didn’t even know whether he would take the Richmond job until the last minute. Beilein, his wife, and his assistant, Phil Seymore, decided to drive to the Final Four last year in Indianapolis from Buffalo. Before he left, Beilein told Richmond athletic director Chuck Boone that he should probably look for someone else.
“Just tell me in Indianapolis,” Boone told him.
Seymore wanted Richmond. So did Kathleen. They stopped at a small restaurant to make the decision. It was time to move on to Richmond. But regret settled into his mind at the Final Four.
“What in the world have I done?” he kept asking himself.
Now, just one game shy of the Sweet 16, the penitence has been removed.
So exactly who is the underdog for today’s second-round East Region matchup between Richmond and Washington?
Could it be the Spiders, a team that history notes loves being in that position? In 1991, No. 15-seeded Richmond knocked off Jim Boeheim, All-American Billy Owens and No. 2-seed Syracuse. And in 1988, the 13th-seeded Spiders beat defending national champion Indiana and its stern coach Bob Knight.
Or could it be the Huskies, who upset No. 6 seeded Xavier on Thursday? The previous time UW won an NCAA game was against Duke in 1984 when coach Bob Bender was a Blue Devils assistant alongside Mike Krzyzewski.
xxxx East Regional Richmond (23-7) vs. Washington (19-9), 1:38 p.m. PST at MCI Center, Washington D.C.