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76 CLASSIC MEDIA CONFERENCE

October 31, 2011

Rick Majerus

TIM SIMMONS: Rick, thank you for calling in. We appreciate it. Just an opening thought on your pre-season practices to date.
COACH MAJERUS: Well, we have a relatively young team. I like our club. We have two seniors, one of whom I think will start for sure, Brian Conklin. Young is not where you want to be. I'm happy to have Kwamain Mitchell back, excellent scorer, a guard from the season before who was suspended. