My Life on a Napkin - Part III

My Life on a Napkin - Part III

• Chapter 5 (Start time 0:24; Run time 37:59)
• Chapter 6 (Start time 38:22; Run time 1:14:14)

Title: My Life on a Napkin: Pillow Mints, Playground Dreams, and Coaching the Runnin’ Utes.

By: Rick Majerus with Gene Wojciechowski

Copyright: 1999 - Rick Majerus and Gene Wojciechowski

Published by: Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 10011

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:10

All right, welcome into this special edition of the Run and Ute podcast in which I read to you my life on a map of Elements, Playground Dreams, and Coaching The Run and Ute by Rick Majaris with Gene Mojahowski. Chapter 5. Wanna be a Ute? It was a courtesy call, really. A favor for a West Point classmate. That's what Mike Schneider told me the day he called to half-heartedly suggest that I take a look at a kid from Central Catholic High School in Portland, Oregon. I went to school with his dad, Mike said. He has this six foot nine or ten son. I think he called Mike Sheshewski and asked him to call Bob Knight. Then he called me, and I told him to go ahead and call you. I haven't heard from him, I said. What's his name? Phil Doliak, Mike said. He's a retired army colonel, a dentist. His son's name is Michael. I don't know much about him, but he's probably not your kind of player anyway. It was the summer of 1993. We had finished the season 24 and 7, tied for first place in the whack, beaten Pittsburgh in the first round of the NCAA tournament, and then, in what would become a postseason trend, we were eliminated by Kentucky. I'm always interested in Biggs, so I decided to check out this Doliac kid. All it would cost was a plane ticket and a day's worth of time, and if he stunk, maybe I'd see somebody else worth looking at. Doliaak was playing in a tournament at Wilson Junior High in Long Beach, California, and there wasn't another college coach or scout in the gym. I checked. Actually, Doliac was doing more sitting than playing. I got there early to watch warmups. I like seeing how a kid conducts himself while doing the pregame fundamentals. Does he take it seriously? Does he screw around? Does he show good form? Just by watching Mike in warm-ups, I could tell he had a real nice shooting touch, which is something you usually don't see in big men. And Mike was big. He had a baby huey look to him. Fleshy but not fat, thick but not oafish. I loved his attitude and his enthusiasm. Some kids sleepwalk through warmups, but Mike treated each drill as if it were the game itself. What I really noticed about him were his hands. If you're going to play the low post for me, you've got to be able to catch the ball on the feed. Some of Mike's teammates threw him some bad passes during warmups, and he caught every one of them. A big guy with soft hands, I was intrigued. Mike didn't play much, maybe three minutes tops, but there was something about him I liked, so I went back to the tournament the next day and invited him to my basketball camp. Mike seemed interested, but Phil Doliak wasn't so sure. Phil isn't obtrusive, but he's protective. He had said he was worried the camp might be a waste of money. Phil, I said, I'll give you the same money back guarantee I give every kid who comes to the camp. If at the end of the week you don't think Mike has learned more ball or progressed to your liking, come on in and I'll refund your money on the spot. Fair enough? Okay, said Phil. We break our camp down by positions. Mike was with the bigs, and I really liked his potential, but what I really liked was his willingness to learn. He was like a handy wipe towel, soaking up anything and everything about the game. His retention level was terrific, and he had an insatiable appetite for ball. We had these early bird sessions at 6.15 each morning. Attendance wasn't mandatory, but Mike came to every one of them. He was smart enough to take advantage of the special attention, smart enough to realize we were offering private tutors for postplay. Midway through the week, I knew what I wanted to do. I told my staff, I'm going to offer this kid a scholarship. Nobody disagreed. Mike wasn't a polished player by any stretch of the imagination, but you could see how far he had come in a single week, and even if Donnie or Judd had objected, it wouldn't have mattered. I had a feeling about Mike. As long as I was the head coach, he was going to have a scholarship offer. On the third day of camp, I grabbed two folding chairs, went outside the Huntsman Center, and positioned them just so. From the Northwest vantage point, you could see the mountains and the valley and the beginnings of a beautiful sunset. I had never taken as much care with propositioning a woman as I had setting the scene for my meeting with an incoming junior in high school. It was like a marriage proposal, about the only thing missing was a bottle of champagne, romantic music, and maybe a nice appetizer. I called Mike out, sat him down in a chair, and said, I really like your game, and I just want you to know you've got a scholarship here. Mike looked at me in stunned amazement. You're kidding me, he said. No, I said, I really want you. He looked as if he needed to be treated for shock. I don't think he quite believed anybody would want to offer him anything, especially a Division I scholarship. This is a kid who had probably spent more time fishing for halibut than working on his drop step. He was cut as a high school freshman and barely made the team as a sophomore. School came easy for him. He had straight A's through his junior year, but playing ball was pure work. I always tell people that Mike doesn't have a basketball Jones like me or Keith or Andre. He's a Renaissance man. His whole life has been a lesson in diversity. He's a sportsman, but he isn't consumed by sports. He's like a big sheepdog, a six foot eleven sheepdog. Says Mike Doliak, quote, I didn't even really know what a scholarship was when he made the offer. I was never into basketball or in sports big time. My dad was in the military, so we moved all over the world, from San Antonio to Kansas City to Frankfurt to Fort Hood, Texas, to Fairbanks, Alaska to Portland, and I played whatever sport was in season. I played Little League Baseball, Little League Soccer. When we lived in Alaska, I skied and played volleyball. We did a lot of camping. I was never a guy who wanted to be in one place watching the NCAA tournament, making that my goal to get a basketball scholarship and become a star. You have to remember that during most of high school, I rarely even played. I never expected to go to college to play basketball. When it happened, it was a complete surprise. By the end of the week, Mike had basically committed to us. That's when it got interesting. I called his dad to tell him about the scholarship offer, and he said, Well, we've really got to make sure this is the right thing to do. Like I said, Phil was a little on the protective side. What he had forgotten was that Mike hadn't even started on his high school team. I was offering a scholarship to a kid who wasn't even a starter, who couldn't even get any minutes in a summer league tournament in Long Beach. Mike was very smart. He was a National Honor Society member at a very well respected high school. He had a lot of scholarship opportunities relative to academics, but we were the first to offer him a basketball scholarship, and I think that meant something. By the end of his senior season, it was obvious that Mike could play Division I ball. He averaged 17 points, 9 rebounds, and led Central Catholic of Portland to the state championship. He was also named the Oregon Player of the Year by USA Today. That fall, Mike and Phil came to Salt Lake City for an official campus visit. But to be honest, I think Mike's mom, Marge, was the real rock of this whole thing. By then, Stanford might have nibbled a little bit, but only because Phil was soliciting calls. Oregon invited Mike to be a walk-on, but that was about it for offers. It was us, and a full ride or nothing. Needless to say, none of the recruiting services hailed the signing as a watershed moment for Utah. To them, Mike was a big body, nothing more. To me, he was baby Huey with a big upside. Even then, Mike had a calmness about him. He was so even tempered, and in some ways that became a problem for him as it related to basketball. But all things considered, that sort of disposition is probably more of an asset than a problem. He's a really well-balanced young man. He has a great sense of self, he loves to golf, he loves to fish, he loves to camp. The problem, if you can call it that, is that basketball is not a passion for him. Not when he was a no-name kid at a summer league in Long Beach, not now in the pros. He plays the game hard, he practices hard, but he doesn't have the obsession with the game that Van Horn or Andre have. And I think that's good. This is a guy who, when his playing career is finished, is going to be a doctor. I'd rather him obsess about surgery or curing diseases. As big as Mike was, he wasn't really the enforcer type of player. He played tough, but the toughest kid on the team was Andre. The first time I saw Andre in Los Angeles, I went to the gym and saw this woman yelling at anything that moved. At Andre, at the refs, at the coaches, at the other players. She was storming up and down the court as if she had a bet on the game. She was yelling, Take him, Andre, take him. During a long break in the game, I leaned over to Andre's coach and said, If there's a god in heaven, tell me that isn't Andre's mother. Sorry, he said. That's Andre's mother. I was impressed with Andre, but all I could think about was his mother. I told my assistant, we can't have his mother doing that at our games. We'll run right into each other. Later, the coach's wife told me what a wonderful woman Andre's mom was. You're really gonna like her, she said. She was right. Andrea Robinson is a remarkable woman, but no one worked the court harder than she did that day. I had never heard of Andre until Donnie handed me a list of guards with Miller's name on it. He's worth looking at, Donnie said. So I flew to Los Angeles and went to see him play at a gym near LAX. My original plan was to watch him play an AAU game at 2 PM, then fly back to Salt Lake City in time for a big Pioneer Day barbecue that night with my girlfriend, Betsy Hunt, and some friends. But the more I watched, the more I wanted to see more of Andre. I was spellbound by the dynamic of Andre, his mother, the coach, and the coach's wife. Andre didn't stand out, but he did make a couple of very nice passes. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to stay, but missing the barbecue wasn't going to be a real popular decision. What time is your next game? I asked the coach. We play at seven, he said. I thought about it for a minute, and then said, I'm staying. But don't you have assistance for that? The coach said. What about the barbecue? No, no, I said, I want to see him. So I stayed, and Andre really showed me something with the way he passed the ball. After the game, I told the coach, this kid's got a scholarship. He does? said the coach. The coach pulled Andre's mom over and said, Andrea, this is the coach of Utah. Don't forget me, I said, I'll be in your home in September. That's when I could make an official home visit. I know it was only two games, but I could see that Andre had great court vision and court awareness. He didn't see one teammate, he saw four. And what I liked best was his great enthusiasm for the game. He wasn't a pretender. With Andre, you literally had to kick him out of the gym, and he's so competitive. He's like John Stockton in that regard, a very, very nice guy who will do what it takes to win. Andre would turn out to be my most competitive player. As a point guard, the most important thing is that you have a feel for the game. You also have to get your team into the offense as well as get other people shots. Andre could handle the ball well. He really could see the floor when he played. He had sort of a soft, doughy, unbuffed body, but he could play tough. He learned how to play physical against the gangbangers in LA. There were some good players in those gangs, kids with raw skills, but kids who were going in a different way than Andre. Andre didn't do drugs, didn't flash colors, he played basketball, and the gang members respected that and left him alone. It was like a code of ethics with them. Andre also knew how to post low. That's because he was the second biggest guy on his Verbum Day high school team. Plus, I started to understand what made Andrea Robinson so special. She and her husband raised a family in the tough Compton area, which you're not going to find on any Hollywood map of the stars. She worked for the Department of Veterans Administration and scraped enough money to send Andre to private schools, and unless he was sick, she didn't let him miss a day of school. She made him do his chores, and if he didn't, then he couldn't play basketball. One time, he forgot to do his work, and Andrea went to the gym and pulled him off the court. It didn't matter if he was in the middle of a game or if all his friends were watching. I liked that kind of discipline. Andre and his family knew unconditional love and tragedy. His brother Duane died of encephalitis when he was eleven, and that must have been a tremendous heartache for that family. The more I got to know Andrea, the more I realized someone ought to write a motherhood, how-to book based on her life. Everything revolved around her kids. She works every day from March to October, so she'll accrue enough days off to watch Andre during the season. The two of them talk at least once a day on the phone. It is a beautiful, loving relationship. Andre had solid grades in high school, but his standard test scores weren't good enough for the NCAA minimum requirements. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that the SAT and ACT are culturally biased, but that didn't change Andre's predicament. To be eligible to play Division I basketball as a freshman, his SATs or ACTs had to improve. I was willing to take a chance. In fact, one time I told him a story about a point guard named Raymond Lewis. Lewis was an LA legend who played with Donnie at Verbum D and later signed with Cal State Los Angeles. As a freshman in 1972, he scored 40 points against a UCLA freshman team that featured Bruins stars Dave Myers and Pete Torjevich. CSLA won 9486 and broke UCLA's 26-game freshman win streak. Lewis also scored 73 points against UC Santa Barbara's freshman squad. As a sophomore, he scored 53 points against Long Beach State. He outscored Larry Bird at 3925 when CSLA played Indiana State. Lewis was the second leading scorer in the nation that year, averaging 32.9 points. But like I told Andre, Lewis was also one of the biggest quitters I'd ever seen in my life. He later went hardship and was taken by the Philadelphia 76ers as the 18th pick in the first round of the 1973 NBA draft. He never played a minute in the pros. Andre, Raymond Lewis never got his degree, I said. That will never happen to you if you come to Utah. Now, you might not have the best social life relative to the latest dance craze. In fact, the dance might not even hit Utah in the four or five years that you're there. You might not ever go to parties where everyone is dressed to kill, but you'll never end up like Raymond Lewis either. Not long after I told him that story, Donnie and I went to see Andre play, and damned if we don't get out of the car and who's at the gym? It's Raymond Lewis, and he hits Donnie up for some money. He tells Donnie he needs the money to get out to the airport and interview for a job. We went inside the gym and afterward I told Andre, we just saw Raymond, but we didn't want to embarrass him. But another guy also saw him and told us, I gave him that same$20 a month ago. I thought that was a very telling story. The sad truth is, I see too many Raymond Lewises, guys who had athletic talent but not academic commitment. Or maybe they were sort of interested in academics, but they didn't have a support group to push them and force them to see it through. I wanted Andre to know he would always have a support group in place at Utah. Plus, he'd have me acting as his Andrea. After all, I'm the king of academics. I think all that had to do with him coming to Utah. But despite some nice stats, he averaged 24 points and seven rebounds, Andre wasn't that good a player when we signed him. He had talent, but people weren't knocking down his door to get him. He didn't look like a prototype guard. He was mushy. It also didn't help that his ACTs and SATs weren't high. The possibility of him becoming a Prop 48 scared away a lot of schools. But this was a kid who made his high school dean's list an honor roll. Says Andre Miller, quote, There were a lot of people who thought that since I came from South Central, I couldn't do well in school. They looked at the ACTs and SATs and decided I couldn't succeed in college. But I had a 3.0 grade point average coming out of high school. I knew I could do college work. I was recruited by Oregon, Long Beach State, San Diego, and Utah. Long Beach State and San Diego were a little too close to home. I thought about Oregon, but Coach Majaris is the one who came to my house and guaranteed me that I would graduate. And once I came to Utah, he made sure I went to class, that I went to tutors, and that I was on top of my studies. Drew Hansen never needed help with his studies. He was a National Honor Society member, the editor of his high school newspaper in Towilla, Utah, an academic Allstate, a regular poster boy for higher education. He was the kind of kid mothers hope their daughters marry. You want to make him chocolate chip cookies and pour him a cold glass of milk. He's too good to be true. Drew averaged 22 points, 8 rebounds, and 5 assists as a senior, and he was named to the All-Sate team, but he had exactly one dunk during his entire high school career. I'm not sure anyone else was looking at him except Brown and the Naval Academy. Jimmy Soto's high school coach is the guy who first told me about Drew. He said, You'll really like this guy. He's your kind of guy. He really loves to play the game. He's tough. I vaguely remembered Drew from our camps. He came to one after his freshman year at Towilla, and one of our coaches said he was a hell of a defender. So we had him guard a kid we were recruiting, and Drew shut him down, even stripped the ball from him. Richie Smith came with me to Towilla for the scouting trip. So did Kent Jones and Jeff Jonas. We watched him play, and on the way back, they were really getting on me about Drew. They weren't impressed. They thought I had wasted a night. They had nothing against Drew personally, they just didn't think he could play for Utah. If you judged Drew by traditional basketball methods, they were probably right. You didn't watch him and go, wow, he was a blender. A complimentary player. His shot was okay, but he didn't look very athletic. He wasn't your classic looking veins popping out of calf muscles athletic. But I could see how hard he tried. In fact, I told these guys, he'll be a great eighth man, maybe sixth or seventh man. He likes me. He wants to come to Utah. He likes the Utes. He works his ass off. We can't pass a kid up like this. He's a role player. They weren't convinced. We were driving back to Salt Lake City and there was a Utah highway patrol car in the distance in front of us. I saw the cop car, but I was so involved in my heartfelt defense of Drew that I kept hitting the gas on the explorer and passed him going about ninety. They thought I was nuts. Nuts about Drew. Nuts about passing this cop. They thought I was just screwing around or that I knew the cop. I didn't know the cop. Well, it took about two seconds for the cop to hit the blue lights and pull me over. The cop walked up to the window, and he probably didn't know what to think. I mean, what kind of person purposely passes a highway patrol car on the highway? He looked at me, recognized the face, and his eyes kind of went wide in surprise. Coach, he said, you've got to slow down. He was almost apologetic. He said, I didn't know it was you, but have a safe day. Just slow it down. That's not the first time I've come near to cracking the hundred mile an hour barrier. One time I was driving to Hiram, Utah to see a kid, and one of my buddies said, Uh, Rick, does this car have airbags? I started laughing. Hey, if we crash, I'm your airbag. I've been lucky with state troopers and cops. I've got a badge from the governor in Utah that carries a little weight when it comes to nudging past the speed limit. I've got a badge from Indiana. In most places, the cops will cut you a break if you're a coach. Now I'm not talking about doing a Jeff Gordon or running gin across state lines, but there are a lot of cops out there who like basketball and who will give a coach a free pass, maybe on a small speedometer violation. I had my own feelings about Drew's potential, but what really convinced me to offer him a scholarship was when I talked with his coach, the recently retired Clyde Alquist. Alquist was a good coach, and I respected his opinion. He crystallized everything for me when he said, Coach, Drew doesn't care what position he plays. He doesn't care when he plays or how much he plays. He doesn't care if you redshirt him. He only cares about playing for you, playing for the University of Utah, and getting a Utah degree. That's it. Says Drew Hansen. He said there might be a scholarship available. I thought he was pulling my leg. Meanwhile, Don DeVaux, the coach at Navy, wanted me to commit. He was a great guy, but for some reason I couldn't tell him I was coming there. I wanted to go to the U. Somehow a scholarship came free, and Coach Majeris invited me to watch them play Colorado State. They lost, but afterward Coach said he was 90% sure he was going to offer me a scholarship. Then he came to one of my games, but he didn't get there until the fourth quarter. That was lucky for me because I had a really good fourth period. Then he saw me play a couple days later, and I did well. Not long after that, he offered me a scholarship. I couldn't say yes fast enough, but I always thought if I had played poorly in those games, he would have never made the offer. Looking back at it, Utah was probably the only top 25 team I could play for. With my physical skills, I could never average 10 points, and if I did average 10, the team would be terrible. But what Coach did was this. He let my mind be a factor. I could play defense and I could play smart. I think I'm a good evaluator of talent, but if you would have told me Drew Hansen would start as a small forward on an Elite 8 team that was ranked number two in the country for most of the season, or that he'd start as an off guard on a team that went to the national championship game, I would have said you needed a breathalyzer test. But someday, Drew is going to be a great NCAA basketball trivia question. Quick, name the kid with four conference championship rings, four NCAA tournament watches, a final four ring, and maybe the best NCAA tournament winning percentage of any senior in recent years? And the answer is Drew Hansen. Remember that, you'll win a lot of free beers. Alex Jensen could have played for a lot of programs. I'd never heard of him until a friend of mine, Bob Henderson, dropped some film of Alex in an AAU game at the front desk of my hotel. There was a note attached. Rick, I want to show you a guy you're going to love. He was absolutely right. I watched the tape and then told my staff, this kid has a chance to be a pro. One of my assistants looked at me and said, What are you nuts? I'll tell you something, I said. This kid plays really hard. Watch how good he plays defensively. Look at his instincts. Al was only a sophomore at the time, but he had good size and strength. He also had a nice way about him, a nice feel for the game. But his high school coach had the same problem I did. Al didn't like to shoot. He loved being a complimentary player. He was such a neat guy. It was almost as though he didn't want to be really good. Al is the kind of guy who wins the lottery and is embarrassed that he won and someone in the cancer ward didn't. He is really a genuinely good person. I remember when he was a freshman, we had a handicapped manager with a bad arm and leg. I didn't know this until really late after the game one night. I went down to look for some film and there was Al carrying all the equipment bags for the manager. That's Al. That's how sweet he is. Al is my favorite. The players know that. He's my favorite because he plays such great defense with a modicum of talent. He's such a great warrior without a warrior's body. I didn't waste any time with Al. I offered him a scholarship during his sophomore year. I think he thought I was nuts too, but I knew this kid had what it took. I told Al's dad, Jerry, look, I love your son. I like his attitude. I like his toughness, his sense of team, and the fact that he does all the little things on the court. I want you to know that he has a scholarship waiting for him, but I'm not gonna pressure him. And I didn't. Al didn't sign until late in the recruiting season. BYU was in the pitcher, as was Arizona State. I also knew there was a chance, probably a good one, that Al would take a Mormon mission in the next couple of years. I used to joke with Al that I'd become LDS if he wouldn't go. But if you're going to recruit LDS kids, you have to deal with that possibility. Says Alex Jensen. Quote. One of the reasons I liked him was because he'll straight out tell you what he thinks. He came to my home in Centerville, Utah, and he didn't guarantee that I'd start, like some coaches did. And he said there were going to be times when he yelled at me, but I learned that he'll praise you just as quick as he'll rip on you. I respected his honesty, close quote. As it turned out, the recruiting class of 94-95 would become the core of the Final Four team. Alex, Andre, Drew, Mike. Drew and Mike probably weren't on anybody's blue chip lists. Andre was a prop 48, and my own assistants didn't want me to sign out. Hano was the fifth piece. He signed in time for the 96-97 season, and let me tell you, that was some recruiting courtship. I first heard about Hano from a guy who books some of our overseas exhibition games. Someone sent me film of Hano and I really liked the way he played, so I told Hanno's coach I was interested in coming to Finland. Many coaches call, he said, but not many come to Finland. If you come here, that will mean a lot to me and to Hano. It will show you have a genuine interest. I said that was fair enough, but before I made the travel arrangements, I needed to know two things. Was Hanno at least six foot nine? Would Hanno be allowed to leave Finland, even though he had a military obligation to the country? The coach assured me that there would be no problems, not with Hanno's height, and not with his military situation. Says Hanno Medala, quote, I never heard of him or the U. A lot of schools were recruiting me. The only thing I knew about Utah was the Utah Jazz, but I kind of figured out there must be a school there, close quote. The flight to Finland takes forever. I left New York at 5 p.m. and didn't get there until about eight o'clock the next morning. I think it's the longest flight from New York to a European country. Whatever it was, my five o'clock shadow had a five o'clock shadow of its own. On the same flight was a former player from Butler University. He was on his way to play for a pro team in