R.I.P. "Big" Rick Majerus

RIP Rick Majerus.

For many of us at Marquette during the mid-80's it sometimes was a love/hate relationship or, in my case, a hate/love relationship.

He hurt my feelings when I was 13 years old at an Al McGuire, Medalist basketball camp.  I think he was trying to relate to a pudgy 13-year old but as Rick sometimes had a knack of doing, he used very poor word choice.  Yeah, "c'mon buddy, move your big fat ass" would rank up there with bad word choices at a basketball camp.  Sorry, I was a sensitive boy back then, not the hardened son-of-a-bitch I am now ;-p

So, yeah, 5 years after that incident, I'm faced with him being the MU head coach and I don't like him one bit.  What's weird is, looking back on it, he truly made Limoncello out of Lemons.  20-11 and 19-11 back then was only good enough for the NIT (especially since we were an Independent) but with the talent he could scrounge up, that was a miracle and frankly, after him, well, it was the Great Disaster called Bob Dukiet proving the old adage, "you know what you know, you don't know what you don't know" or better yet, "the grass is NOT greener on the other side of the fence".

It took 12 years for me to meet up with him face-to-face again.  I know I was much wiser and realized how foolish I had been.  It was a really quick meeting and in a restaurant (duh, two fat-bodies needing to munch) and I chatted with him about 'the incident'.

We had a laugh, he wished me well, and I, him.  It was right after he took Utah to the '98 finals and lost to Kentucky.  I had come to respect him long before that meeting but it was nice to share even just a moment with someone who loved Marquette so much having been a product of both the High School and the University.

It's sort of a cruel that a man who actually had a very warm and generous heart would end up succumbing to a disease of the heart.  Although most details are not known, those of us who have followed his career know that he's had to take time off due to whatever issues he was having over the last 12+ years since he couldn't finish out his first year coaching Utah.

May God Bless him with eternal salvation.