Shooting, system could propel Mountaineers to Indy

	John Beilein has enjoyed 24 winning seasons in his 27 years as a head coach. Elsa/Getty Images
	MAILBAG Grant Wahl will periodically answer questions from SI.com users in his mailbag. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

We didn't get to any questions in last week's Magic Eight unveiling, so let's dive right in...

Time to write a full-length article about what's going on here in Morgantown. John Beilein took a broken program in a basketball backwater and in four years has turned it into a national championship contender. And he did it with interesting, intelligent basketball. Best of all though, Beilein does it with class. I don't want this season to ever end, but this program will attract new, great talent. WVU basketball fans are on cloud nine.
-- Matt Armistead Morgantown, W. Va.

I had a blast in Morgantown last week, and not just because I spoke with Patty (the Mistress of Pain) Colebank, Kevin Pittsnogle's tattoo specialist. (See this week's SI for more details and the full-length story you're looking for.) It's easy to forget how much disarray the WVU program was in before Beilein took over. Remember, Beilein was something like the school's 85th choice to replace Gale Catlett after Bob Huggins turned down an offer and Dan Dakich took the job -- and then left after a matter of days because the program was such a mess.

Pittsnogle, for one, had committed to Catlett before all hell broke loose. "I was in Germany and got a call from Dakich saying he wanted to visit when I came back," Pittsnogle recalls. "Then I come back and there's another coach named John Beilein. I'm like, What happened to Dakich? 'Oh, he quit.' So Coach Beilein came out and we talked, and his offense seemed great for my style of play." Pittsnogle kept his commitment, which he now calls "the greatest decision I ever made."

As for Mike Gansey, nobody really noticed when he transferred from St. Bonaventure, and nobody thought he would turn into a Big East Player of the Year candidate and potential first-team All-America with an NBA future. But he has thrived in a system that values good 3-point shooting, sharing the ball and wearing down teams with near-faultless precision. It's tremendous fun to watch.

Which "system" team is toughest to prepare for in the NCAA tournament? The famed Syracuse 2-3 zone? West Virginia's 1-3-1 zone AND backdoor offense? Wisconsin's s-l-o-w game? The Princeton-esque Air Force attack? Or another school? To put it another way; if you are playing a weekend game in March with only one day to prepare, who do you least want to face?
-- Daniel Dingerson, Chicago

If you're talking about this March, that team is West Virginia. This came up last week when I was interviewing Beilein. When I asked him the best way to describe his complicated offense, this is what he had to say: "It's based on trying to have five shooters on the court all the time, whether you're taking advantage of mismatches or being different in your whole system, so when people try to prepare for it in two days hopefully it's a little more difficult. In the Big East we play almost everyone once, so they only see it once a year."

WVU's 1-3-1 zone is also a head-scratcher for opposing teams, which means the Mountaineers are confusing on both ends of the court. Obviously, preparing for Syracuse's 2-3 zone is an annual headache, and I agree with your nomination of Wisconsin, though more for the matchup quirks of Bo Ryan's Swing offense (big guys on the outside, small guys inside) than anything to do with pace.

In your Magic Eight article you spoke about the great chemistry of Florida. What do you think contributes to chemistry? A coaching strength in developing it? A "skill" of certain players to induce it? Or does it just happen and can't be predicted?
-- Kyle Meadors Nashville, Tenn.

When I asked Billy Donovan about the Gators' chemistry recently, he said something that I thought was fascinating: "You don't find that out in the recruiting process," Donovan said. "We all ask the same questions and get the same responses." This statement is intriguing on a couple of levels. For starters, it indicates that Donovan thinks chemistry can't be predicted with any certainty. Second, it implies that he thinks Florida hasn't always had that togetherness (which you and I already knew, but this is the coach admitting as much). In the end, coaches help create an environment where chemistry develops, and players provide the willpower (and sacrifices) to make it happen. But for Donovan to say that you can't know ahead of time based on recruiting is a significant admission. Maybe coaches don't get to know players during the process as much as some folks believe.