Europe. We talked a little bit, and I wished him luck. The most terrifying part of the flight had nothing to do with the occasional air pocket or the dreadful airplane food. Instead, I was worried sick that I'd get off the plane and there would be Hano, all six foot four of him. It's happened to coaches before. A guy flies to Europe and then discovers his foreign recruit shrunk in the wash. What happens is that foreign coaches sometimes fiv about size and height. Same thing happens in the States. When I finally landed in Europe, I was a wreck. All I wanted was a hot shower, a decent meal, a change of clothes, a Hanno who was at least six foot nine, and then lots of sleep. I went to baggage claim and saw the kid from Butler heading towards customs with his luggage. Later, my red Reebok bag tumbled onto the conveyor belt. I went to Customs and here's what they found when they opened my bag Afro Sheen, Doc Martin boots, a hairdryer, and assorted clothes that wouldn't fit me in a thousand years. The kid from Butler had my bag, and apparently had been whisked through customs. I had this bag, an almost identical Reebok bag, and no change of clothes. Worse yet, I barely had time to check into my hotel and then go see Hano and his brother at a YMCA gym in Helsinki. I took a shower, but is there anything worse than having to put on the same dirty, grungy clothes you wore for a transatlantic trip? I sure as hell didn't need any Afrochine or a hairdryer. The Doc Martins didn't fit, nor did the other clothes. The guy from Butler had a size 15 neck, size 38 sleeves, and had a great affection for safari jackets and silk shirts. Not my size, and not my style. When I finally got to the YMCA, I could barely keep my eyes open. I felt like I was being ropodoped by Muhammad Ali. I was just hanging out. On for the count. I was so tired that I actually fell asleep while I was talking to Hano and his brother. I could feel myself fading into sleep, but I was helpless to stop it. It was like watching one of those old detective movies where someone slips the guy a Mickey. That's how I felt. I hadn't shaved, my clothes smelled, I couldn't stay awake, I looked like a sewer troll. But Hanno and his brother, Matthias, were extremely nice. So was the coach. They knew I was trying, and they knew I was serious about Hano. The big discussion mostly had to do with Hanno's ties with the Finland national team. The coach wanted to know if I would let him come back and play for Finland in international tournaments. I said I understood how important it was to play for your country, so I offered a deal. Hanno could come back any time during the season, except during the WAC tournament and the NCAA tournament. I kept that promise. During Hanno's first year at Utah, I let him leave two or three times to go play in European tournaments. He missed several regular season games because of those tournaments, but a deal's a deal. Later, the Finnish coach and I reached a basketball accord. Hanno wasn't doing himself much good by trying to play in these tournaments. He wasn't doing Utah much good playing in the tournaments. He wasn't doing the Finnish team much good playing in the tournaments. No more tournaments during our season. But before Hanno could actually sign with us, we had to get clarification about his military obligations. At first, I was told he could play. Then it looked like he was going to have to stay because of military duty. Then they said he could leave. Hanno was a very worldly guy, especially compared to most kids in the States. He had spent time as an exchange student in San Antonio. He had played with several Finnish teams that traveled all over Europe, but he didn't know much about Utah, which is understandable. There are kids in the States who don't know much about Utah. I told him Utah is very much like Finland, very cold, overcast, with a great deal of snow during the winter. He had a friend who had played at BYU, so he knew something about the climate and the basketball environment. I liked Hano enough that I took two trips to Finland to recruit him. The cuisine was interesting. Lots of fish, reindeer meat, vodka, you know what they say. Lenin Helsinki. I might have been sleep deprived for the first time I saw him practice, but you could tell he was a player. He was every bit of six foot nine, and once I saw him shoot, well, it was a no-brainer, he was very enthusiastic about the game. Plus, Hano was a very nice guy. He always took extra steps to make sure I knew where I was going when I visited him. He didn't want me to get lost. He was very proud of his country and very determined. We weren't the only school to recruit him. Kansas was interested, and so was Illinois State and Cal Berkeley. As usual, I told him exactly what was going to happen if he signed with the Utes. I told him how we were going to play, I told him how I was going to play him, I said we'd develop his inside game, his outside game, and if he worked hard, I said he was going to have a chance to play in the NBA. I don't say that often, but with Hanno, I thought with his size, his touch, and his instincts, he had a legitimate shot to play Pro Ball in the States. I also told him, as I tell every recruit, that sometime during his career at Utah, we would play in his hometown, or in Hanno's case, in his home country. I will coach you every day, I told him. I'll show you everything I know. Together we can make this dream happen. We need you to have a good team, and you need us to play on a good team. I think the big thing to Hano was that I had a reputation for coaching bigs and that I had coached in the NBA. Playing in the NBA was really a big deal to Hano. That's why he wanted to come to the United States, so he could position himself for a shot at the NBA. Whereas Doliak didn't really give much thought to the NBA, mostly because he never thought he'd play in the NBA. Telling Doliak he was good enough to go to the NBA was like telling him you could have a baby if you had sex. It was like an awakening. In fact, until his junior season at Utah, he didn't believe it could happen. The NBA, that is. I kept in touch with Hano, and I made sure Donnie and Judd did the same. We called when aloud, and I even sent Judd over there once. When it came time for official visits, Hanno narrowed it down to Cal Berkeley and us. If ever there were two radically different programs, campus environments and physical plants, those are the two. Everything about the two places spoke to opposites. But in the end, I think Hanno really liked our players, liked our program, and liked what we were building. Not only did we sign Hanno in that recruiting class, but we got Nate Althoff, a big from Delano, Minnesota. We got David Jackson from Portland. David was a fourth-team parade all American, and I liked his athleticism. We got Jeff Johnson, a two-time Utah Player of the Year, and I signed Jordy McTavish from Salman Arm, British Columbia. In 1997, we added John Carlyle, a center from Salt Lake City, who originally had verbally committed to BYU but changed his mind when they fired Roger Reed. We signed Trace Caton, whose brother Ben played for me. Trace was worried about following in his brother's footsteps and almost signed with Colorado State, and we got Britton Johnson, Jeff's younger brother, the first McDonald's All-American I've ever signed, and part of the fifth set of brothers I've coached in my career. A lot of people thought Keith was one of those kids, but the closest he ever got to McDonald's was a drive-thru lane. You couldn't find Keith's name on some top 100 recruiting lists. It was only natural that Britain was compared to Van Horn. And in a way, I agreed with the comparison. Entering the program, Britain had the same bad body that Keith had and the same lack of commitment on the defensive end, but I wasn't complaining. Britton could have signed anywhere, bad body or not. He was a bona fide top 10, top 20 recruit. He also was a nice kid, got good grades, and could play three positions. Britton visited Syracuse, Connecticut, and us and canceled his visit to UCLA. It was such a long, drawn-out process, and there were so many other things going on with the team and in my own life that when he finally said he was coming to Utah, it was like, okay, great. Says Britton Johnson, quote, I first met Coach when he was recruiting my brother Jeff. The Utah coaches came to our house and they asked me if I'd want to come in and visit Utah too. What did I think? What I think? I thought he was big. I thought he was a totally nice guy. He really knew his X's and O's. It's funny. A lot of coaches who came in to recruit Jeff kind of told him how good they were, but right away he started telling Jeff what he needed to work on. He didn't say anything about himself. He didn't say anything about his record or how good of a coach he was. He just started telling Jeff, you need to work on your jump shot. I think I can do this with you. I think I can do that with you. I thought it was pretty cool. I won't say any names, but the night before, a different coach from a different part of the valley, I'll put it that way, had uh a different approach. When it came time to make a decision, it wasn't that hard a choice. I took a couple of visits, one to Syracuse and one to Connecticut, but I pretty much had my mind made up. The Syracuse visit was pretty interesting because of what happened when I met Coach Beheim. I really think Coach Beheim is a good guy. But when I was in his office, he pointed to a ball he had from the Final Four and he told me, You see that ball? You know you can go play for Utah, and you'll probably be a good player there. And Coach Vajeris is a good coach, and Utah is a good school. But I'm telling you, you'll never get the chance that we just did. You'll never reach the final four. This was the year after they went to the final four. I even kind of believed what Coach Beheim said, but I wanted to stay close to home, and I really liked the program here. Close quote. So this is who we were Dolia, Andre, Drew, Alex, Hanno, Britton, Dave, Jordy, Trace, Nate, Barrett, Carlisle, and Adam Sharp. Including walk-ons, we had 15 players. We were the ultimate blended family. Seven Mormons, one Finn, one Canadian, two African Americans, there were my longtime assistants, Donnie and Judd, my new assistants, Rock Brunkhorst and Jeff Strom, and there was me and a dream. Chapter 6. The Best Move I Never Made. I didn't really have an offseason. Instead, I had a job offer from the Golden State Warriors. Then I had reporters constantly calling about the job offer from the Warriors. I had an under 22 USA basketball team to coach in the World Championships in Australia. I had my own team to worry about. I had recruiting concerns. I had a personal schedule that didn't allow for a day off, and in a strange way, I loved every minute of it. The Warriors job was extremely tempting. I had been approached in the past about coaching at other college programs, but I never seriously considered leaving Utah. However, this was different. The offer from the Warriors really turned my head. The money was beyond belief. The Bay Area was one of my favorite places in the world, and I really liked the owner, Chris Cohen. He was a great guy, and he was honest and really up front. In fact, I was more attracted by his honesty and his directness than I was about the financial side of the deal. The Warriors were a mess. Mostly because they were prisoners of their past personnel decisions. Their record was terrible, and the roster was on the thin side, but to his credit, the owner didn't put a happy face on the situation. Look, he said, we're really bad. We've got problems. We've got salary cap problems, we've got attendance problems. I'm offering you a seven-year deal because no human being can write this ship unless I just want your enthusiasm and energy and your commitment. I loved that approach. And again, even more than the money, I loved that area. I think the Bay Area is a great place to live. Plus, he was going to get me a home or get me a condo suite in a beautiful hotel up in the hills in Oakland, and I'm not going to pretend that the money wasn't important. It was mind-boggling. Seven years, 23 million. For a guy who used to work at Pabst Brewery, that was more money than I could ever imagine. Says Don Nelson, quote, He was offered so much money at Golden State, I actually thought he should take it, work his way through that bad situation, and then see what happened. That was an incredible offer they made to him. Everybody told me to take it, but you know what? I would have never traded 23 billion for the experience of a final four year. There were some other considerations. To be honest, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about pro players. I didn't know how the pros would accept teaching, and I didn't want people saying, Van Horn left, now he's out of there too? Nobody would have blamed me had I left Utah. It was difference making money, and it was the NBA. There aren't many of those jobs in the world. And it was in San Francisco. But the truth is, I really like my guys. It's hard for me to tell them that. I'm like a German father. Joy through work. Never pat you on the back while you're on the job. Save all the hugs for senior night. That's how I am. Cohen was really passionate about his team. The team would have a new arena and new uniforms. I remember he was so excited when he showed me the new team logo. I turned him down. Not because I didn't think I could coach in the pros, I could. I turned him down because I didn't think I would enjoy it. I wasn't sure about the players, I wasn't crazy about the constant travel. Before I made my final decision, Richie Smith flew out to LA to see me. I was there doing analysis of the Jazz Lakers series for one of the local Salt Lake City TV stations. I showed Richie everything