John Beilein is in a comfortable and familiar place with this season's Michigan basketball team.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

When Darius Morris was a kid growing up in Los Angeles, he watched the NCAA tournament every year. In 2005, a team making a run caught his eye.

West Virginia reached the Elite Eight that year as a No. 7 seed before falling to Louisville in overtime. At the time, there was no way to know how it would impact the Michigan point guard’s future.

“I remember West Virginia making that run,” Morris said. “I didn’t know I was going to be playing for that coach but how they were exceeding expectations and how they really were making a lot of noise even though it wasn’t really expected (stood out).”

Sound familiar? It should.

There are plenty of similarities between the John Beilein-coached teams. Former West Virginia standout Mike Gansey said in an email from Spain the comparisons are easy to make.

• The 2004-05 West Virginia team started its season 10-0 including winning at LSU and North Carolina State. This year’s Michigan team started its year 11-2 with a win at Clemson.


• The 04-05 WVU team then started the Big East season 1-5. This year’s Michigan team started the Big Ten 1-6.

• “It was kind of just a shell-shock, we won all these games, beat good teams,” said Patrick Beilein, a junior on the 2004-05 West Virginia team. “And then you get into the Big East and we’re like ‘What happened? We’re the same team.’”
  

• All of it flipped after a win over a big rival. In Michigan’s case, it was a 61-57 win at Michigan State on Jan. 27. For WVU, it was an 83-78 overtime win over Pittsburgh on Feb. 5.


• From there, both teams made a run to reach the NCAA tournament bubble. WVU finished the regular season 6-2 tear. Michigan finished its regular season on a 8-3 run.


• To feel secure, both teams needed to win a game in the conference tournament. West Virginia beat Providence, Boston College and Villanova to reach the Big East championship game. Michigan knocked off Illinois in the Big Ten quarterfinals.

Both teams had a guard who also played undersized in the post. For Michigan, it is junior Zack Novak. For West Virginia, it was Johannes Herber. Even when Beilein was recruiting Novak, he saw the comparison.

“He reminded of a left-handed Johannes Herber, who played the two and the four for us at West Virginia," Beilein said. "He was a tough rebounder and a matchup problem for people.”

West Virginia had a star with a cult-like following in forward Kevin Pittsnogle. Michigan has a star who is developing that kind of reputation in Morris.

And both teams made their runs due to first-year players who picked up Beilein’s two-guard offense faster than most.

At West Virginia, it was Gansey, who had transferred from St. Bonaventure. At Michigan, it is freshman guard Tim Hardaway Jr. Both were listed as guards who played out on the wing.

“He has really carried them in the second half of games late this season,” Gansey wrote in an e-mail from Spain. “Also, Zack Novak and Stu Douglass have been instrumental leaders with this young team with no seniors and have let Morris and Hardaway Jr. kinda be the stars and have done the little things.

“Without the two of them, Michigan wouldn’t be where they are right now.”

The teams aren’t identical, though.

Michigan, mostly due to the sophomore guard Morris, gets more production out of its guards while West Virginia was a more forward-and-wing based team. J.D. Collins, the point guard on that WVU team, averaged 3.8 points a game. Morris leads the Wolverines with 15.2 points a game.

The Mountaineers had more experience, having reached the 2004 NIT and had some senior leadership in forward Tyrone Sally. Michigan has no seniors and just two rotation players — Novak and junior guard Stu Douglass — who have any postseason experience from the 2009 NCAA tournament when they were freshmen.

The run in 2005 caught the eye of then-Michigan athletic director Bill Martin, who started paying attention to West Virginia because of Pittsnogle. He continued to pay attention to the coach, Beilein, and eventually hired him four years ago, perhaps envisioning a team like this.

So what would it take for a similar Michigan run this March?

Gansey said West Virginia made its run because “it was just getting hot at the right time,” including a run to the Big East tournament final.

Patrick Beilein pointed to the confidence instilled by his father, that when the Mountaineers faced second-seeded Wake Forest and Chris Paul in the second round, they weren’t intimidated. What they had done to reach the NCAA tournament had given them confidence they could do anything.

“We came into the game like ‘We’re here, too. Not we’re here just because,’” Patrick Beilein said. “We made things happen in the regular season and it’s all about confidence and swagger and I think this team has that a very young age, which is great.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein