Go West (Virginia) young man: John Beilein has rekindled the once-proud mountaineers' program that harkens back to the days of Jerry West and "hot rod" hundley.

COACH: We know you are a native of Burt, NY. What was your childhood like? Where did you attend high school and what sports did you play?

BEILEIN: I was the eighth of nine children. So my childhood consisted of a lot of backyard games and limited television. We played basketball an awful lot during the winter and football in the fall and baseball in the summer. I went De Sales Catholic High School in Geneva, NY.

COACH: You attended Wheeling (WV) College (now Wheeling Jesuit University) and played on the basketball team from 1971-75, serving as team captain your junior season. What position did you play and what kind of player were you?

BEILEIN: I was a walk-on point guard who earned a scholarship in my sophomore year. I didn't even visit the school. I just went there and decided that's where I wanted to go and I was going to make the team and earn a scholarship. And that's exactly what happened. I was not a great player. I played four years but never started a game during that time or played much more than 10 minutes a game.

In baseball I played shortstop and third base. Overall, I would say I was a better than average high school athlete.

COACH: You began your coaching career at Newfane (NY) Central High, where you served for three years. What do you remember about your days on the scholastic level and how did the experience shape you as a young coach?

BEILEIN: That was a tremendous classroom experience for me. I coached three different sports and I would have maybe a week off in March between basketball and baseball. I would virtually teach courses a day then go coach football, basketball, or baseball and then go to night school to get my Master's degree. So those were very informative days for me. I knew that I wanted to coach basketball full-time after that because it was very demanding and rewarding.

What I started to learn was that there were so many different methods of coaching and so many different personalities on your team, that you couldn't treat everyone fairly but you also couldn't treat them all the same. That's when I also began to read Scholastic Coach magazine. I would look for it every month. And since I was coaching three different sports it always appealed to me, whether it was some new type of rotation against the bunt or a new formation in football, and obviously anything on basketball.

COACH: In 1978, you accepted your first collegiate head coaching position at Erie Community College in Buffalo, NY, and posted a record of 75-43 over four seasons. At what point in those formative years did you feel you had what it took to become a successful college coach?

BEILEIN: This was another avenue of learning. Teaching young men to be both a good player and a good college student, without their parents being involved. At least in high school, you have a pretty good idea that the parents are going to make sure their kids go to school. Now, on the college level, you have to make sure that your players are going to class every day. I become more than just a coach at that point. In high school I was a teacher of history. Now I was suddenly a teacher of lifestyle, values, and work habits.

COACH: Success has followed you at virtually every one of your coaching stops, compiling 24 winnings seasons, including 12 20-win campaigns and the only collegiate coach to record 20-win seasons at four different levels--junior college, NAIA, NCAA Division II, and NCAA Division I. To what do you attribute that?

BEILEIN: Yes, I have all of those 20-win seasons but I'm also probably about the only guy who has coached at all of those levels. I also think that being thrown into the fire at a very early age helped. I was coaching at the college level in my 20's. I didn't have a mentor at that point yet. I established a mentor-protege relationship with my uncles, Tom and Joe Niland: one had been the head coach at LeMoyne and the other at Canisius, before I got to LeMoyne. And I was basically learning on the fly and hated to lose so much that I was willing to work every hour that I could to make sure we had every chance to win.

You can go to clinics and read Scholastic Coach to better yourself, but you really don't have anybody to take you aside and say, 'Hey, it was a good idea but it doesn't work' or 'Why don't you just try changing the angle of the screen a little bit.' It's important early on to have someone to help you with the nuances of the game. When I got to LeMoyne, when I was about 29-30, that's when I started to develop a coaching style, so to speak, of my own.

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COACH: Prior to taking over the program at LeMoyne College, you served one season (1982-83) at Nazareth College in Rochester, NY. One of your players was a guy by the name of Jeff Van Gundy, who has since become one of the best coaches in the NBA. Did you foresee his potential as a coach?

BEILEIN: Jeff Van Gundy was my last recruit. I never got to coach him. He played on the SUNY-Brockport team for his father, Bill, and I was the coach at Nazareth. Actually, my first game as a four-year college coach was against Brockport and the Van Gundy's. I hadn't interviewed for the LeMoyne job yet nor had I even entertained the thought. Then Bill Van Gundy left SUNY-Brockport and Jeff was looking for a place to transfer. So Jeff came to our office at Nazareth and we talked and I told him I would love to have him play for me. But a week later I took the LeMoyne job and never did have the chance to coach him.

At that time, I didn't really get to know him for more than an hour in my office. But you could sense that he was driven. I think a lot of us who are not particularly great players; we find out very early that we're not going to make any money in the game as players. What's our next path? It's to make a living out of coaching.

Look at where some of the more successful college coaches went to school. Tubby Smith went to High Point. Rick Barnes went to Lenoir-Rhyne. I went to Wheeling Jesuit. Jim Calhoun went to AIC. Jim Boeheim was a walk-on at Syracuse. Great players? Not many. Great minds? Almost all of them.

COACH: You have a knack for rebuilding moribund programs, i.e., guiding LeMoyne to the Division II tournament with a school-record a 24-win season in 1987-88 and leading Canisius to three straight postseason appearances, including the 1996 NCAA tournament. What is the secret to your success?