I had, the Warriors players, salaries, the salary cap numbers, the deal Cohen was offering. Richie looked at it and strongly encouraged me to take the job. He was the only person from Utah telling me to take it. He said the offer was too significant to turn down. I met with Cohen one last time. It was a Sunday. That's when I told him. Afterwards, I went out to my rental car and called Richie. It's over, I said. I'm sitting in Chris Cohen's driveway. I'm not taking it. Are you sure? Richie said. I really am, I said. Richie asked why I turned it down. That's when I read him a pair of letters I had with me. Says Richie Smith, quote. He had a letter from Keith Van Horn's mom, May. She had written him to express her appreciation for everything Rick had done with Keith, what a positive influence he had been on her son. Then he read me a letter from Larry Kane. Rick inherited Larry when he took the Utah job. No one took more abuse from Rick than Larry Kane. Larry's whole goal was to go to medical school, but during his senior year, Larry almost gave up on that dream because of a personal situation. Rick jumped on him just as hard as if Larry had missed a blockout. Larry ended up going to medical school and becoming a doctor. He wrote Rick during the Golden State courtship. So Rick had these letters and he's saying, Do you think there's a player on Golden State who's going to write this kind of letter? That's what he based his decision on. Not money, but if he could enrich a person's life. After I hung up with him, I told my wife, the world doesn't know what a wonderful guy this is. Close quote. I could have taken the job for money. Even if I had failed, I think I would have been able to go back to College Ball. College ball would have been a great security blanket. And certainly there was the financial security blanket. It was like, voila, here's a couple million dollars. I would never have had to work another day in my life. But I didn't get into coaching because of money. I make plenty of money, enough to keep me happy. Dell Harris and I were talking about this a couple years ago. I never got into this business to be famous or to be rich. I never thought I would be paid and compensated like this. I realize it's a fairy tale. I made$5,000 for my first nine-month contract at Marquette. I made$40,000 as the Marquette head coach and got another$30,000 from New Balance. At Ball State, I made about$60,000. When I was making five grand a year, I thought that was all the money in the world. Now I can write a$25,000 check to the Huntsman Cancer Institute. I don't do it for publicity. In fact, nobody except John Huntsman knew about the donation until now. My biggest dream would be to hit it big and give something in my dad's name. That's something I'd really like to do. The point is, money only means so much. If money was my driving force, I'd be the coach of the Warriors right now, or the Milwaukee Bucks. Says Keith Van Horn, quote, he definitely has the knowledge to coach in the NBA, but I don't know if he'd be able to put up with the players. They're definitely not the type of players he's used to. He's used to players who are willing to accept rules, and some of the players have pretty flamboyant lifestyles. So I don't know if he'd want to put up with some of the stuff that goes on in the NBA. I don't know if he'd really like it, close quote. Says Drew Hansen, quote, for me personally, I didn't think he would go. I don't think he's a coach who could accept 60 losses a year, close quote. P.J. Carlissimo eventually got the job. He also got Latrell Sprewell's hands around his neck. With the Warriors romance behind me, I started to concentrate on coaching the under 22 team. It was important to me, which is why for only the second time in my career, I didn't go out recruiting during the summer months. I let my assistants at Utah handle it. The only other time I made that promise was when I was with Nelly's Dream Team 2 staff. I enjoyed coaching the under-22 team, but it was frustrating at times. When USA basketball selected me as the coach, I thought I'd get guys like Rafe LaFrentz of Kansas, Paul Pierce of Kansas, and Vince Carter and Antoine Jameson of Carolina, but none of them came to the tryouts. They were in summer school. I also thought I'd get Mike Bibby, but he was on an overseas trip with his Arizona team. USA basketball had a committee that helped pick the team, but I had a lot of input. The committee was very fair. Terry Holland, the athletic director at Virginia, and a member of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee, headed that group. They basically gave me who I wanted. Anyway, it wasn't the committee's fault that certain players pulled out at the last minute. We could have really used a kid like Robert Trailer from Michigan. You know the guy, Tractor Trailer. He's a load in the low post. He's very physical, which is important in international play, and he's quick enough with his feet to defend perimeter big guys and strong enough to defend anyone inside. He could also score on anyone inside. I've always been very high on him. In fact, I think he's potentially a very good NBA player, if used the right way. At the time, Steve Fisher was still the coach at Michigan. Our practices began July 6th in Newport Beach, California. Fisher called the night of July 4th and left a voicemail, as if we're all going to check our message machines on July 4th, and said trailer would be a no-show. He said trailer was going to summer school. Now that begs the question, did Fisher know Trailer was going to summer school before July 4th? And if he did, why would he wait two days before our tryouts began to tell us? USA basketball let me have a camp anywhere I wanted, so I picked Newport Beach. I love California. We could have had it in Salt Lake City, but I didn't want to host a fan night every night. You know what I mean. The fans in Salt Lake are great, but it would have become too much of a distraction. It was the exact opposite in Newport Beach. Nobody cared if we were there or not. It was as if we didn't exist. Southern California is like that. Here we are, the USA's representative for the under-22 World Championships, and you would have needed the FBI to find us in the local sports pages. It wasn't like people jumped out of their pools, towel themselves off, and said, hurry up, honey, let's go watch Majoris coach the Under-22 team. People didn't even know we were around. We were the stealth team. As part of our preparation for the World Championships, we played in the LA Summer Pro League. That's when I had a minor problem with Scott Pageant, a 6'9 junior forward from Kentucky. I guess I kicked him off the team. It depends on how technical you want to get. He quit, and then he changed his mind, but by then it didn't matter. I thought he had a bad attitude and wasn't worth the trouble. What happened was this. During halftime of a game, he started yelling at Corey Brewer, a kid from Oklahoma. That didn't last long. Take a seat and shut up, I told Pageant. You don't yell at a teammate. He's trying just as hard as you are. Pageant said something back to me, so I said, Look, if you don't like it, leave. Well, he took me up on it. After the game he came back in and apologized and said he'd like to come back. But my mind was made up. No, but I wish you a lot of luck, I said. I'm not going to sit here and dwell on this, but you're not coming back. And that was that. To this day, I still don't know who was the best player on that under-22 team. If you called my assistant coaches on that team, Jim Cruz of Evansville, Lorenzo Romar of Pepperdine, and Dick Hunsaker, who's now on my staff, they'd all have separate picks. The NBA guys also used to ask me to name the best player on the team. If pressed, and I say this with a little bit of prejudice, I'd go with Andre. We pulled him out of summer school, and he didn't even know he was coming. He hadn't done anything for two weeks because he was immersed in the summer school program, but he played very well. Cruz, Romar, Hunsaker, and I used to debate which player would make the best pro. That seemed to be the fairest way of picking a top player. You could have made a case for Minnesota's Sam Jacobson or Texas Tech's Corey Carr, Pat Gardy, the kid from Notre Dame, was mentioned, but none of us were sure how his game would translate to the pros. I thought Nebraska's Tyron Lou was probably the best overall talent, but he got hurt. That's when we moved Purdue's Chad Austin over to point and eventually brought in Andre. We had a good team, but we didn't win the World Championships. In fact, the very best college players from the USA would have been challenged to win the under 22 title. Even if I would have had Bibby, LaFrance, Carter, Jameson, and Trailer, I'm not sure we would have won it at all. First of all, the level of international competition has improved dramatically. There are a lot of good players around the world. Next, you have to deal with a trip to Australia. You've got a 13-hour or 16-hour or whatever it is time change, and it takes its toll on the body. Going to Australia is like the ultimate road trip. You think going from Salt Lake to Honolulu to play Hawaii is a tough trip, but multiply that trip by two and you've got Australia. You also have to allow for the time zones. Now if it sounds as if I'm making excuses, I'm not. We got beat. Not that anyone knew what had happened. People back in the States said you could barely find our results on the agate pages of any sports sections. You could pull 100,000 basketball fans, and only 10 of them would know that we were playing in that competition. But I knew we had lost, and I felt like I let people down. They gave me the head coaching job and I didn't come home with the gold medal. I felt bad about that. Even the Melbourne Papers didn't consider the under 22 tournament a big deal. Australian Rules Football received the marquee coverage. I was really intrigued by Australian Rules Football. You've seen those guys on ESPN or Fox Sports. The games are always on about 3 15 in the morning, and every player looks like he ought to be a bouncer at a bar on the south side of Chicago. They're tough, physical, athletic, and talented guys. I went to some of their practices and games, and I really picked up some good things to use for basketball conditioning. We're going to have a leather tambourine, if you can visualize that, a steel rim with leather stretched over it, and make the players box against it for 30, 60, and 90 seconds. That's what they do over in Australia. The tambourine is about the size of a small, circular dinner table or a big war drum. And I'm going to tell you something. You've got to be in great shape to keep hitting that thing. You have to be so conditioned to maintain that pounding. I think it's great for body balance, stamina, aggressiveness, and quick hands. I'm always preaching the importance of active hands, so I'm going to figure out a way to have the tambourine held slightly above the players so they can punch at it. I'm sure they'll be thrilled. I've already called my strength coach at Utah, and he called the Australian Rules football people. We're going to get one of those tambourine things. I don't care if I have to pay for it out of my own pocket. We're going to get it. I have no idea what it's called, but it works. All I know is that those Australian Rules football guys are in magnificent shape. I also spent some time with the team psychologist of the Hawthorne Club, which is one of the teams in the league and is located in a suburb of Melbourne. He was a fascinating psychologist. His team played in a beautiful old stadium, sort of like the Wrigley Field of Aussie Rules Football. They were one of the most established franchises in the league, and they had a player who was considered the Michael Jordan of Australian Rules Football. I can't remember his name, but he was about 36 years old. He was revered. He had broken all sorts of records and was loved for his classiness and longevity as much as he was for his scoring ability. So the team psychologist and I were standing there on the practice field one day. You have to understand that the fields can be of varying lengths. There's a minimum length, but there's no sameness to the fields. It's kind of like different-sized hockey rings. Let's say the field was 140 yards long. The players were out there on a drizzly day, and on the horizon you could see this perfect rainbow. The players lined up in three different lines with about 10 yards between each line. They started moving downfield all the time, keeping the football alive with their fists or with their feet. The field was slippery, the ball was oblong, but they didn't have a single turnover in the entire drill. I was flabbergasted. It was like watching my team run a fast brake drill, except that we always turn the ball over, and we do it indoors, with a smaller, easier to handle ball on a smaller court in dry conditions. When the drill was finished, I told the team psychologist, I can't believe it. These guys haven't turned the ball over yet. He looked at me with equal amazement. Of course not, he said with a certain professional a plomb. They're not supposed to. You've really got to admire the simplicity and the positiveness of that statement. They're not supposed to. I was disappointed we didn't do better in the World Championships, but I understood our limitations. And as always, it was an honor to represent my country. The whole USA basketball experience has been great for me. I've traveled all over the world, met a lot of wonderful people, and learned more about myself as a coach. I fell in love with a giant tambourine and, as an added bonus, got to go snorkeling on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef. Later in that summer, I took six of my Utah players, Andre, Doliak, Drew, Jordy, Dave, and