The ghosts haunting Chrysler Arena–the dingy, rundown 16^th century concrete toilet bowl in Ann Arbor, Mich., which stands next to the shiny, twice-a-year renovated multi-bazillion dollar football stadium–for the past 15 years finally got a kick in their baggy maize shorts.

Gone are the dreaded nightmares of mistaken timeouts.  Gone is the Web of thorny Roses left behind by the black-soxed Fab Five.  Gone are the Tractor-sized memorizes of underachieved goals.  Gone is the sight Jamal Crawford sitting out games, just in case a scandal broke.  Gone are the days of raw skilled LaVell Blanchards, Daniel Hortons, and Dion Harrises never improving after solid freshman years.

In just two years John Beilein showered Chrysler in holy water, stripped down an underachieving program, cut loose dead weight, and built his own imperfect tower of Pisa.

When Michigan hired Beilein away from West Virginia in 2007 the general consensus was that it would take three or four years for the program to contend in the Big Ten and annually compete for a spot in the NCAA Tournament.

His 1-3-1 defense took time to learn, he needed to get different types of players to play his back-cutting, 3-point shooting style of offense.  His style on the court and on the recruiting trail was much different from his Duke-grown predecessor Tommy Amaker. The process would not be a quick and easy.  The first year proved as much. Beilein’s team tallied the most losses in school history.

However, early upsets over highly rated–perhaps overrated–UCLA and Duke gave the Wolverines an inside path to March’s Dancing party.

But growing up is never a smooth ride.

Without a legitimate big man inside the Wolverines struggled during Big Ten conference play, going 9-9 and needing a furious comeback in their final game against Minnesota to be considered a lock to make the Tournament.

The student body in Ann Arbor nervously waited in its worn out old arena on Selection Sunday, praying their bubble wouldn’t burst. As CBS’s program wore on and Arizonas, Minnesotas, and other at-large teams found their place, the crowd at Chrysler felt the ghosts surrounding them start to choke the life out of their tournament dreams.  Finally in the last section of the show Michigan was announced as a 10 seed, and the crowd erupted into screams of ebullient relief.

The Wolverines were the sophomores at the Senior Prom: too early to assume they’d get lucky.  They were supposed to lose to the quicker, stronger, more athletic Clemson team.  “At least we made it” became the Michigan fan’s motto.

Then the game started.

Then they gained a lead.

Then increased the lead.

The game began to epitomize all the reasons John Beilein succeeds everywhere he coaches.  His 1-3-1 stymied Clemson shooters, his pace slowed the game, and his shooter knocked down 3-pointers.

As the lead ballooned to 16, the faithful began to expect a victory.  But as has happened all year, the young team hit a cold patch, going scoreless for 5:14 of the last 6 minutes of the game.  The Tigers chipped away at the lead and finally began hitting 3-point shots.

After the higher ranked team pulled within one, Michigan star Manny Harris, who is often accused of shying away from the big stage, made the biggest play of his two-year career.

He drove hard to the rim. Got hacked on the arm, but hung in the air long enough to make the basket and get the foul.

The team that wasn’t supposed to make the tournament yet–not in its coach’s second year, not without a big man–just won its opening round game.

The confidence of a team that has beaten good opponents, believes in its system, and knows it can hang with any team, is what creates upsets in March.

The fans in Ann Arbor spent the next day convincing themselves that Blake Griffin was overrated and Oklahoma was vulnerable.

They then spent the entire game convincing each other that someone paid the referees–maybe it was Ed Martin?

“27 free throws to 11,” they shouted.  “If Manny wasn’t out the whole game,” they moaned.  “Seriously how was that an offensive foul,” they began to cry.

Valid points?  Sure.

But the refs didn’t force missed shot after missed shot to open the second half.  The refs didn’t commit a turnover that led to Zack Novak performing mid-game fellatio on Blake Griffin.  The refs didn’t will in some of Griffin’s impossibly difficult shots.  The refs didn’t force Ekpe Udoh to transfer to Baylor in the off-season leaving Michigan with ½ a big man (Zack Gibson) to bang with the Griffins.

Complain if you want that CBS seemed to have a giant hard-on for the big man.  It was even rumored that after he allegedly calmed down his big brother to avoid getting a technical, that Obama made a call to Oklahoma to have him shipped to the Gaza Strip.  And I’m pretty sure “60 Minutes” is working on a news story detailing how he found the cure for cancer.

But refs don’t lose 10-point games.

This Michigan team hung in for as long as it could in the tournament: a game and a half.  And that was a game and a half more than most thought they would have.

This was the test run for a young Wolverine squad.  With another year of seasoning in the Beilein system, the maturation of Laval Lucas-Perry, and incoming big men adding much needed size this won’t be a flash-in-the-pan season for basketball in Ann Arbor.

Beilein has already held up his end of the multi-million dollar bargain he signed in 2007 by making Michigan Basketball relevant again.

Now lets hope when the University is done putting up walls around the Big House they hold up their end of the bargain and build him a real freakin’ basketball stadium.

Related posts:

1. ⊚  10 Ways College Basketball is Better than the Pros (Part 2)
2. ⊚  The BCS debacle: Blame Michigan
3. ⊚  10 Ways College Basketball is Better than the Pros