Michigan's Beilein: Albrecht has 'a shot' with Kate Upton

• Albrecht tweeted at Upton after the game
• Beilein thinks his guard has a chance with the supermodel
• Albrecht made a name for himself by scoring 17 in the first half of the title game

Spike Albrecht went from no-name to big name in the course of one half — his 17-point first-half explosion in Monday's NCAA title game loss to Louisville.

Then, after seeing supermodel Kate Upton attended the game, he dropped the infamous tweet: "hey saw you at the game last night, thanks for coming out! Hope to see you again"

When it was mentioned that Albrecht's tweet hit the New York gossip pages, Michigan coach John Beilein laughed.

"I think he's still got a shot there," Beilein said on WTKA-AM (1050) this morning. "He's got a shot. The young man has a lot of bravado to tweet the way he did. I think it was inspired by Nik Stauskas a little bit, he edged him on a little bit, his roommate. It's all good. It's fun. When it comes down to we want our kids to have great educations, we want them to win basketball games, we want them to enjoy themselves in the process. I think they've enjoyed themselves."

Though Beilein is not a regular gossip follower, he was told of Albrecht's Twitter bump during the game.

"The report is he got 20,000 new followers during the first half?" Beilein said. "The little son of a gun's got more followers than I do. In one half. It's an incredible story of what happened here."

Now Albrecht has over 35,000 followers — Beilein's at 18,500 but has only sent two tweets in the past two months.

The Spike recruiting story is one Beilein loves to tell.

"You knew his mom and dad, last year I was sitting at his kitchen table as I went in the recruiting process, maybe at this time or a little earlier than that," Beilein said. "His coach said to me beforehand, 'Coach, he's not going to pass the eyeball test.' There I am getting up and he's got this hoop in the driveway and he's looking at me and I said, his coach is 100% right. As I'm looking down on him in his driveway. We stuck with our decision and I'm glad we did."

But Beilein knew he needed another point guard and felt Albrecht fit well, even though it was against the coach's nature.

"He's a remarkable young man," Beilein said. "I have never spent so much time evaluating a player as I did with Spike. He obviously does not pass the eye test as what you look for as a Big Ten guard. There was something about him that I said, what are you (doubting) here? Everything's telling you he's exactly what you're looking for right now.

"You have Trey Burke in the fold, you have Derrick Walton coming in the following year. You need a guy you can just trust to run your team, whether he's going 40 minutes or four minutes, he can go in there and do that. The kids love playing with him. We have five guys who could be in the popularity contest for most popular player. The team loves him. I'm glad it's all working out. He's got to do a lot of work now and get strong and continue to work but it really feels good knowing he's coming back as well."

Mark Snyder also writes for the Detroit Free Press