“When you’re a head coach all those years, you watch every program he builds,” Villanova coach Jay Wright said, “and are just impressed with the same character, class, dignity at each school.”
After a season clouded by an FBI probe — when college basketball’s problems seemed to be approaching a tipping point — get ready for a feel-good Final Four of sorts. Especially in Saturday night’s first semifinal, when the captivating underdogs from Loyola-Chicago take on Michigan and Beilein, a man so respected by his fellow coaches that he topped a preseason poll on the topic of following the rules.