Hanno, on a basketball exhibition trip to Europe. Remember my promise to Hanno about playing in his home country? The schedule called for us to play two games in Sweden, two games in Finland, and two in Ireland. The trip was a good prelude to the season. It got the guys some playing time, it exposed them to different parts of the world, and it allowed Hanno to show his teammates his home country. He was so proud to show the guys where he lived. I had to do a charity fundraiser in Chicago, so they started the trip without me. The team went to Sweden, and Brock Brunkhorst coached the first game. Rich Pinilla was on the trip, and he helped, but I wanted Brock to gain that kind of experience. I know it was only an exhibition game, but it was good for Brock to run the team. They were down at halftime, but came back to win. Now Brock can tell everyone he's undefeated as a Utah interim head coach. We only had six players, so practice wasn't a priority. I wanted them semi-fresh for the games. I also wanted them to have time for sightseeing. We were scheduled to take a boat to Finland a couple of days after our second game in Sweden. On the night before the boat trip, I gave the team a one o'clock curfew. I usually don't set curfews, mostly because I've never needed to. We've never had anybody late for anything in five years. But because we were leaving the next day, I decided on one o'clock. I thought that was reasonable enough. Says Mike Doliak. Earlier that day we were at lunch with Coach and the Rebok rep from Sweden. The rep was telling us that the nightclubs didn't get packed until 2 AM at the earliest. We knew about the one o'clock curfew, but the thing was we didn't have anything to do the next day. We didn't even have a practice scheduled. We were just going to hang out and catch a boat over to Finland. So we were at the hotel and we were in Andre's room watching TV. It got to be about one o'clock and I said, You guys tired? You want to go to bed? I mean, this was our last night in Sweden, and we kind of wanted to see what the clubs were like. And anyway, what were the chances we'd ever run into coach? Five of us went to the club, Drew didn't go, and as we were walking up, David Jackson said, Oh my god, there's coach. We thought he was joking, but then we looked up and it was like, holy shit, it was him. We were dead. We walked up to him, but he wouldn't say a word to us. I talked to him the next day, and that wasn't much fun. Our next free day, we had the practice from hell. Drew wasn't very happy with us, but this was a team concept, so he had to practice. If it's one of us, it's all of us. As soon as they saw me at the club, they knew they were in trouble. They didn't know if they should come and say hello, or turn and run the other way. The next day, Doliac tried to explain to me what had happened and tried to rationalize the whole thing, but I told him, Mike, this isn't what a captain does. I would have let you guys go out until two o'clock if you had asked. I'm the king of you guys determining that. The one reason I didn't want you out that late was because we have to play a game soon and there's only six of us. I don't want to embarrass you guys or the university or put you in jeopardy of getting injured because you're fatigued. You know yourself, Mike, that when we don't practice or play games, I'll let you stay out as long as you like, but last night wasn't one of those nights. The curfew incident was a watershed moment for the team, and I'll tell you why. I got them up the next day at 7 AM and I practiced them from 8 until noon. They almost died. I had told them that I wasn't going to have a practice in Europe, and I never had in any of the previous times I've taken teams overseas. But I also never had a team break curfew. To their credit, They expected the practice to be hard. They knew they were wrong, and in a very tangible way, I think the experience brought them closer together. Drew had told them not to go to the club. He told them they'd never get back in time, but to Drew's credit, he didn't complain about having to go through the four hour practice, even though he hadn't really done anything wrong. He was a captain, and a captain has to set an example. Says Drew Hansen, quote, During a short break in the practice, Coach came up to me and said, I'm really sorry you have to be here, but as a captain, you have to stop these things. And he was right. It taught me a good lesson. There are points in your life where you have to stand up and choose. That night in Stockholm, I walked the in-between line. They were the ones breaking the rules, but I didn't really do enough to stop them. I think the team knew how disappointed I was with it, but you know what? The world turns every 24 hours. That practice was very tough, and I ran them up and down pretty hard, but they responded well. I was especially proud of Mike and Drew for the way they handled the whole situation. Mike and Drew had to learn how to be captains and how to take a leadership role. Mike and Drew had had the luxury of having Keith as a captain for three years. Ben Caton was also a sensational captain. Ben and Keith were the two best captains as a group I've ever had. That's partially why I think Mike and Drew had a tough time crossing over the line from being one of the guys to being the ones who set the tone and yelled at other players. They had a tough time with that concept. That's something you have to learn, and eventually they did. The highlight of the trip might have been the visit to Finland. Hanno was so proud. He showed them his house, the countryside, even a Finnish sauna. We didn't play in front of a very large crowd relative to what we'd get in the States, but in Finland, on a summer night when it stays light for a long time, it was a very big crowd for basketball, about 1,500 people. We won, and it was a great experience for Hanno, his brothers and sisters, and his girlfriend. Later, we played a game against one of the club teams Hanno used to play for. We stopped in Copenhagen and then made our way to Ireland. I had originally wanted to go to Finland, the French Riviera, and Italy for the trip, but there was a problem with travel arrangements, so we ended up with a Sweden-Finland-Ireland combination. I had been told the basketball was terrible in Ireland, and they were right. At one game we only had nineteen people in the stands. There were almost more coaches and players than there were fans. We played a game in rural Northwest Dublin, a working man's town. The game was sponsored by the Holy Name Parish, and afterward, something very touching happened. We were invited to a local beer hall, where they served little herring snacks. As everyone knows, Ireland is not the gastronomical capital of Europe. This isn't meant as a criticism, but their idea of a seven-course meal is a six-pack and a potato. I don't know what would have been better, famine or eating those herring snacks. It was very smoky in the beer hall. Everybody was drinking and smoking, and if they weren't drinking and smoking, they were offering my kids some Irish creams or pints of beer. Of course, the Mormon kids don't drink, and my other guys knew better. And then they didn't know what to do with me. I don't really drink beer, but they kept offering the stuff. They couldn't believe I wouldn't quaff a pint. Not long after we got there, the Holy Name Society director presented us with a plaque of appreciation. It was so touching. These people had spent their money and time to put together this beautiful plaque, it read To the Utes, our friends from far away, thank you for honoring our parish, and thank you for coming to play with us. The coach was so appreciative, and so were the townspeople. What they did was such a wonderful gesture. There was a jukebox blaring some sort of music. A TV was on in the corner. There were smoke clouds from cigarettes, but that plaque presentation was a moment I'll never forget. It was such a poor parish in such a poor area, and basketball in Ireland means nothing. It's the equivalent of elephant polo in the States. In Ireland, the sports are horse racing, soccer, and a game that resembles field hockey. We played twice in Ireland, the second night on the west side of Dublin, and in front of about twenty people, and each time the townspeople took us back to a bar and gave us the best they had. They were wonderful people, generous to a fault, but I don't think they were ready for the size of our players. One time this little man brought out a small bowl of peanuts. The bowl was about the size of a cup of soup. Doliac reached his hand in the bowl, and it was like Godzilla. The peanuts were just gone. They brought out some small salmon chunks on little toast wafers. Our guys would stack them up like dagwood sandwiches and inhale them. The townspeople weren't used to players who were that big and had those types of appetites. I loved Ireland. The ball's bad, but it was a great experience for me and my players. I loved the history of the country, and the people were as genuine and as giving as you'll ever find. It had been an eventful summer, a memorable summer, but now it was time to concentrate on the upcoming season. I wasn't greedy. All I really wanted in 1997 was a run at the whack title and, if everything fell into place just right, an NCAA tournament berth. I would have been ecstatic if someone would have promised me those two things. I would have given up custard cones for that deal. Every once in a while, I drop a little Shakespeare on my team. Some of them probably don't even know it's Shakespeare. They probably think I'm the guy who coined the phrase, to be or not to be. Anyway, when we had our first team meeting, I told them, Heavy is the head that wears the crown. I wanted them to understand exactly what was going to happen that season. The new guys didn't have a clue, so I made it perfectly clear. For the whole decade, we've been kicking ass in this league, I told them. We are the biggest game on everyone's schedule every night throughout the Mountain West. So you'd better be ready to play every night because you're going to get a different, higher level of effort from these teams. There's going to be a difference in attendance, a more vocal crowd. We're going to be on TV 15 times this season, but the team we're playing might only be on twice. This is going to be their big moment. But that's fun. That's the fun of playing at Utah. You're going out every night and you're going to get everybody's best shot. And let me tell you, that's a great feeling. When you beat a team that has given its very best against you, that will make you a better player and a better team. Let's face it. When you think about the best programs in the 90s, you don't automatically think Utah. You think Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, Arizona, those kinds of teams. The marquee teams. But entering the 1997-98 season, we had five WAC titles and five NCAA tournament appearances, including one Elite Eight and two Sweet 16s. As expected, the WAC coaches voted New Mexico the preseason favorite. I did the same thing. It was a no-brainer. There was a lot of talk about the effects of losing Van Horn, sort of a post-Keith syndrome. This was a kid who was an all-American, the three-time WAC player of the year, the centerpiece of our offense, a clutch shooter, basketball obsessed, the leading scorer in the history of the WAC, and Utah, the number two pick in the NBA draft. During his sophomore junior and senior years, we finished 84-17 overall, 45-7 in the WAC, and won three consecutive league titles. Keith helped set the table for this program. He had an amazing work ethic. He was coachable. He had a wonderful practice demeanor. He was committed to academics. You don't replace somebody like Keith with another player. You don't even try. Despite Keith's impressive resume, I never felt we wouldn't survive without him. I think initially there were guys looking for Keith, guys who were used to giving him the ball and watching him make the big basket or the big play. But those guys learned to adjust. Drew was one of them. I told him, Drew, take the shots that come to you. If a shot's there, I want you to take it. I've got no problem with that. I also told him we'd never run a play for him, never a set shot for him. His job was to get other people their shots. I wanted him to work the ball inside to Mike. That was Drew's mantra. Inside, inside, inside. I've always tried to funnel the ball to the post. Keith was great at establishing position and posting low. Now I wanted Mike to do the same sort of thing. He had the size and the power to do it, plus he had the ability to keep defenses honest with a good perimeter shooting game. People occasionally compare Mike to Bill Lambier, but it's not a good comparison. Mike's feet aren't as quick and he's not as athletic as Lambier. Lambier was a great shooter, maybe in the top two percent of shooters in the NBA. Mike's a very good shooter, but there's a difference. We were ranked sixteenth in the Associated Press and fourteenth in the coach's poll at season's beginning. I had no problem with that. I thought Arizona would be really good, I thought Kentucky would be great, I thought Kansas would be great, and I thought Carolina would be really good. I also thought Duke would be very good. I just knew the personnel on those teams. Every radio or TV show I did, I always pointed to the big five Kentucky, Arizona, Carolina, Duke, and Kansas. Those were the teams I expected to see fighting for those four spots in San Antonio. As for us, we were without Keith, Ben Caton, Jeff Johnson, and Ashante Johnson. Keith moved to the NBA, Caton earned his degree, Jeff went on a Mormon mission, Ashante transferred. We were a mid to low top 25 team with three seniors but ten freshmen and sophomores. We had a lot of