There are very few coaches that can say they put a product on the hardwood that produced year in and year out. This man did it and he did it for 25 years. In that period of time, he only had one season where his team did not finish with a winning record. While he was making sure his teams were ready to compete on the hardwood in 23 of those 25 seasons this great coach battled heart issues. Two weeks ago, the health of his heart became so serious that he was forced to resign his head coaching position with the Saint Louis Billikens. Two night ago, this great coach and former college basketball analyst for ESPN lost that battle.
On Saturday night in Los Angeles, former college basketball coach Rick Majerus passed away from heart failure in an L.A. hospital. He was 64 years old. He is survived by his sisters Jodi and Tracy Majerus.
In his 25-year as a college coach at Marquette University Warriors, now Golden Eagles, Ball State University Cardinals, Utah Utes and Billikens, Majerus compiled a 517-216 record. He had only one losing season in those 25 years, which was a 12-19 in St. Louis in 2010-11 season.
Along the way, he claimed so individual honors. He was the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Coach of the Year five times (1991, 1993, 1995, 1997 (media), 1999. District Coach of the Year four times (1991, 1993, 1995, 1996); United Press International (UPI) Coach of the Year and Basketball Times National Coach of the Year in 1991; Utah Sports Person of the Year in 1992 and 1997.
“He was a unique guy. He’s one of the great teachers of the game of all-time. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I saw how emotional he was last year at the press conference at the NCAA tournament,” ESPN college basketball analyst Fran Faschilla said on Saturday.
“He could be demanding. He can be at times crude, but ultimately the vast majority of his players loved Rick because he got the most out of them.”
The Rick Majerus journey began Sheboygan Falls, WI on Feb. 17, 1948. After graduating from Marquette University High School in 1966, he attended Marquette University, where he tried out for the basketball team as a walk-on in the 1967 season. While he did not make the team, he stayed on as a student assistant.
Three years after he graduated with his degree in history, Majerus began coaching eighth-graders at St. Sebastian Grade School in Milwaukee, WI. He then moved on to coach the freshmen boys basketball team at his high school alma mater.
From 1971-83 he was an assistant coach at the his alma mater Marquette under mentor Al McGuire. He would get his first chance as the head man of Marquette in 1983 taking over for Hank Raymonds. In three seasons Majerus went 56-35.
At Marquette one of the players that played there back then was a man who would go on to play 13 seasons in the NBA for the Atlanta Hawks, Los Angeles Clippers, New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs and followed it up by being an excellent head coach in the NBA. That player was Glenn “Doc” Rivers, the current head coach of the Boston Celtics, who he helped guide to an NBA title back in 2008.
“It’s a tough one for me. He’s the one who gave me my name,” Rivers said after the Celtics lost 91-88 at the Bucks on Saturday night.
“I knew before he wasn’t going to make it through tonight…”
He then moved on to be an assistant coach for the Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) under the leadership of Hall of Famer Don Nelson. The Bucks went 50-32 that season and lost to the eventual Eastern Conference Champion Boston Celtics in the Conference Semifinals in seven games.
Majerus then moved on to coach at Ball State where he helped lead the Cardinals to a 43-17 record in his two seasons. He led them to a first place finish in the 1988-89 and they lost in the second round of the NCAA tournament.
The next year he moved on to Utah where he would make his name as a basketball coach.
It did not start well in the beginning because after just six games in his first season on the bench, Majerus took a leave of absence to undergo heart surgery. The team went 4-2 in those first six outings and they were coached by assistant Joe Cravens the remainder of that season.
Majerus came back the next year in good health and the Utes went 30-4, going 15-1 in WAC play and finishing first in the conference. They lost however in the Sweet Sixteen. In six of the next eight season, the Utes under Majerus finished first in the WAC and made it to the NCAA tournament.
His best season at Utah came in 1998 where his third-seeded Utah Utes defeated the Arkansas Razorbacks, Arizona Wildcats and North Carolina Tar Heels in the NCAA tournament to reach the national championship game. While they held a 10-point lead at intermission, they lost to Kentucky 78-69 in that national final.
