Remembering Rick Majerus

By Tom Weber
Saluki Media Services

Plenty of stories have been written about Rick Majerus during the past week and I have a few of my own to share about the late head coach.

My two brief windows of interaction with the legend came during his reign at Ball State (1987-89) and later when he was an analyst for ESPN.

I was a college freshman at BSU during Majerus’ first year at the school. His practices were open, and I was a frequent spectator. The roster he inherited consisted of borderline Division I players. More precisely, they were a sorry lot. Majerus joked that 6-foot-8 forward Rick Hall, his best big man, couldn’t jump over a phone book. He asked 7-foot center Rick Bettenhausen to give him one good reason why he was playing basketball, other than being tall. The players who were sitting out that season always beat the starting five in practice. It was rarely close.

Yet somehow this group of misfits went 14-14 and finished fourth in the Mid-American Conference. There was something special about this balding, portly fellow from Wisconsin. What was it? You could find the answers at his practices.

Majerus loved practices as much as games. The way he spoke to his players was mesmerizing — at times harsh, at times loving, often funny, and always teaching. He would line them up on the baseline at the end of practice and tell each guy exactly what they did right and wrong during that day’s session. At first I thought it was impossible for one coach to have seen everything every player was doing during practice, but apparently he could. One day, he spent several minutes analyzing the play of point guard Scott Nichols. He went on and on, and it was a brilliant. The next player in line was Mike Giunta. He looked the 6-foot-4 guard in the eyes and simply said, “horse-bleep practice.” Then he moved on to the next guy. The assistant coaches were laughing so hard they had to turn away. It was classic Majerus.

The students at BSU loved Majerus. Maybe that’s because he would show up at the dorms on a weeknight and pass out pizzas. Or maybe it was because they could finally latch on to an icon of their own. Indiana had Bob Knight and Purdue had Gene Keady. We had Majerus. There was a popular t-shirt that depicted a rotund Majerus throwing a recliner. The shirt read, “Who needs Bobby Knight?”

No one taught defense like Majerus. Not only were his teams fundamentally sound, but he turned advance scouting into an art form. Every team produces scouting reports on their opponents, but Majerus took it to another level. He personally prepared the scout team and had them replicate an opponent right down to their jersey numbers. I remember Ohio University had a stud guard named Dave Jamerson, who scored more than 2,000 points in his career and went on to play in the NBA. Majerus used Giunta to simulate the OU guard in practice, and Ball State was so well prepared for Jamerson’s every move that they completely shut him down. The memory of Giunta as Jamerson is so ingrained in my mind that I didn’t have to look up his jersey number (33) 25 years later.

Majerus’ second and final year at Ball State was magical. One of his many strengths was spotting talent that other schools overlooked. He picked up two forwards from Arkansas-Little Rock (Paris McCurdy and Curtis Kidd), a pair of JUCO guards (Billy Butts and Shawn Parrish) and a scrawny 7-footer named Roman Muller. An entirely new team took the floor in the 1988 season opener and produced a six-point win over Minnesota. After losing by 49 at Purdue the year before, this new Cardinal team beat the Boilermakers by 14 points. Students had camped out for tickets for the game and Majerus made sure they had donuts while waiting in line. His legend was growing.

Ball State finished that season with a mind-boggling 29-3 record. The Cardinals stunned Pittsburgh in the first round of the NCAA Tournament before losing to the Flying Illini in a close second-round game. Individually, the team was nothing special. McCurdy was the leading scorer and averaged 12 points. Like most of his teammates, he was better on defense than offense.

I wrote for the Ball State Daily News that year and had to interview Majerus for a feature story about Kidd. I was intimidated, my questions were lousy and I didn’t get any decent quotes. I did have one memorable exchange with him later that season, though. He came to speak to my journalism class and instantly recognized me as the kid who came to practice all the time. Majerus must not have understood that I was studying to become a sportswriter, because he asked me to stand up and then told the class I could play in the NBA if I only worked hard enough and had enough heart. He compared me to Utah Jazz guard John Stockton, who he said had no more natural ability than the average Joe. Stockton just wanted it worse than everyone else. It was meant as a simple motivational speech to the class, nevertheless I went to the rec center the next night and played about five hours straight, just to make sure I wasn’t missing something. (I wasn’t.)

After he left for Utah, I did not meet up with Majerus again until 2007, when he was ESPN’s analyst for the Southern Illinois BracketBuster game at Butler. We practiced the day before the game at Northwest High School in Indianapolis, and Majerus waddled in just as practice started. He pulled up a chair next to me and we talked about the Salukis for the next two hours. By the end of practice, he knew more about the strengths and weaknesses of our team than I did. He loved Randal Falker’s big-time body, saying it reminded him of Kidd. He spotted a flaw in Matt Shaw’s shooting technique. He nodded approvingly throughout Rodney Watson’s scouting report. At the end of practice, he predicted we’d beat Butler. “They are more skilled, but you guys are much tougher and better defensively.” He was right, of course.

It was clear to me that Majerus still harbored coaching ambitions. He loved teaching the game so much and only his poor health could keep him from it. Several months later, he was named head coach at Saint Louis. It’s a shame his life and career were cut short by his legendary eating habits. There was a hole-in-the-wall in Muncie called the Rib Cage that he personally kept from Chapter 11.

I thank Majerus for what he did at Ball State. He was their Bruce Weber. I also thank him for helping me understand why some mid-major programs flourish and why many others do not. Basketball is a sport where the most talented team doesn’t always win. A well-coached team, grounded in defensive principles, can often beat a more gifted squad.

That’s what makes college basketball so special and why Rick Majerus was a coaching legend.