questions to answer. Who would be our new go-to guy? Where would we get our three-point shooting? How long would a nagging knee injury keep Britain from practicing in games? Could Al contribute after spending two years getting fat in London during his mission? Would David Jackson progress or regress? What would I do when Andre needed rest? We had some experience, some depth, and I knew we would be a solid defensive team, but we certainly didn't have the look of a team that could dominate the whack again. Says Keith Van Horn. Quote, I didn't underestimate them as much as other people did. First of all, they only lost two guys. No matter what two guys they lost, they only lost two players. And I think an experienced team is always a better team. And a team that has played together is always a better team. Another reason I like their chances was because they had three NBA players on that team. Anytime you have a college team with three NBA players, you're going to be successful. Mike became a first round pick, Andre will be an NBA player as well as Hano. A lot was made out of me not being there, but I thought they'd be fine. Close quote. What really worried me was Al's physical condition. Like every returning missionary, he was out of shape and had lost that edge you need to play successful Division I basketball. When Al was a freshman, he picked up our system as well as anyone I'd ever had. He was tough, he was lean, he was a greyhound who played disciplined defense and never lacked for hustle plays. He was the best freshman I've ever coached. He dove for balls, took charges, set screens, rebounded, looked for the open man, took the shot if he had it. When he left on his mission, I told a reporter that I genuinely felt sorrow. We had all the pieces in place, I said. I was sadder to see him walk out of my life than I was about any girl I have dated. Those weren't tears of joy. When Al got off the plane in June, I almost wanted to cry. He said he weighed two hundred fifty, but I say it was more like two hundred seventy. He looked like the Michelin man. He was wider than a double deckered bus barreling down Kensington Road. I can't say I was completely surprised. I had visited him in England, and his living conditions weren't exactly plush. He was in London, but he was on the south side of London, on the other side of the Thames River. He was in a poor neighborhood, primarily Indian and West African. Everything is fried. Indians cook everything in some sort of fat that makes the food taste terrific. It's like cooking something in animal fat and lard with emulsified butter. It tastes great, but it's the most nutritionally unfit food ever created. You might as well get an ice cream scoop and just start eating straight butter. None of this was Al's fault. When you're on a mission, you get your meals where you can. It's not like they had the world's finest salad bar on the corner. He lived in South London, so he ate what they ate. He didn't have much of a choice. When he left on his mission, he weighed about 188. He was rock hard, thanks to a lot of work with weights. I was actually on his case to gain weight. He gained it all right. About eighty pounds, give or take a few. He had a big time waste. He could have borrowed my belt. I told him, Al, we'll be getting the same size clothing from Reebok. As soon as he came back, I got him to the USA basketball under twenty two trials. He needed to play. The more, the better. But the other coaches weren't impressed with Al. They hadn't seen him as a freshman in 1994 when he averaged 6.7 points, 6.1 rebounds, and six floor burns. They saw this overweight kid who was basically relearning the game. One of the coaches came up to him and said, Al, I want you to shower with me tonight. That way I won't feel so bad about my own body. Jim Cruz from Evansville came up to me during the tryouts. I was sipping from a glass of water and he said, Where'd you get that guy? You find him playing behind a senior citizen's home? I nearly spat my water out on that one. Says Al Jensen, quote, I didn't gain 80 pounds. It was more like 60 pounds. I ate fried food and we lived off of peanut butter. Every week we'd get a day off to shop and do our laundry. If we could find another American, we'd try to go out and play basketball. But it wasn't like you could stay in real basketball shape. I know Coach thinks missionaries return home different from when they leave. That's something I've asked myself. You definitely grow up and you definitely mature, but from a basketball standpoint, I was so far removed from the game, you almost never saw it on TV. It wasn't part of your life. I knew it was going to take a while to get the fire back, the competitiveness. You're on a mission and you're nice for two years, and then you're back with coach, and I was so out of shape. One of the hardest things I've ever done was get back into basketball shape. Britain's situation wasn't very encouraging either. Shortly after the beginning of practice, his left knee began bothering him. He was diagnosed with patella tendinitis. The doctors thought rest might heal the injury, so we basically shut him down until mid-December. A redshirt year was a possibility. Nobody really knew what to make of us. Andy Katz, one of my favorite basketball writers, proved to be something of a visionary. In his report for the Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook, he said we were missing a proven shooter, but that this squad might be more complete than a year ago if the returning missionary, Al, and the newcomers, Britton and Carlisle, produced as expected. He also wrote that we had a new hunger without Van Horn. Now the passion is to prove that Miller and Doliak can be just as successful without Van Horn dominating the lineup. Then he picked us to reach the NCAA tournament and be a team to watch come March. That was easy for him to say, but as the season got underway, I started feeling better about my guys and about our chances. Honel was developing much faster than expected, but the key guy was Caton. His maturity level was tremendous. Like I said, I've coached five sets of brothers in my career at Utah, but this was the first time the younger one had every character trait the older one did. Ben was seven years older than Trace, but they might as well have been twins. Trace shared his brother's work ethic, physical toughness, quiet determination, and courage, and already I could see that Trace was a better shooter than Ben and a more physical player. When I yelled at him, and I yelled at everybody, he never sulked or needed therapy. He used it as motivation. He was becoming a very good role player for us. Andre, too, was improving each day. His whole career came in such leaps and bounds. First he sat out his freshman year as a prop 48 kid, then he didn't start until the second game of league play during his sophomore year, and we'd lose the game but go on to have a hell of a record. He had a very good sophomore year but was pudgy and fat and had three chins. George Carl occasionally would stop by our practices and he'd grab Andre's chins and his stomach rolls. By the time he was a senior, his body had undergone a tremendous amount of change. He wasn't the most buffed kid on the team, but at least he didn't have boobs and a saggy chest. When he first got here, he had the exact opposite of the classic basketball body. But he worked very hard to change that. Says Drew Hansen, quote, I knew with Alex coming back from his mission that we were going to be an outstanding defensive team. I knew Andre was a great defender. I thought I was a pretty good defender. I knew Mike was a great defender. If you have four great defenders on the court, you have a chance to be really good. The question mark was whether we could score, but I kind of had an inkling that even without Keith, we could be so good defensively that it wouldn't matter if we couldn't score as much as the season before. Our exhibition season began November 6th with a four-point win against Hungary. Then we beat the California All-Stars by 23 points. We opened our regular season schedule with a victory against Cal State Fullerton and finished the month 5-0. December began with a trip to Chicago and the United Center for the Grade 8. The Grade 8 is where they invite the final eight teams from the previous season's NCAA tournament. We practiced at the Berto Center, which is the Bulls team facility in a North Chicago suburb. Bulls general manager Jerry Krause was there, so I asked him to talk to the team. He told the guys about the NBA, about what the Bulls look for in draftees, and about the draft in general. The players were spellbound. Plus, I think they loved being in a professional environment. The Bulls' logo on the court, red and white, Utah colors everywhere. They were in the locker room, Jordan's locker room, and I think it was just a neat experience for them. For most of the kids on that roster, it was the closest they would ever come to Pro Ball. Maybe that's why so many of them wanted their pictures taken in front of Jordan's locker. I also asked Dick Vitel to address the team. Vitel is so passionate about the game, and that was his message in his little speech. He was good about telling the team that basketball was a small part of their total lives. He stressed the same things that we did as a staff academics, decorum, responsibility, discipline, but it was good that they had heard it from someone else. The Great Eight isn't really a tournament, it's more of a basketball version of boxing night. There are two games one night, two games the next night. We were the undercard in the first night's double header. It was us against Providence, followed by defending national champion Arizona against Kansas, which a lot of people, including myself, thought had enough talent to win the title in 1998. The next night it was North Carolina versus Louisville, and then Purdue versus Kentucky. Great matchups. We beat Providence by six, but nobody's going to find a videotape of that game in any time capsule. We had 21 turnovers, but as I told everyone after the game, we played hard and beat a short, quick, and athletic team, a team that's everything we're not. Dave Jackson got a lot of minutes in that game, and he deserved them. It was the best he'd played since coming to Utah. He had 10 points, but what I really liked was his six rebounds and the defensive job he did on Jamel Thomas, an all big east forward. Afterward, I guess he told some of the writers that I had challenged him early in the season, that I had been tough on him, and maybe I was tough on him, but no more so than any other player who doesn't give me a hundred percent effort. I guess he also said that I'd been riding him, but that he didn't mind, that coaching brought out the best in him. I hoped so, because he was going to get coaching. Our game finished about 9 o'clock Central Time, and the next morning at 5 45, Drew was on a plane back to Salt Lake City for an afternoon interview with a Rhodes Scholar committee. Only 12 candidates are interviewed nationwide. I've always said Drew's mind is a gift from God. Until the end of his sophomore year, he had never earned a grade lower than an A. He got an A- in Judicial Process 512. The day after he got the final grade, I told him, You've got it made now, you're not going to graduate with straight A's. So the easiest thing to do was get a couple of Bs and not worry about it. He didn't listen. Telling Drew to settle for an occasional B is like telling me to eat TV dinners. It doesn't compute. If ever there was a kid who fulfilled the qualifications needed to become a Rhodes scholar, it had to be Drew. I had coached Mark Moroda at Marquette and Rick Hall at Ball State when they were candidates, but of the three, I thought Drew had the most to offer. No one can ever accuse me of emphasizing athletics more than academics, but with Drew, I made even more allowances. Earlier in the offseason, my new strength and conditioning coach told me Drew was missing too many weightlifting sessions. So the next time the whole team was together, I told the players Drew didn't have to go lift weights. He could skip the mandatory three-a-week workouts during the offseason and the twice-a-week lifting sessions once practice started. There were a few raised eyebrows. Look, I said, if you guys are going for 4.0 GPA sumacum laud status and a spot in the Michigan Law School, then you don't have to go to weights either. The way I look at it, it was a good trade-off. Drew's body paid the price, but his academics didn't suffer. I have no regrets about that. Of course, we now had Drew with a body showing wear and tear. We had Al with a fat body, and we had Hanno in his bad European basketball habits. But at least he wasn't throwing any more passes while he was in the air or throwing cross-court passes. In fact, I got a huge kick later that year when I heard Hanno doing analysis for a finish station during the NBA playoffs. When the Bulls were playing the jazz in the NBA finals, apparently Hono became disgusted with Tony Ku Koke's lack of fundamentals. Look at Ku Koke, he said, just like a European, jumps in the air and throws the ball. As it turns out, Drew wasn't selected to advance to a second interview. A candidate from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota was the only one asked to do so. But I'll always believe that he would have been worthy of the honor. Oxford doesn't know what it missed. While Drew was in Salt Lake City, we flew to North Carolina for our game against Wake Forest. They didn't have Tim Duncan anymore, but they were 6-0, ranked in the top 25 and playing on their home court, where they were 57-2 against non-conference opponents. We had lost to them each of the last two years, so I didn't have to worry about us being overconfident. Andre was sensational in the 62-53 