The John Beilein era has come to an end at Michigan after it was announced on Monday he would be leaving Ann Arbor to become the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
His departure signals the end of a golden era for Michigan basketball, with his list of accomplishments here containing everything short of a National Title.
To put in perspective just how rare the sustained run of success Beilein had at Michigan was, we've taken a look back at all of his predecessors throughout U-M history.
Beilein's 278 wins were the most ever for any Michigan basketball coach, and in fact, made him just one of two coaches in U-M lore to eclipse the 200-win plateau (Johnny Orr being the other, with 209 victories).
Ironically, Beilein and Orr — the two winningest coaches in school history — compiled an almost identical winning percentage.
Orr came out victorious in 64.9 percent of his games in Ann Arbor, while Beilein beat him out by one/tenth of a percentage point, at 65.
Both coaches were also at Michigan for 12 seasons, but Orr's list of accomplishments pales in comparison to Beilein's.
The former won two conference titles (1974 and 1977) and took the Wolverines to the National Championship in 1975, while Beilein, on the other hand, grabbed two Big Ten regular-season crowns (2012 and 2014), two Big Ten Tournament titles (2017 and 2018), and took his club to two National Titles (2013 and 2018).
Beilein also led the Maize and Blue to the NCAA Tournament in nine of his 12 years on the job, while Orr only did four times (though the field primarily consisted of either 25 or 32 teams during the 1970s).
The most losses in school history in 2007-08 (22) and a 15-17 campaign in 2009-10 helped prevent Beilein from owning the program's best-ever winning percentage, with five other coaches holding a better mark than his 65.
Two of those five, however (George Veenker's 74.5 victorious percentage from 1928-31 and Osborne Cowles' 66.7 mark from 1946-48), coached three seasons or less in Ann Arbor.
Both Bill Frieder and Steve Fisher finished with higher winning marks than Beilein (68.7 and 69.2, respectively), but each had their reputations tarnished for separate reasons — the former for the way his teams consistently underachieved in the NCAA Tournament, and the latter for the recruiting scandal that shook the entire basketball program.
No coach in Michigan history won at such a high level — while also doing it the right way — to the extent that Beilein did.
---
• Talk about this article inside The Fort
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, The Wolverine
• Follow us on Twitter: @TheWolverineMag, @BSB_Wolverine, @JB_ Wolverine, @AustinFox42, @Balas_Wolverine, @DrewCHallett and @Qb9Adam.
• Like us on Facebook
