March 2017 | Page 18 of 34

INDIANAPOLIS –– As Michigan’s team plane skidded off the runway at Michigan’s Willow Run Airport at 150 miles an hour last Wednesday, Coach John Beilein and his players feared for their lives.

“What made it Cinderella was the circumstance,” Beilein said here as his team prepares to face Oklahoma State on Friday afternoon in its first game since winning the Big Ten Tournament on Sunday in Washington, D.C. “It wasn’t just skidding off the runway. It was full going, 150 miles an hour, we can’t stop. And our kids got — thank goodness the plane didn’t flip. All kinds of things could have happened once we got off the plane and looked.”

The pilot “veered to the side” instead of going forward through buildings and that saved the lives of those on the plane, according to an account from Brendan Quinn of MLive.com.

Now, as the Wolverines prepare to play in the NCAA Tournament, one has to ask: Are they the team of destiny? Is it preordained that they will make some kind of deep run given that they all just survived a brush with death?

Coaching moves, Indiana

Rick Pitino, John Calipari Both Say Tom Crean Will Get Another Job

March 16, 2017

author: Adam Zagoria

INDIANAPOLIS — Kentucky coach John Calipari and Louisville coach Rick Pitino both supported Tom Crean after he was fired by Indiana on Thursday and both said he would land another job down the road.

“In this profession, you’re hired and you’re fired, that’s the two things that happen,” Calipari said on the eve of his No. 2-seeded Wildcats facing No. 15 Northern Kentucky at Bankers Life Fieldhouse. “Whether I think it’s right or not, I’m just disappointed for him and his family.

“But let me say this, someone will hire him because he’s Tom Crean, he works, [has] great integrity. So ther will be a job and if he wants to take it he’ll take it. And if not he’ll sit out and do what I did, I became the best amateur golfer in the country for about six months.”