win. You could see him becoming an extension of the coaching staff. We would tell him something, and it would appear in basketball form on the court. That game was the beginning of a new and improved Andre. It was a game where Andre began to establish himself as a constant force. We also got a nice effort out of Mike, whom I had really aired out after his effort against Providence, and also from Hanno, and, in a reserved capacity, Nate. We held Wake Forest to 28% shooting from the field and out rebounded them 43-33. That's what wins basketball games. I know it wasn't the most artistic win, but I was feeling pretty good after the Wake Forest game. I did my postgame radio show with Bill Marcroft, and afterward, several Demon Deacon fans wanted to take a couple of pictures. If people are nice about it, I'll almost always sign an autograph or sit still for a picture. It's not that hard to sign your name or smile for a few seconds. And these people were basketball fans. That's how it is in North Carolina. It's a basketball state. What with Wake, Duke, Carolina, and NC State? Those people down there can tell you who played for what coach in what year, if a kid has a decent drop step, if he can defend, if he has active hands. They're like pseudo coaches with season tickets. When I was done with the photos, the local high school coach introduces himself to me and then introduces one of his players. I can't remember the kid's name, but I remember what the coach said. This is the best junior in the state of North Carolina. As soon as he said that, I knew there was no way he would ever be a running ute. Utes don't come from North Carolina. Utes come from Towilla, not Tobacco Road. There's no way that a kid was ever going to turn his back on Carolina or any of those ACC schools. There's just too much tradition and probably too much pressure from the locals to stay home. I asked the kid, I'll bet you don't even know where Utah is on a map. Yeah, I do, he said. Okay. I'll bet you a barbecue dinner that you can't name two states that border Utah. The kid said Nevada, and then guessed Colorado. I owed him a dinner. Before he left, I told him what I usually tell kids getting ready to make a decision about college. I told him to get a good education. There's nothing more important than a good education. I really believe that. So there we were, 7-0, ranked in the top 10, and doing it without Keith and without Britton, who didn't begin practicing on a regular basis until December 10. But we were winning, and it wasn't hard to figure out why. We were getting the ball inside the Doliak. Andre was really pushing the ball, and our defense was good. That's the key. From day one, Drew was good defensively, Caton was good defensively, Doliak was good defensively, Al was really good defensively. I know some coaches who love scoring lots of points and who think offense wins games, but if I had to choose between the two types of teams, a defensive or offensive-oriented one, I'd take the defensively skilled team every time. Then again, that's probably why I'll never win a national championship. You don't need an offensive gun to win one of those things, but you coach like your personality, which is why I sit on the bench and coach like Mr. Defense. That's because I was such a crappy offensive player. When you need a radar screen to find the backboard with your J, then you'd better learn how to stay low and wide with your stance. And that's the truth. McGuire was the same way. But at least I was smart enough to know to let a guy like Andre go offensively. Because he was so far behind, and because I wanted my assistants to have a day off once in a while, I started working with Brita during Sunday practices. I wanted to encourage Britain and push him. I usually try not to practice on Sundays, but in Britain's case, there were extenuating circumstances, and anyway, he wanted and needed to work out. With a significant portion of my team being LDS members, the issue of practicing on Sunday is a sensitive one. BYU, as well as several other schools in the country, won't play games on Sunday and, if invited to the NCAA tournament, are automatically placed in Thursday Saturday brackets rather than Friday Sunday brackets. Larry Miller, the owner of the Utah Jazz, won't attend his own team's game if it's played on a Sunday, all because of his Mormon faith. I respect and applaud those beliefs, but I'm also pragmatic and realistic. In today's world of college basketball, it isn't always possible to keep Sundays free from game schedules or practice schedules. I do what I can. I'm honest with the LDS kids when I recruit them. I tell them there will be occasions when we'll practice on Sundays, and if we do practice on Sunday, I tell the team to pick the time that best suits their church-going needs. If they want to attend church in the morning, then we'll practice in the afternoon. I'm flexible. I also tell them that I have a lot of good Mormon friends, and I notice their stores are open on Sundays, that they cut a deal on a Sunday, that they make a buck on Sunday. Everybody would prefer to not work on Sunday, but the reality of life is that you can't always do what you want to do. And if a recruit feels that strongly about practicing on Sundays, I tell them they shouldn't come to Utah. I tell them I can't promise them that we won't practice on Sunday. So far we've never played a Sunday game except during the NCAA tournament and once during the 1998 regular season. I've always said I would never agree to a Sunday regular season game unless it was absolutely warranted. And in the case of the New Mexico game, There were circumstances that had to be taken into account. The game was supposed to be played at the Huntsman Center, but then ABC asked if we would consider a Sunday tip-off. I knew that probably wasn't going to work because of our fans, so we traded dates with New Mexico. We played there on Sunday, on national TV, and they'd come to our place in late February. At that point, Britain would have played in any game on any day. Sundays, Monday at 6 AM, Tuesday at midnight, it didn't matter. He was frustrated by his knee injury, and he was frustrated by me. He was making slow progress, but not enough to satisfy either of us. He was a freshman, worse yet, he was a freshman trying to overcome a knee injury. That isn't a good combination. Says Britton Johnson, quote, I'm not gonna lie, there were points when I wasn't sure I'd make it. I sat out the first two months of the season, then I slowly started coming back. But there were points when I was so depressed that I didn't even want to look at the man, close quote. I wasn't about to risk Britain's health for basketball. He had a knee injury. The time off helped, but his knee was almost always sore. The kid lived on ibuprofen the whole season. After every game and after every practice, he iced his knee. The doctor said the injury, patella tendonitis, wasn't serious enough to keep him from playing, but you could tell there was discomfort. Britain was smart about it. He said he would never risk playing with serious pain, and I would have supported him one hundred percent. I will never compromise a player's health for a victory. With any new player, there's an adjustment period. Britain had to get used to my standards, my system, my emphasis on academics, my yelling, and my decisions. He wanted to play. I wanted him to play, but only if he was ready, and he wasn't really ready. It wasn't until midway through December that Brita made his Utah debut. He played 11 minutes against Azusa Pacific, scored seven points, had seven rebounds, three turnovers, two fouls, and generally looked like someone who hadn't been in live action for months. I didn't play him on the road against Oregon State, barely played him when the whack regular season schedule began, and kept him on the bench the first time we played UNLV, UTEP, and New Mexico. The Oregon State game was not Britain's finest moment as a Ute. This was a game I scheduled so Doliak and Jackson could play in Portland in front of the same people who had seen them play in high school. We played it at the Rose Garden, which is where the Trailblazers play, and it was a hell of a game. We fell behind 18-4 and committed 15 turnovers in the first half. They trapped us, pressed us, forced us into playing tempo that didn't suit our style. We eventually made some adjustments and kept our undefeated season alive. I was so happy for us and even happier for Mike, who played so well in that game. He had 21 points, 9 rebounds, hit a three-pointer, and converted seven of eight foul shots. I remember when he signed his letter of intent in November of his senior year in high school. I was ridiculed by writers in Portland. They couldn't believe it. But Mike is what I call a manufactured player. He doesn't have an array of athletic skills, but he plays with such an intelligence, and he compensates with heart, a big body, and a soft shooting touch. After the game I came into the locker room just in time to see Brita throwing soda cans against the wall in anger. He was mad that he hadn't played. Never mind that we had overcome a 14-point deficit, or that one of his teammates had had a special night, or that we were 10 0 and off to one of the best starts in Utah basketball history. I went right after him. Look, I said, you just grow the hell up here, sit your butt down, or else you're never going to play. We just had a wonderful win, we came back against a good team, and if I thought you could have helped us, I would have played you. But there was nothing I could do. You weren't ready for this. Your time is going to come. You're a hell of a player, but you've got to be happy for the success of this team. This team is built on guys supporting each other, and I'm not going to tolerate your behavior. If you want to act this way, then go back to your junior high friends, because this is what 13 and 14 year old kids do. You'll play when I play you and when I feel you're ready. I'll play you when you have an opportunity to be successful and help the team. And from that point on, I never had another problem with Britain. That was a watershed moment in his career. Says Britton Johnson, quote, I could see why he was a little overprotective. I hadn't done anything the first two months of the season. I was a step behind, and I wasn't picking things up very well. It was frustrating, and I was always upset because I wanted to play. He was always asking me how I was doing. I understood why he was bringing me along slowly, but that didn't make it any easier to take. The only thing you could do was try harder in practice and convince him you deserved the playing time. By the end of December, we were 11-0. By the end of January, we were 18-0, and hadn't had a game closer than six points. We were ranked third in the country, had set a school record for consecutive victories, and yet, as I would later find out, there was something wrong with our team. We didn't suffer from lack of effort. The guys played hard, and considering we had 10 underclassmen on a 13-man scholarship roster, they played with a lot of chemistry and continuity. We knew how to play defense, how to rebound, how to listen and learn. I knew we were living in a fantasy world, there was no way we were going to do an Indiana and finish undefeated, but I wanted the guys to enjoy the wave. And that turned out to be the problem. Nobody was enjoying the experience. When we beat BYU January 10th at their place, it was our sixth consecutive win against our biggest rival. But that was a game where we didn't play smart. Al fouled out with almost 13 minutes left to play. We had a nice run in the first half and let it get away from us. That's when I had a discussion with the team at halftime. One of the lone bright spots was Caton, who was fast becoming one of my favorites. Playing at BYU is no easy thing. A year earlier, Trace was riding a bus to and from games in Alamos, Colorado. Try finding Alamosa on a map. I think somebody said there were three times the amount of people in BYU's Marriott Center as there are in all of Alamos. But Trace played with so much poise. He was a difference maker. That was also the game when I was introduced to our new school president, Dr. J. Bernard Matchin. I knew he had come from the University of Michigan, so one of the first things I said to him was, You've got to help me get Drew Hansen into Michigan's law school. I guess you can call that power networking. Plus, I wanted the very best for Drew. I knew he had always dreamed of going to law school at Michigan or Stanford. It was also during this win streak that I noticed Andre becoming more of a factor. There was no question he was the best point guard I'd ever coached. But what really impressed me was his ability to stay calm under difficult circumstances. We played at Air Force in late January and something happened during the game where I started yelling at one of our guys. Instead of focusing on the game, I lost my concentration. Air Force switched defenses, but I didn't know it until Andre came over to the bench and said we needed to switch to another offensive set. I usually make those calls, but this time, Andre was alert enough to make the call for me, and he was absolutely right. There were a couple of other things that happened in that Air Force game. For the first time that season, Al bore a resemblance to the pre-LDS mission Al. He put a big time glove on this kid from Air Force, Jarmika Reese. Reese was the seventh leading scorer in the country at the time, but Al, as well as some of our other guys, did a great job shutting him down. Reese had averaged 22 shots in his three previous games. He got off nine against us and finished with 13 points. Al had 17 points, six rebounds, and some key steals down the stretch. And you could tell he was slowly working himself into