“We started where we started, and we’ve been able to just … make our way. John has worked hard and kept his integrity, the values of what he’s always believed, and just kept it going. Now I feel he has reached the very top. I think it means more when you do that. You appreciate everything along the way. It’s always been work hard, stay the course, and good things will happen.”

So many people are talking about John Beilein’s journey this week, but really, they are talking about the end of the journey. That’s the story here, isn’t it? Beilein has coached for 36 years at seven schools, and this weekend, at age 60, he will finally coach in the Final Four. Validation. That’s a hell of a story.

Except … that’s not the story, not to Beilein. That’s just the end of it. But what about the first 35 seasons? Why are they just a prelude to this weekend? Don’t they have value? And if they don’t have value, then what kind of life is this?

“It was probably in his head, or my head: Wouldn’t it be nice to be in the Final Four someday?” his wife Kathleen told me this week. “But I don’t think it was really what drove him so much.”

On dark Michigan winter mornings, before he leaves for work, John Beilein usually pulls out a very small book. It fits in the palm of his hand. It is called “My Daily Bread”. It’s a prayer book. It belonged to his mother for many years before she passed away in 2000.

Beilein, a Catholic who attends Mass every Sunday, reads a passage from “My Daily Bread” at home. Then he takes the book to the office. He reads it before games. He brings it on the road. He bought copies for his sons Mark, Patrick and Andy, and for his daughter Seana. He bought more copies for other friends, or to give to people who seek his help, when he thinks the time is right.

Seana says when her father reads the prayer book, “it’s more about the reflection,” than religion. It is a moment to be thankful. His Michigan teams huddle for a brief prayer before games, but it’s so deliberately generic that it is barely even a prayer. Essentially, the players thank whoever or whatever they think is responsible for them being there.

Beilein does not talk much about this. He practices his religion but doesn’t promote it. Yet he is shaped by his religion every day. It helps explain how he climbed to the top without seeming to climb at all. He won’t allow himself to be driven by the petty feuds and raw ambition that fuel so many other successful coaches.

Sometimes his wife and kids tease him: Come on, you’re a good coach. Admit it! He won’t say it. He just works, the way he worked on his family’s apple farm in upstate Burt, N.Y, as a kid.

Four years at Erie Community College. One at Division III Nazareth, in Rochester, N.Y. Nine at LeMoyne College in Syracuse.

At one point, the Canisius job opened up, and man, did he want it. Division I! It was in Buffalo, near his hometown. It was his dream job. He interviewed. Canisius hired somebody else. “He was devastated,” his wife says. He kept working.

After he spent nine years at LeMoyne, Canisius called again.

This time, he got it.

People asked him about getting rejected the last time around, a big, juicy apple for the kid from an apple farm: Just take a bite and let your ego take over. Tell them Canisius finally realized its mistake. Say you felt you deserved it instead. Instead, Beilein just said last time, “I wasn’t ready.” Back to work. He coached Canisius for five years.

We’re up to 19 years now, and we still haven’t left western New York.

A lot of coaches commit so completely to their jobs that they wake up at age 50 and realize their kids don’t really know them, or resent them. Beilein’s work just made his kids admire him more. They saw him driving the van and help his players move into their dorms. He looked at recruits’ transcripts to see if they were good students, not just good enough to get into school. In a profession that so easily corrupts, he remained uncompromised.

“It’s hard to say what” it is, his son Patrick says. “But you see him walking down the street … you see just acts of kindness a lot with other people. Giving a homeless guy 20 bucks on the street. Just little things.”

They adopted his teams, and not just the ones he coaches. The kids are all Buffalo Bills fans like their father. John listened to St. Louis Cardinals games on KMOX radio as a boy and got hooked. All of his kids are Cardinals fans. They have never lived near St. Louis. And think about this: John never had a favorite NBA team, and so Patrick, a basketball junkie who is now the head coach at West Virginia Wesleyan, has never had a favorite NBA team.

Patrick decided as a kid that he would play college basketball for his dad. He didn’t care what level. When Patrick was in seventh grade, John left Canisius for Richmond. Five years later, he went to West Virginia.

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