The reunion theme is strong here. Villanova’s Jay Wright, Temple’s Fran Dunphy and Iowa’s Fran McCaffery all have Philadelphia bonds, and the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight games are in Philly. West Virginia has its Brooklyn players. Bob Huggins and Stephen F. Austin coach Brad Underwood go all the way back to when Underwood was the head coach at Dodge City Community College and Huggins recruited Art Long. WVU shared Big East space with Notre Dame and Mike Brey.

And of course, John Beilein once coached the Mountaineers.

He shepherded the Wolverines to an upset win against Indiana in the Big Ten tournament that ultimately put them into Wednesday’s play-in game against Tulsa in Dayton, Ohio, which they won. Michigan then left the arena not long after midnight and headed here.

JOHN BEILEIN: We’re really pleased to be in this situation. Not even 12 hours ago or so, or 24 hours ago, we were getting ready to play a game not knowing if we were going back to Ann Arbor or making this trip to Brooklyn.

So get in at 4:00 this morning and got some rest. We had the latest wakeup call ever at noon for our players, and just ate and walked through a few things that Notre Dame does. Look forward to getting a little shootaround and getting the kids sweating a little bit today and get prepared for Notre Dame.

Q. It’s a short amount of time for you to turn around and prepare your team. Does it help at all that you spent a bunch of time coaching in the Big East against Mike Brey’s teams?

JOHN BEILEIN: Yeah, I guess it helps him as well that we know each other pretty well. I’ve got a lot of respect for Mike. Yeah, I know a little bit when I watched him play. I see a lot of similarities the way they played, but it was nine years ago when we did play.

We recruited many of their players. They recruited many of ours. There’s a lot of similarities between the programs. So in a short prep, whether it’s one or two days, you’ve just got to go play this time of year.

We spoke for a few minutes afterward about this and that. General and jovial catching up stuff. But he did confess this reminds him a bit of the team’s 2005 journey.