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Everything’s on the Table

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Times Staff Writer

After playing for Australia in the Olympics, Andrew Bogut came back to Salt Lake City with empty pockets and a request for Utah Coach Ray Giacoletti.

“Coach,” Bogut said, “could I get a job?”

Bogut, 20, and perhaps the best college basketball player in the country, played for a national federation that, Utah assistant Marty Wilson said, “was a little short with the stipend money.”

Giacoletti told his 7-foot center that getting a job was fine. “But,” Wilson said, “he also told Andrew that this was Utah. At Utah, if you got a job you had to work at it.”

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So Bogut hooked on with a local restaurant, busing, waiting tables, and bending low to pour the coffee. “I’d take my wife over sometimes just to make sure,” Wilson said, “and whenever we’d go, Andrew was working his tail off.”

It’s safe to say Bogut will not be working for tips and minimum wage next fall. Only a sophomore, he is sure to be an NBA lottery pick and he even participated in “Senior Night” at Utah so that Ute fans could give their star a proper sendoff.

When Utah, seeded No. 6 in the Austin Regional, plays second-seeded Kentucky today it will be facing a nemesis. It was Kentucky that eliminated Utah in the second round of the 2003 NCAA tournament, and in the championship game of the 1997 West Regional, and in the Sweet 16 in 1996, and in the second round in 1993, and, most memorably, in the 1998 national championship game.

Rick Majerus was Utah’s coach in all those games and he said Wednesday, “I wish, just once, I’d had Andrew Bogut.”

Here’s why:

Bogut moves his 248 pounds lightly on the balls of his feet as if floating on a soft puff of air. Although he’s usually the biggest player on the court, he seems invisible until he materializes alone in the paint, where his long arms swallow the ball, or in maneuvering around the perimeter to make a pass that seems to lead to nowhere but, down the line, often results in a basket.

“What Andy does so well,” Utah senior Marc Jackson said, “is make the pass that leads to the pass that becomes the assist. He sees the game so well. It’s like he has a little projector running in his head and the game has been fast-forwarded for him.”

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Bogut leads the nation with 25 double-doubles this season. He is averaging 20.4 points and 12.4 rebounds, which is second-best in the nation.

Majerus, who quit coaching Utah part way through last season because of health concerns, found Bogut in an innocuous way. “A friend called,” Majerus said, “and told me I should go look at this 16-year-old in Melbourne.”

Majerus got on an airplane prepared for a 20-hour flight and disappointment.

“I would have been happy if he was 6 feet 7,” Majerus recalled, “and ecstatic if he was 6 feet 8. But I got there and he was a legit 6-9, maybe a little bigger. That’s all I needed. Sometimes these things are a crapshoot, but this was a good one. The kid could really play.”

Bogut’s parents, Michael and Anne Susan, were born in Croatia; they immigrated to Australia in the 1970s. Michael Bogut opened a shop in Melbourne repairing carburetors and the 8-year-old Andrew hung around, getting greasy and making a pest of himself. He said his dad glued a piece of round metal onto the wall because Andrew loved watching the one NBA game a week that was televised to Australia.

“I’d be all covered in grime with this big grin on my face,” Bogut said last week in Tucson, after Utah upset Oklahoma. “I’d throw an imaginary pass, then catch the ball and dunk.”

By the time Majerus saw him, Bogut already had been invited to the Australian Institute of Sport, a state-funded collecting ground for talented athletes. And before the coach could sneak him to Utah, Bogut already had blossomed on an international stage, leading his team past the United States and to a world junior title.

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“Other recruiters started calling,” Bogut said. “Oregon I remember, Gonzaga. But I wanted to stay loyal because Utah had been loyal to me.”

After the turmoil of a year ago, when Majerus quit and Kerry Rupp operated as an interim coach, Bogut went back to Australia to train for the Olympics. Although his team didn’t make it out of qualifying in Athens, Bogut was a star, holding his own against the best big men in the world, including Tim Duncan.

Giacoletti flew first to Melbourne to sell himself as coach and his idea of running a faster-paced game that would feature Bogut as the playmaker, then to Athens, where he had to stand outside a fence to cajole Bogut to play one more year in college.

Bogut came back to Utah even though he could have made millions playing basketball in Europe. Instead, he bused tables, hung out with his friends, acted goofy, got better.

Bogut, with floppy black hair that covers his eyes and tumbles over his ears, has changed his hair color from blond to black to black with blond highlights to black again. “Just my whim,” he said.

After he had given out seven assists because Oklahoma was surrounding him to the point where he scored a season-low 10 points Saturday, Sooner Coach Kelvin Sampson said, “He throws some of the doggondest passes I’ve ever seen. He’s fun to watch.”

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Majerus said he wished Bogut would stay in school at least one more year to get physically stronger. He also said that Bogut is capable of playing like Cleveland Cavalier center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, an NBA All-Star this season.

Some NBA observers say Bogut might be the No. 1 pick in the draft. “I’m probably the luckiest coach in America to have a chance to coach a guy like that,” Giacoletti said. “Not only for what he does on the floor but the type of person he is.

“The bottom line with Andrew Bogut is that he’s a winner.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

*--* Bogut’s Best Five of Andrew Bogut’s top performances during the 2004-05 season: * Nov. 25 -- 23 points on eight-for-eight shooting, and 11 rebounds in a 78-71 loss to Washington. * Jan. 3 -- 24 points, 17 rebounds in a 69-55 victory over Louisiana State. * Jan. 22 -- 24 points, 20 rebounds in a 69-58 victory over New Mexico. * Feb. 12 -- 33 points, 16 rebounds in a 64-50 victory over Colorado State. * March 17 -- 24 points, 11 rebounds in a 60-54 victory over Texas El Paso in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

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