In John Beilein's fourth season as West Virginia's coach, the Mountaineers won 22 games and reached the NCAA round of 16 for a second straight year.
His fourth team at Michigan will have to surpass a lot of expectations to come anywhere close to those heights.
Beilein's Wolverines were one of college basketball's biggest disappointments a season ago, winning only 15 games after starting in the Top 25. Michigan then lost guard Manny Harris, who left early for the NBA draft. With the 2010-11 season fast approaching, Beilein and his players are eager for a fresh start, but they have their share of doubters.
''I know we're going to develop and get better every day, but I also know the Big Ten is at a peak right now,'' Beilein said at media day Wednesday. ''We're dead set on making sure that we finish as high as we are capable of doing, and then we get better.''
This new rebuilding effort is a bit of a shock, considering Beilein's track record. Before arriving at Michigan, he spent five seasons each at Canisius, Richmond and West Virginia, taking each program to the NCAA tournament and enduring only two losing seasons at those three schools.
Things were going according to form at Michigan, too, for a little while. The Wolverines went 10-22 immediately after Beilein's arrival, then improved to 21-14 in 2008-09, making the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1998 and winning their first-round game to boot.
After entering last season with high hopes, Michigan struggled from the beginning and finished 15-17 when a 37-foot buzzer beater by Ohio State's Evan Turner knocked the Wolverines out of the Big Ten tournament.
''The difference between winning and losing, it's so small,'' junior Zack Novak said. ''You really need to take care of the little things.''
Michigan shot under 30 percent from 3-point range last season, a recipe for disaster in Beilein's free-flowing offense. The Wolverines averaged 24 attempts a game from beyond the arc.
''In my experience with shooters, a bad night is 2-for-6, and a good night is 4-for-6. We don't have 1-for-6 nights,'' Beilein said. ''And we've had way too many 1-for-6, 1-for-7 nights from the 3-point range. When you're a shooter - 1-for-6 - you want to avoid those like the plague, and I think you're going to see that evolution as they go into this year.''
Before taking a step forward, however, the Wolverines will have to figure out how to replace Harris and forward DeShawn Sims, who averaged nearly 35 points between them last season. The team does return three starters who can play the perimeter: Novak, Stu Douglass and Darius Morris. Novak averaged 7.4 points last season and is the team's top returning scorer.
After losing Sims - who was a senior - and Harris, the Wolverines will have to be even sharper while executing Beilein's offense.
''I think naturally, when you lose great scorers like that, the following year, you're going to have a lot of balance,'' Morris said.
Douglass says the Wolverines might have become too reliant on Harris and Sims.
''We had two huge weapons in Manny and DeShawn, so whenever they caught the ball they were a threat,'' Douglass said. ''But a lot of times, we'd take really quick shots, and the defense would still be fresh the next possession down.''
That's not how Beilein's teams have traditionally played, but not everything has gone quite as planned so far at Michigan. Beilein enters this season with 597 wins, if you include 75 at Erie Community College, where he got his start as a college head coach. He's won over 58 percent of his games at every stop since, but at Michigan, he's 46-53 so far.
There are no seniors on this season's Wolverines, so the core of this team figures to be together for a while. That gives Michigan another chance to start moving in the right direction, the way Beilein's other programs have done.
''Everybody's really hungry right now, and everybody's just excited for a new challenge,'' Novak said. ''I think we like the position we're in right now. Nobody's really expecting much from us - that's no secret - but we've got a lot of young, talented guys.''