BEILEIN: Sometimes we walked into programs where the cupboard wasn't bare. Maybe if the previous coach hadn't left he might have had the same success. Then there have been other times where we started from scratch, like we had to at West Virginia. When we go into a program we try to build relationships with our players. We have a saying: Rules without relationships equals rebellion. You can go into a program and establish a lot of rules but if they don't feel that you care about them or love them, it's going to be tough for them to adhere to those rules. You really have to connect with the players before you can reach them. I think that has been a constant with our staff.

COACH: At Richmond, you compiled a 100-53 record in five seasons and led the Spiders to three postseason berths, including the 1997-98 NCAA tournament, where your team knocked off a solid South Carolina team in the opening round. What was it about the West Virginia program that enticed you to leave? Did you feel it was a sleeping giant?

BEILEIN: I had gone to Wheeling Jesuit in West Virginia, so I knew a little bit about the athletic climate at West Virginia. I like a place that is a college town and has a college atmosphere. I liked the idea that we were the state school and played in the Big East Conference. Richmond, of all of my moves, that was the most difficult for me to make. That was probably my favorite of all the jobs. They were all special to me but Richmond was really a terrific situation. So I knew West Virginia and I wanted one shot at the Big East and I took it.

COACH: You are obviously a coach who has paid his dues, climbing the ladder to your current position at a Big East Conference school. What advice do you have for young, aspiring coaches who may be frustrated with their ability to move up the ranks?

BEILEIN: There's a reason for everything. And I think there was an opportunity at Canisius, I think in 1988, when I did not get the job. I was a runner-up. That would have been my first Division I job. I ended up getting it 1992. If I had gotten the job in 1988, I now realize that I really hadn't been ready to be a Division I coach. In the ensuing years, from 1989 to 1991, that's when I began to evolve as a coach and start to understand personalities. And to understand the fluctuation of a team from year to year: That I was now ready to teach my players how to play as a team.

COACH: Interestingly enough, you have never served as an assistant on any level--you have always been a head coach. That is almost unheard of in this day and age. Do you feel you missed out on what you could have learned as an assistant coach?

BEILEIN: I think it goes the other way. The thing that's allowed us to have the success we've had is that when you're a head coach and you make mistakes, you don't forget them very well. And if you use those mistakes as a teaching tool for yourself, you will become a better coach more quickly. More so than an assistant coach who is not allowed to make the same number of mistakes. We learn a lot more from failure than we do from success.

COACH: What characteristics do you look for in an individual when hiring an assistant?

BEILEIN: You look for an assistant coach who isn't concerned about weekends off or a day off here and there. I want someone with the mentality of, 'Can we get the job done?' They have to have that kind of mindset and then being willing to learn. I also look for someone with similar qualities on how to think about the game.

COACH: What is your approach to recruiting at West Virginia, a state with a small talent base, and how important is that to the future of Mountaineers basketball?

BEILEIN: What's unique is that because it's a state with a small population, you don't have a large number of great Division I athletes. You do have some good athletes. But usually you have to go outside the state more often than we stay inside the state. Just getting recruits to West Virginia, it's more about finding a kid you can identify with and who can identify with you, your staff, and the university. You can be the best recruiter in the world but if you recruit a kid to a place where he doesn't belong, it doesn't work. If you recruit a non-academic kid to Richmond, it becomes a very, very difficult situation. If you recruit a kid who wants to stay in the inner city to West Virginia, you're going after something that doesn't have a chance of working. When you sit down with a kid, you will find out pretty soon if he fits.

COACH: What kind of offensive and defensive philosophy do you employ at West Virginia?

BEILEIN: Offensively, we try to be very versatile and resourceful in our approach. It's sort of an old school two-guard set with a high post. We pretty much run an open floor. Defensively, we continually try to change our defenses as much as we can. We play a good deal of man. But we play a lot of 1-3-1 zone that is quite unique.

COACH: What part of coaching do you enjoy the most: practice, recruiting, game preparation, or ingame decision making?

BEILEIN: I love practice. And I enjoy the process of seeing a young man grow both on and off the floor. To see him get it, to look in his eyes and have him say, 'I understand now, coach.' Why it's important to eat right. Why it's important to have the proper amount of rest. And why it's important to practice hard every day. That's what I coach for. The wins and losses, they don't really affect me that much. Seriously. Losses used to drive me crazy. Now, I can't wait to watch the film because I know I am going to learn so much more that is going to make me a better coach after a loss.

COACH: Name your biggest pet peeve when it comes to today's players?

BEILEIN: There's a sense of entitlement. They want it all and they want it right away. And they do not want to own it. We try not to recruit those kids.

COACH: In your opinion, what is the most important aspect in a player-coach relationship?

BEILEIN: It might sound funny, but it's love. You have to do as much as you can to make the kid feel at home and feel loved, not only from you but his teammates.

COACH: Aside from teaching the game of basketball, what is the single most important role of a head coach when relating to and shaping young men?

BEILEIN: Accountability. There is going to be consequences, both good and bad, for their actions. That's so important, whether it's time management or decision-making. They could be big or small but you want them to be positive consequences. You want them to know they will get a pat on the back for a job well done or doing community service. But there will be stern consequences if they don't attend class or are rude to someone in a restaurant.

Interview By Kevin Newell