For most of his 27 years, Patrick Beilein has studied how his father planned practice, taught players and recruited.

Now, he’s doing it on his own. He left Ann Arbor on Monday - and his position as a graduate manager at Michigan - to become a full assistant at Dartmouth.

“I didn’t know Patrick very well, but I tried to recruit John to come here as my assistant because I could never beat him when we played against each other,” Dartmouth coach Paul Cormier said. “I thought I had him but when I couldn’t get him, I thought I would get the next best thing and that’s his son, Patrick.”

Patrick Beilein

Courtesy of U-M

Cormier and John Beilein go back to the MAAC, when Cormier coached Fairfield and Beilein was at Canisius. Beilein’s Canisius team beat Cormier’s Fairfield team in the 1996 MAAC tournament final to give Beilein his first Division I NCAA tournament berth.

The next year, Cormier beat Beilein in the MAAC final to send Fairfield to the NCAAs. Now, a Beilein will join Cormier on the same sideline.

Cormier said Patrick Beilein will do everything as an assistant at Dartmouth. He’ll recruit nationally and a lot of on-court player development.

At Michigan, he was unable to do either.

“That’s just more of my profile, on the court coaching, teaching, rather than behind the desk doing things that an operations guy would do or an administrative guy would do,” Patrick Beilein said this week from Hanover, N.H. “Not that I wouldn’t be good at it, but my true passion is on the floor and helping guys develop their skills and working them out, pushing them.

“So that was a huge part of my decision.”

This wasn’t the first time Patrick considered leaving Michigan. He explored Division II and III assistant coaching options a year ago, but decided it’d be worth it to watch his father for one more year.

When the Dartmouth job opened, both he and his father contacted Cormier, the Big Green’s new head coach, about the position.

Soon after, Patrick was offered the gig.

“I would think that for him to get there and to be an assistant at the Ivy League will be a great start for him,” John Beilein said. “Because now he will have to mass recruit to get those guys and it’ll open up his network more and more.”

Until now, Patrick Beilein’s network had mostly mirrored his father. He played for his dad at West Virginia. Then, after playing professional basketball overseas for two years, he joined his dad at Michigan.

It is the last name, though, that has given him both the opportunities he’s had as well as dogged him throughout his time in college basketball. When he was at West Virginia, he said he heard that he was just playing because he was John Beilein’s son.

In coaching, he figures it might be the same way - to live up to the name of a man who has amassed 597 wins.

“I feel the pressure, but it’s more of a challenge to me, a challenge to develop these kids into players and get this program that’s been down for a couple years now and get that program on the move,” Patrick Beilein said. “I couldn’t think of a better situation to come into to rejuvenate a program here at Dartmouth.

“I understand the challenge of ‘There’s Beilein’s son, he’s coaching and he’s not winning.’ But I’ve dealt with those challenges my whole life with playing, that Beilein’s son is just playing because he’s playing. I don’t think it’s any different in coaching, I just have to work harder than the next person and use that to my advantage of what my dad has given me.”

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