Michigan coach John Beilein talks with guard Stu Douglass (1) during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Kansas, Saturday, Dec. 19, 2009, in Lawrence, Kan. Kansas defeated Michigan 75-64.

AP photo

Somewhere along this gauntlet of a schedule, Michigan coach John Beilein must have wondered what exactly he set his team up for.

The Wolverines entered the season with sky-high expectations, even though they finished in the bottom half of the Big Ten last year and had one of the toughest schedules in the nation.

Now, less than two months into this season, Beilein said he may have over-scheduled.

“In retrospect,” Beilein said. “Maybe it was a year where we shouldn’t have done that, but we chose to do it.”

(Michigan's schedule and results).

Consider, Michigan will play only five teams on the lower rungs of teams in Division I. They’ve gone on the road to play No. 1 Kansas, played at Utah, faced three quality opponents in the Old Spice Classic, Boston College in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge and still have to face Connecticut in the midst of the Big Ten schedule.

Beilein’s scheduling philosophy consists of fielding two good non-conference opponents for home games at Crisler Arena. Every other year, the Big Ten/ACC Challenge takes care of one of those. The other ones usually come road games.

It’s why Michigan went to Kansas last weekend, why they went to Connecticut a year ago and went to Duke in Beilein’s first year.

It's a schedule that serves as good preparation for an NCAA tournament run, but also one that, if a team isn't prepared, can keep it on the outside of the postseason.

“It’s probably the second-toughest part of the job,” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo said. “Recruiting is the toughest part. But scheduling, not only who you schedule but when you schedule and where, I think have become a very, very important part. I think the (NCAA tournament) committee takes it into hand but not as much as we think.”

That’s always been a balance - and Izzo knows it well. Michigan State usually plays one of the more ambitious schedules in the nation, to the point where Izzo usually toes the line of overscheduling every year and admits there have been many years he has taken on too many tough games for his team.

But his philosophy has served him well throughout his 15-year tenure with the Spartans.

It initially stemmed from a credo of playing anyone, anywhere, in order to get Michigan State on television more. Now, it’s just part of the culture.

That is part of what Beilein is trying to build - play more quality opponents and when you win a few, it gets you respect and into the NCAA tournament.

“Time will tell whether that was the thing, that was a good thing for us to do,” Beilein said. “But at the same time, one of the reasons we felt we got into the tournament and played well was we went to UConn and really played them a great game, a game we thought we could have won and had a chance to go on national TV with Kansas and you’re Michigan, you want to do that.”

Not every coach believes in that strategy. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim would only schedule one or two difficult non-conference games every year for years - until his team missed the NCAA tournament in 2007 despite a 10-6 Big East record. Notre Dame coach Mike Brey has often scheduled “strategically” to get his team into the NCAA tournament, be it playing a weak non-conference schedule or trying to be ambitious like he was a season ago, when the Irish tumbled from the Top 10 in the preseason all the way to the NIT.

Purdue’s Matt Painter often schedules to how he thinks his team will be. It led to some interesting arguments on his radio show his first year.

“I got some people calling and getting upset with me my first year, wondering why the schedule was bad and what are you supposed to say, we have a bad team,” Painter said. “When you have a bad team, you have a bad schedule. When you think you’re going to make some strides, which I thought with the guys we had coming in and the guys we had coming back to make a little bit of a jump in the second year, so our schedule made a little bit of a jump.

“We’ve been fortunate enough to make an improvement each year and our schedule has made an improvement.”

Still, it’s a tough line to draw when you’re making a schedule. Are you home or away in the Big Ten/ACC Challenge? Is there an unexpected injury? Do players regress?

Does your team just fall into an unbelievable slump, like Michigan has done the first 2 months of a season?

All of it leaves scheduling as the great enigma to figure out, hoping that your team doesn’t wake up one morning in December wondering what happened to a season with strong expectations.

“It’s one of the most difficult things to do,” Penn State coach Ed DeChellis said.” Everybody has trouble putting a schedule together.”

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558, by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com or follow along on Twitter @mikerothstein.