Rick Majerus Tournament Appearances

[Tony (admin)]

With all this coach talk I took a glance at Big Rick’s wikipedia this morning.  It was an eye opener. Utah went to the sweet 16 four times in eight seasons, from 1990-91 to 1997-98.  Coach K has gone to the tournament twice in 9 years.

Rick went to the NCAA tournament 10 out of 15 seasons, which is impressive yes. But 3 of those years he left the season early due to health reason, bypass surgery and/or personal leave.  In 89-90 he coached 6 games. In 2000-2001 he coached 1 game.  In 03-04 he coached 20 games. So for the years he coached the entire season we went to the tournament 10 of 12. Yeah he had many strange issues, but we were regulars in the NCAA tournament and we were only in the lowly WAC and Mountain West conferences.

So Big Rick (RIP) went to the sweet 16 twice the amount of times K has tournament appearances.  Interesting perspective, and that’s why I have such high standards for our basketball team.  I was there for every home game Rick coached, and watched nearly every road game on TV.

[Trailgoat]

Solid post. I don’t recall Big Rick losing by double digit points many times or ever losing by 20+ points. If and when it happened he would go completely balistic. Bottom line, this years team is playing worse BB than they did the first half of the season. Two more games to get this season over with and move on to the Spring transfer watch. Go Utes!

[Utah5410]

I don’t recall Big Ric making excuses often. I’m sure he did, he is human. But I feel that with K it’s always something. “We’re too young”, our schedule was too hard/too soft, next year etc etc. this, is why I love Whit so much. Even when he underachieves (like the pac-12 title game the second year) he doesn’t blame the players, he doesn’t makes excuses for youth, injuries etc. he bites the bullet. I believe K thinks he’s immortal due to his contract and Franky he is because of his contract. Whereas Whit has earned the right to be immortal but what he’s actually accomplished/ yet, he understands, in this business you don’t get 2/3 years to build a program. It’s a year by year process. If K really understood that and coached like his job was on the line yearly. We would see much different results.

[bopahull]

I don’t know we would see better results. What if this is as good as Coach K can do?

[Tony (admin)]

I credit coach K for bringing Utah basketball back from the dead. He doesn’t seem to be the one to take the reigns from this point on though.  He apparently can’t put the program back to the regular tournament, and often sweet-16 team it once was.