Well, it either happens tonight and a good story gets a great ending addition, or it doesn’t and John Beilein will try again in the 39th year of his coaching career to win the national title that would have gone twice to Rick Pitino and three times avoided Beilein.

I’m not really used to nerves before a big sporting event since my teams are mostly terrible. They’re not often on the cusp of something special and it rarely goes right when they are. This is not to say I’m a Michigan Wolverines fan, either. Nor am I opposed to Louisville.

But to be completely honest with you, I want Beilein to win tonight and I think I’m nervous. Maybe excited. I won’t bore you with the details, most of which I trust you know already, but that outcome would make me really happy for John and his family and everyone they’ve affected through the years.

You may or may not disagree, but I think it’s a pretty fitting testament that Beilein, after all these years, and after a tricky exit, remains the object of so much admiration from those who knew and continue to know him.

“He’s always nothing but gracious, nothing but complimentary about his time at West Virginia,” Richardson said during a phone interview from Atlanta, site of this year’s Final Four. “He always remembers that I was a reporter at WVU and he wants to know what I’m up to.

“He’s a special guy when it comes to people skills.”

Adam Fletcher, a 2005 graduate of St. Albans who played his hoops at Miami University in Ohio, was an assistant strength coach at Michigan for two seasons. Fletcher just completed his first season as the strength coach at Towson University in Maryland.

“You won’t find a better guy in the business who does things the right way and if you’re around him long enough it’s pretty impressive how he manages that on a daily basis,” Fletcher said. “Whenever I was up for the Towson job, one of the better things I had going for me was John Beilein went out of his way to call for me for that position.

“I saw him at a closed practice (at the Final Four on Friday) and it was like he just saw me yesterday.

“With all the stuff you see going on now in college basketball, the reports you see in the paper and on television, you know something like that would never happen in his program. He’s always doing the right thing.”