The loss greatly affected Majerus to the point that he claimed to be able to recall the final six minutes of play in that title contest from the first second right down to the last.
Majerus would never reach another title game and after 15 seasons on the Utes sideline and 323 victories, he departed because he wanted to get control of his health. Back in 1989 he underwent seven vessel bypass surgery to his heart.
On Dec. 15, 2004, Majerus was hired as the head coach of the University of Southern California Trojans basketball team.
At the introductory press conference, he said, “I hope I die here. I hope I coach here the rest of my life.”
In order to take the position though, he needed to buy himself out of his contract to be a college basketball color analyst for ESPN.
Majerus out of the blue resigned just five days later sighting during a very somber press conference that his health and fitness were not up to the stage that would allow him to perform his head coaching duties noting, “ I wanted this job so bad I was in denial where my health actually is… I realized [USC] wasn’t getting the guy they hired. I came to the conclusion myself. I’m not fit for this job by my standards.”
Years later Majerus said the true reason he changed his mind was that his mother, who passed away on Aug. 6, 2011, requested that he not take the job because he would have to relocate to L.A., which is very far from her home in Wisconsin.
Majerus took the gig with ESPN where he worked as an college basketball game color analyst as well as a studio analyst.
On Apr. 27, 2007 Majerus left ESPN to become the head coach at St. Louis University accepting a six-year contract.
Unfortunately Majerus’ Billikens did not have the kind of success that he had in his first three stops. The team while they did finish above .500 in four of those five seasons, they only made the NCAA tournament once, which occurred last season and they lost in the third round. The team went 95-69 in those five seasons.
On Aug. 24, 2012, Majerus announced that he would be taking medical leave and would not coach this upcoming season.
Back on Nov. 16, it was announced that Majerus would not return at all to the coach at St. Louis.
When we look back on the memory of coach Rick Majerus, it is clear to say that he was different. He was funny, emotional, caring and he loved coaching the game. He had a way of being the kind of person who could laugh at himself and had no problem wearing his emotions on his sleeve.
With all of that said, he was a very competitive person who wanted to put a team on the hardwood that would compete and win when the time came.
“He could be very demanding. He can be at times crude, but ultimately the vast majority of his players loved Rick because he got the most out of them,” Fraschilla said on Saturday.
Three players who benefited from coach Majerus’s coaching were Andre Miller, Michael Doleac and Keith Van Horn who played for him at Utah and became first round picks in the NBA Draft. Van Horn was selected by the Philadelphia 76ers in 1997 playing nine seasons for the New Jersey Nets, 76ers, New York Knicks, Bucks and Dallas Mavericks. Doleac was drafted 12th overall and played 10 seasons for the Magic, Cleveland Cavaliers, Knicks, Denver Nuggets, Miami Heat and Minnesota Timberwolves. Miller was drafted 8th overall in the 1999 draft and is currently in his second tour of duty with the Nuggets. He previously played for the Cavaliers, Los Angeles Clippers, 76ers and Portland Trail Blazers.
“Majerus is by far the best coach I ever played for,” Doleac told Sports Illustrated, according to a Dec. 3 New York Times article.
“He’s got an unbelievable ability to see the game. If you coach kids for a week, after a while you get tired of correcting them. But he never lets go.”
It is sad that one of the best of the college hardwood Rick Majerus is gone, but his influence is still alive thanks in part to the coaches who worked alongside him in his career are still coaching.
Porter Moser is the head basketball coach at Loyola (Illinois); Dick Hunsaker is now at Utah Valley; Alex Jensen is coaching the Canton Charge of the NBA Developmental League, who also played for Majerus at Utah and was his assistant at St. Louis; Jeff Judkins is coaching the BYU Lady Cougars and Kerry Rupp is the interim head coach at Utah.
Information, quotations and statistics are courtesy of 12/2/12 5 a.m. edition of ESPN’s “Sportscenter” with Cindy Brunson and Adnan Virk; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Majerus; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Miller;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Doleac; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Van_Horn;SportingNews Official 2006-07 NBA Guide. Dec. 3, 2012 The New York Times article by Richard Goldstein entitled “Rick Majerus, College Basketball Coach, Dies at 64.”
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