Wojo Article on John Belein

What's so confusing?

Whether you're the hunter or the hunted you need to run and work hard to succeed.

The Fable of the Lion and the Gazelle

The earliest instance located by QI appeared in the Economist magazine in 1985 in an article titled “Lions or gazelles?” where the words were credited to a securities analyst named Dan Montano [DMLG]:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.

Yeah, it's not as inspiring, but I'm pretty sure that logically, the gazelle must run faster than the slowest gazelle,* or it will be eaten, and the lion must also run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. **  

* See also the joke that starts with "Two Michigan Law students go camping" and ends with "I don't have to outrun the bear . . ."

** Assuming one gazelle will feed the pack of lions, and that the pack won't let a slow lion mooch indefinitely.  Otherwise, add replace "slowest gazelle" with "slowest N gazelles", where N is the number of kills it will take to make the lions stop chasing.

I think both have great futures. And choosing your assistants wisely is one way to extend success. I think both may move on to HC jobs soon, so JB will probably have some replacements to make. But he did a good job getting Jordan and Bacari, so I think we'll be alright. I wouldn't mind one of them taking over for JB, but Brandon seems to want to go for more proven coaches based on comments from his other hires. 

I wonder if the words "tight end" came into the conversation?

When you have a week off, you can afford to hold more guys out.  

He's taken four different schools to the NCAA Tournament.  He won Michigan's first Big Ten regular season title since '85-'86.  He got Michigan to the No. 1 ranking for the first time in 20 years.  He got them to the tournament for the first time in eleven years.  He is unimpeachable as far as ethics...But yeah, otherwise I don't see why people appreciate him either. 

Thanks for the opinion of the low hanging fruit, every program he's gone to he's made it better. He struggled his first few years here and look at where he's taken this program now...this is a 22-4 basketball team that hasn't been ranked lower than 7th all year. He's a darn fine coach and he's taken this program where it hasn't been since the mid 90's. I'll let you know my judgement, I'm glad he's here and hope he continues to succeed.

Izzo is an amazing motivator. His players play so hard for him. They give so much effort. I can't imagine an Izzo coached team blowing a chance to win an outright Big 10 title in the last conference game of the year on their home court.

I don't see anyone proclaiming he is the greatest or the best coach in the conference. But considering the history of the Michigan bball program since Ellerbe took over, he's done some pretty impressive things at Michigan. But what a time to start posting for the first time since the OSU-Michigan football game. My instincts tell me you are a troll and my post and common sense is fruitless when confronting you. But I'll post this anyways. 

I am not a Michigan State fan but Tom Izzo is head and shoulders above Beilein in almost every aspect of the game. Had he been coaching the Michigan team when they played Michigan State recently they probably would have won

Are you aware that Beilein has beaten Izzo head-to-head three of the last five times? Or are you one of those frontrunners who was "too cool" to support Michigan basketball until this season?

anyone who criticizes Beilein most likely was not a fan in the early aughts. I remember when cheering for an NIT Championship was the best I could do, I remember sitting in a half-empty Crisler arena during the Amaker era, and I remember when I could show up 2 minutes prior to the game and still get prime seats in the Maize Rage. This was a lousy program not so long ago, and Beilein has completely resurrected it. 

That we could actually get, would do things the right way, and do a better job? Because Brandon was right; if he fired him he'd have to go out and find another Beilein. Will he go down as one of the elite coaches of all time? Probably not, but barring a major downturn in future years that recruiting shows no signs of happening he's not going anywhere because we can't really do any better for us. But if you have any names, I'll listen. If not, you probably need a nice big cup of shut up.