If John Beilein’s team doesn’t win the Big Ten regular-season championship, many will point back to a snowy, miserable night in State College.

Beilein knows that, understanding the value of each night on the floor. His team didn’t show up early, and he couldn’t show up in the second half, getting tossed out of an eventual 75-69 loss.

The circumspect U-M boss hadn’t gotten the heave-ho since a fellow Michigan Man, Gerald R. Ford, was leaving the White House. Beilein says he’ll discuss the circumstances with Big Ten officials, a meeting which — if conducted in Crisler Center with tickets available — would likely sell out.

The Michigan boss went ballistic (by Beilein standards) after junior guard Zavier Simpson got sent halfway back to Ann Arbor on a moving screen. The Wolverines hadn’t done much at that point, and after the Nittany Lions added a potential injury to the insulting opening 20 minutes, the coach became fed up.

He began barking at the Big Ten crew of Lewis Garrison, Robert Riley and Paul Szele, and didn’t last long. He drew a technical foul, and shortly thereafter, the bye-bye blow — a second “T.”

The ejection was so rare, and seemed so out of character, that one long-time Beilein observer wondered if it wasn’t calculated.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about it,” former Wolverine and college basketball analyst Tim McCormick said. “John Beilein is brilliant. I’m going to go as far as to say it may have been planned. When he was looking at his team, he was seeing a lack of energy. I think he needed to do something to get them riled up a little bit.

“It may have been he needed to do something as drastic as to get thrown out, to spark them. It seemed to work for a stretch in the second half.”

If the early exit was a ruse, it didn’t ultimately work. When you dig a 13-point halftime hole on the road in the Big Ten, anger will buy only so much comeback.

Certainly, nobody saw the Beilein bon voyage coming — including his assistants.

“I love his assistant coaches,” McCormick said. “They are phenomenal. I think they got caught off guard a little bit, too. Coach Beilein is always so in control.

“An assistant coach’s job is that, when a coach gets that first T, you put him in a bear hug and you get him out of there and protect him … Beilein was not insulated from the referees enough, and I think that was why he was thrown out.”

If that’s the case, some Big Ten head coaches must be wrapped in 20 invisible layers of Bob Vila’s finest. Either that, or ejections are on a sliding scale, according to established personality.

In other words, if you act from the opening tip like the someone squired lighter fluid on your remaining hair and tossed on a match, you can get away with it. Oh, that’s just the great, fiery … well, you fill in the name.

But gentleman John Beilein … well, if the neck tie swings off center, it’s time to settle down.

Nobody’s going to insulate Michigan from the present Big Ten reality. The Wolverines lost to the 14th-place team in a 14-team league, and while Beilein is right in saying Penn State could easily have several more wins, it’s a bad loss.

Instead of remaining atop the Big Ten all alone, the Wolverines are knotted with Michigan State at 11-3, just ahead of 10-3 Purdue, with Maryland (10-4) and Wisconsin (9-5) hanging around. Worse yet, Michigan still has the Spartans and the Terrapins twice each, with a road game at Minnesota also remaining.

Earlier in the year, McCormick predicted four losses would win the Big Ten. That seemed pessimistic, given the run the Wolverines were on. Now it might be conservative.

“I don’t know where the team will go from here,” McCormick said. “I could see Michigan maybe losing three of their last six. They have a really tough schedule. If they don’t use last night to get really, really focused, there’s the potential that you could have a slide going into the Big Ten Tournament.

“I don’t think that will happen, but certainly — watching last night — they’ve got some things to tighten up on the offensive end.”

And overall. Beilein sensed it, with a game slipping away. Now and his team face a tougher fight than ever.

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