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John Beilein is leaving West Virginia and will be the new basketball coach at Michigan. Among the most interesting things regarding his departure is how he will deal with his ample buyout. West Virginia is owed $2.5 million over the next five years and Michigan is not paying any of it. Beilein has been surprisingly coy when asked about it, as though he thinks that somehow his lawyers will be able to get him out of it. Beilein had better have something up his sleeve, otherwise the $1.3 million a year Michigan will pay him suddenly wont seem like so much.

The bigger question regarding Beilein coming to Michigan is how his system will fare in the Big Ten. Of course the “system” I refer to is just shooting tons of three pointers on offense and playing a 1-3-1 zone on defense. In the past, Beilein’s teams have played shoddy defense and been dominated inside and on the boards. At first glance, that does not bode well for a team that will have to play in the rough and tough Big 10. However, the thing that Beilein does have going for him is that at Michigan he will be able to recruit better athletes. A fitting analogy to Beilein’s situation is that of John Thompson III at Georgetown. Thompson took a gimmicky system to a big school, and when he was able to recruit outstanding athletes to play in that system, a final four berth ensued. In light of Thompson’s success, the optimistic way of looking at Beilein coming to Michigan is not that his soft team will get battered in the physical Big 10, but rather than his three point shooters and 1-3-1 zone will be impossible to stop once he is able to recruit athletes who wont be overmatched inside. It will certainly be interesting to see which kind of team Beilein puts on the floor in the coming years.

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