Utah’s Man of the Hour Knows Time Is Precious

So you think you had a good week. Try topping Rick Majerus of Utah, the man who ran the Runnin’ Utes into the national championship game here Saturday.

The 50-year-old Majerus returned to Salt Lake City last weekend after coaching his team to a shocking upset of defending champion Arizona in the West Regional final. He was riding high, but facing a doctor’s appointment with dread. His doctor had ordered him in Tuesday for a procedure that would remove polyps from his colon.

Later Tuesday, he was told the two tumors removed were benign.

So a man who has been through heart bypass surgery and who tends to fear the worst when it comes to health matters, was able to head for the grotto of college basketball, the NCAA’s Final Four, with a clear head and a light heart.

And it only got better here Saturday night, when the unexpected--and to many knowledgeable about college basketball the unbelievable--sent Majerus’ Utah team past powerhouse North Carolina, 65-59, and into Monday night’s final against Kentucky.

“Tuesday, I was scared to death. I thought I had cancer,” Majerus said. “But I guess I have a little angel on my shoulder.”

*

On a day in his life when he knew there really was no such thing, Majerus found sanctuary on a Stairmaster.

It was 10:30 a.m. Saturday, about eight hours before the game, and the lone machine in the small hotel workout room pumped up and down. Majerus needed to sweat, needed to get the release that comes from exercise, needed to get about 45 minutes of escape from the insanity that has swirled around him ever since Utah drowned Arizona at the Pond of Anaheim last weekend.

“If I don’t do this, I’ll just eat,” he said.

Also, there on the Stairmaster, he wanted to tell a friend about his little angel.

“Her name is Sarah,” he said. “She died about two weeks ago. I’m going to wear a pin on my sweater tonight, just this one pin--the hell with the NCAA pin--for her.”

The pin is an organ donor pin. Sarah, daughter of Jerry Haggerty of Milwaukee--a friend of Majerus’--stayed alive for more than a year because she received three different organs from donors. Eventually, the infection that spread throughout her body killed her.

“I couldn’t do anything,” Majerus said. “I can wear the pin. That’s all. I hope somebody sees it, lots of people see it, and decide to put their name on the donor list. My mom’s name is, lots of my friends. Mine too. Nobody is gonna want my heart, but I sure go to the bathroom a lot, so I must have great kidneys for somebody.”

*

On this, the biggest day of his basketball life, Majerus is a swarm of demands, requests, expectations.

As he grinds away on the Stairmaster, there is a steady stream of managers and assistants, each with yet another detail to handle. He had gotten a call from somebody he couldn’t remember, but who said they had played basketball together many times at Hart Park in Wauwatosa, a Milwaukee suburb. Got any tickets, coach? Then there were his friends who had asked for, and received, two tickets and now wanted to get two more for their bartenders.

He handled each request with aplomb. If this basketball gig ever goes bad and Murray’s Tickets is looking for a top-notch employee, Majerus is its man.

Through all of the requests, his line of decision is clear. He has made himself responsible for 340 tickets, and friends--those who have stuck with him through the good and bad from the playgrounds of Milwaukee to the stops along the way at Ball State and the NBA, to those who have stayed faithful during his years at Utah--will be taken care of.

One such friend is a man named Mike Schneider.

“He called me as soon as he got back from the West Regional,” Schneider said. “I’m a nobody, just a guy, and he called me and told me he wanted me here.”

Schneider and Majerus went to grade school together, back at St. Catherine’s in Milwaukee. Schneider said that they played basketball every day as kids, no mean feat in Milwaukee’s winters.

“It would snow, we’d shovel it, and we’d get out and play,” Schneider said. “We’d even skip school if we had to. I guess we’re old enough to admit that now.”

In July 1977, Schneider was vacationing in northern Wisconsin when a tornado hit his campsite. His daughter, age 6 and Majerus’ goddaughter, was killed when a tree crushed their trailer.

“I drove home. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t feel,” Schneider said. “When I got to my house, Rick was there. Don’t even ask me what he said. I have no idea. But he was there.”

*

Majerus lives on his friends, dotes on them and them on him. His life consists of communicating the intricate skills of the game of basketball to young men at an age when they seldom are interested in intricate skills of anything, and taking his friends out to share a meal and stories.

The friends range from guys who played on the playgrounds with him and are now box boys. To Kevin Costner.

Costner and Majerus, America’s new odd couple, had a party here earlier in the week.

Then on Saturday, Costner and the box boys sat together in the stands and celebrated Majerus’ finest moment in basketball yet.

“I got back from the West Regional last Saturday night,” Majerus said, “and I had 106 messages on my machine. Friends, so many friends, all wanting to share this with me.

“You know what I did? I just turned on the machine, lay back on the bed and listened to them. It was great.”

*

The Stairmaster sanctuary has ended. It is 11:30 a.m., time to head to the Alamodome for Utah’s last practice time slot before its evening date with North Carolina. Majerus must slip out of the hotel elevator and through a lobby of fans dressed in red and dying to chat with the man of the hour.

He does so smoothly, turning down a couple of autograph requests courteously, and heading for a waiting car that is to be led by two local policemen on motorcycles. Majerus knows the NCAA allows no flexibility on its time slots for practice, and he wants every minute coming to him for this last preparation session.

But he is, in his words, “tight and snarly” now. The game-face has replaced the soft one that talked about his little angel, Sarah.

One of the two policemen stops in an intersection to give a pedestrian directions. Majerus is fuming. Then the police take the team bus a different direction than Majerus’ car, and Majerus, at this point sitting in the front passenger seat, orders the driver, a friend, to pull over.

“Gimme the wheel. I’ll get us there,” he snarls. “This is one of those cars with an NCAA sticker on it, and in this town right now, you can run over a widow in this and get away with it.”

No widow was run over, but one red light was ignored and seven cars in the far right lane of the freeway were passed. On the right.

For a passenger in the back seat, a Majerus line to sportswriter Gene Wojciechowski, then of the Chicago Tribune, came to mind. Majerus was driving on a Utah highway, well above the speed limit. A concerned Wojciechowski, in the back seat, asked about the speed.

The hefty Majerus, assuring the sportswriter that all would be well, said, “If we crash, I’ll be your air bag.”

*

The practice session is held in total privacy. The NCAA guards the entrances like the North Koreans guard the border.

Majerus works his team on defense. He always works on defense. When it is over and the NCAA blows its horn on Utah’s preparations, Majerus takes his team over to the side. He tells them not to whine at the referees, no matter what happens; to go right at North Carolina and run on them every chance they have, and to not be content with getting here, to expect to win.

When he finishes, he is looking right at Drew Hansen, his senior Rhodes Scholar-finalist guard and defensive specialist. Hansen is not a great player, just a great leader and team member.

“When we beat Arizona,” Majerus recalled later, “we were on the court, celebrating afterward, and Drew comes to me and says he’s got the game ball for me. And he tells me that he only asks one thing: that I put something in my will that says, when I die, it goes to him.

“I thought about that for a minute, then gave it to him and told him that I only ask one thing: that he puts something in his will that says, when he dies, it goes to me.”