shape. He still didn't have the spring and lift in his legs he had before he left, and his body wasn't what it used to be, but he was trying hard. He would stay after practice and ride the stationary bike for an hour. His body fat went down. His commitment was everything I had expected. One other thing. A lot of people in our conference think that Air Force is a gimme win. I know their record in whack play isn't very good, but I always admire how hard they play. They played with so much tenacity and pride. I said it that night, and I'll say it again, those are the kind of guys who should be flying the Enola Gay. If there's ever another Enola Gay, those Air Force guys will be the ones flying it. They're fearless. As it turned out, February might have been the most pivotal month of the season for us. So much happened. Not all of it pleasant, but no month helped shape us as a team more than those 28 days. Remember the schedule switch with New Mexico? Well, we went to Albuquerque and lost the game on national television 7774. It was a controversial finish. Some people say we got cheated in that game. All I know is we had a nine-point lead with three minutes to go and we let it slip away. Then we came home and beat BYU in a game where Al took an elbow on the chin and had to get 12 stitches to close it up. It was also a game where there were 50 fouls called. I told reporters that I had been to Beerfests, Bratfests, and now a foul fest. We beat Rice on the road, came home, and got ready for another road trip, this time to Wyoming and then Colorado State. That's a bastard of a trip. And the first mistake I made was flying the team into Laramie the day of the game. I made that trip every way I can, but this time we took Huntsman's plane over there. It's only a 42-minute flight from Salt Lake City, and the plan backfired. I don't think I'll ever do that again. Wyoming beat us by six in a game we let get away from us. First, we didn't play tough or hard, and we weren't ready to play. Second, Wyoming played with a great passion, especially after we had beaten them by 17 points at our place. Third, Doliac didn't get down in the low post and establish a low post presence. We flew to Colorado State, and the staff and I watched tape of the Wyoming game until 4 a.m. and then again from 7 o'clock to 10. The players watched it from 10 to 3. I wanted Doliac to understand how important it is that he get inside and stay inside. I told him I didn't care if he missed every shot from that point on, but that I wanted him to get wide, get those size 17s close to the hole, and establish a post position. If he wanted to take an occasional three-pointer, fine, that's a bonus. But we were going to win with him in the post. That's where he had to do it for us. Says Jeff Strong, quote, there was a play in the Wyoming game where Al Jensen didn't hustle and run. Coach ran that one play back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He played it 15 times. I counted, but Coach never brought the losing up, close quote. After the film session, we practiced, and after practice, Mike and Drew approached me. They wanted to talk about some things. Says Mike Doliak, quote, coming into the season, we had the same goal as usual, to take the season a step further. We were on our way to doing that, but something was different. I remember sitting on the bus after beating BYU in January, and we were also pissed. We were undefeated and had just beaten our big rival, but there weren't many smiles. We were all looking at each other, and it was like, what the hell? We were a Division I team, we were undefeated, but we were all pissed and wondering why we weren't doing well. It was like, how is this happening? Then later we lost at New Mexico and then at Wyoming. Even with those losses, we had a hell of a record, and we were doing a great job, but nobody was having any fun, close quote. Says Drew Hansen. Quote, we went up there on behalf of the whole team. We all took losing hard, but when we lost a game, Coach relived every play. Then he would relive every play with each player. He was yelling at every player. We had lost two games, but we felt like we had lost a hundred. We just wanted to loosen him up, so we decided it was time to talk to him. We spent maybe 20 minutes talking basketball and about 90 minutes talking about the function of a team. This was a big deal to us. It was a critical part of our season. After that meeting, he went out of his way to build up our morale. He'd always ask, You having fun? Close quote. Drew and Mike took me upstairs at the hotel in Fort Collins, and they didn't pull any punches. They said I had been really hard on the players, that I had been uptight, that I had been especially hard on Dave and Geordie. They also wanted me to bring Donnie and Judd off the road recruiting. Donnie and Judd are much more easygoing, and they thought those two guys would be a good counterbalance. It took some guts to do what Mike and Drew did, but that's why they were captains. That's part of their responsibility, to step forward and be team spokesmen. They were respectful, but they also got their points across. It was a good meeting, and I listened. I took what they said to heart. It was also after the Wyoming game that I made the decision to start playing Britain. He had gotten minimal minutes and hadn't even played in the game in Laramie. I just didn't think he was ready, but now it was time. Britain, you've been practicing your ass off. I love the way you're working, you deserve to play. I still have a little bit of consternation, but I probably went too far with that. I don't want you to lose your confidence. Your practice habits have been outstanding. Now you go out there, and I don't care how many mistakes you make as long as you play hard. I don't care if we lose every game, you're not going to sit again. We played Colorado State two days after the Wyoming loss, and anyone tuning into ESPN that night saw one of the great defensive efforts in WAC history. We held them to 14 first half points, they held us to 18. We made seven of 28 shots in the period, they made six of twenty-four. You could almost hear the television sets being clicked off around the country. But I love defense, and even though Brita didn't know all of his assignments and made some mistakes, I loved his enthusiasm on the court. He had practiced so hard and he deserved the playing time. He ended up with six points and one rebound in 12 minutes, and we ended up with a 60 to 48 win. It was a special victory for a lot of different reasons. It had been such an emotional trip, what with the loss to Wyoming, and then the meeting with Drew and Mike, and then the situation with Britain, but I was so happy with the way everybody played against Colorado State. It was also my 300th career win, and afterwards Strom got the game ball, and all of the guys presented it to me. So the whole trip was a watershed experience, for me and for the team. Says Jeff Strom, quote, I think about his 300th victory, and it still brings chills. The kids gave him a five-minute standing ovation in the locker room after the game. He kept telling them to be quiet, to stop cheering, but they wouldn't do it. They gave him the game ball, and I can remember Doliak saying, Coach, whatever it took, we were going to win that game. And I heard Andre tell Brock, I'm so tired, but I knew I wasn't coming out of that game. I wasn't going to let Coach take me out. I wanted to do whatever it took to win for him. Close quote. We had a nice little run for the remainder of the month. We beat Air Force and UNLV, dodged snowstorms long enough to get into El Paso and beat UTEP, and then returned home for senior night in our game against New Mexico. This time there wasn't an agonizing ending. We won by 10, claimed a fourth consecutive WAC regular season championship, and earned a number one seed in the WAC tournament. This was a night for my players, especially Drew and Mike, who were playing in their final game at the Huntsman Center. I just wanted to sneak into the tunnel and enjoy their moment as the players took turns climbing up the ladder and cutting the net. Drew and Mike had smiles as wide as basketballs. It was their fourth WAC title in four years, and they had helped produce a 109 and 19 record during that time. Incredible. I doubt if two players will ever experience those kinds of numbers and that many consecutive championships. Drew and Mike each took turns on the public address system after the game. I got a kick out of Drew's comments when he said, I know change is inevitable, but for four years we've owned this league. I liked that. I wanted the players to feel a sense of accomplishment. Of course, I could have done without Drew asking the crowd to chant, Rick, Rick, Rick. I know why he was doing it. There were all sorts of rumors concerning the Arizona State job, but I wanted this night to be centered around the players, not me. Next up was the WAC Tournament. To this day, I'll never understand why the league wanted to play the tournament in Las Vegas. First of all, I'm old enough to remember the City College of New York betting scandal in 1951, after they won both the NIT and NCAA in 1950, which ended basketball at CCNY. And you don't have to be so old to remember the Tulane scandal or the Boston College scandal or the Northwestern scandal. To think that there isn't a danger of gambling in college sports is beyond naivete. I know the Vegas casinos don't take bets on the whack tournament when it's in town. So what? It still isn't a healthy environment for a college athlete. We're supposed to show them a tape on gambling. Do I show it to the boys when they're checking their keyno cards? You want a kid to wake up in the morning, roll out of bed, brush his teeth, and then go downstairs to the lobby and roll the bones? Or see if he can double down on a pair of tens or maybe play a parlay? When we played UNLV earlier in the season, we stayed at the Crown Plaza Hotel. Why? No casino. Don't get me wrong, I love Vegas. I love the restaurants, the shows, the casinos, the music, the hotels. You think the restaurants don't like seeing me walk in the door? And you should see the casinos. They love a sucker like me who thinks he's Mr. Vegas. Believe me, the chips don't spend much time in my hand. Vegas is a great town. I just don't think the whack tournament should be there. We constantly tell these kids not to gamble and to beware of gamblers. At Northwestern, they put in a new one strike and you're out policy. If you're caught gambling illegally, and that means internet gambling, final four pools, fantasy leagues, you lose your scholarship. And if you're a member of the athletic department, you lose your job. But at the whack, we not only played our tournament at the gambling capital of the world, but we had our players stay in casino hotels. What sort of message is that? It can only lead to trouble. We didn't stay long in Vegas. That's because UNLV upset us in the tournament quarterfinals 54 to 51. I have to take a lot of the blame for the loss. Not only did we get outplayed, out rebounded, and out hustled, but we got outcoached. I didn't have the team ready for UNLV's zone defense, and I made a mistake by looking ahead. And once again, I didn't trust myself with Britton. I only played him six minutes. I promised myself I wouldn't make the same mistakes again. Says Britton Johnson, quote, he called me in and actually apologized for not playing me. How many coaches would do something like that? It happened right after our game against Las Vegas. I had had a pretty good first half against them, no big mistakes, hit a three, worked hard, blocked a shot, but then he didn't play me whatsoever in the second half. I couldn't understand why. He said he just didn't feel comfortable putting me in, but at our next practice in front of all the guys, he apologized and told me, for the rest of the season, we're going to win with you or lose with you. No matter what, you're going to play. From that point on, I felt like I had his complete confidence. I think he realized maybe I could help out a little bit, close quote. Says Mike Doliak. Quote, that loss to UNLV was the best thing that could have happened to us, because we kind of looked at each other and said, we're not playing as best as we can. We're not being aggressive enough. Close. Never did I think we'd finish the regular season with a 25-3 record or another WAC championship or a guaranteed at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. We had answered most of those questions asked at season's beginning. Who would be our new go-to guy? Well, there were three guys Mike, Andre, and Hano. Where would we get our three-point shooting? We picked our spots with threes, but Mike, Drew, Caton, and Dave all shot 40% or better from the arc, and Andre was close. How long would a nagging knee injury keep Britain from practicing games? Britain was never 100% during the season, and he wouldn't be 100% during the postseason. He became close, personal friends with ice packs and ibuprofen. But as long as he felt comfortable playing with the nagging pain, I was going to play him. Could Al contribute after spending two years getting fat in London during his mission? He still wasn't the old Al, but he was getting there. He had started all 30 games, been our second leading rebounder, and our second leading assist man. And he was a joy to watch on the defensive end. But I still couldn't get him to shoot. Would David Jackson progress or regress? He gave me glimpses of progress, but only glimpses. What would I do when Andre needed rest? This was my number one concern entering the NCAA tournament. One other question remained would I make good on an earlier promise to give up custard cones if we made a run at the whack title and were invited to the NCAA tournament? Give up custard cones? Never.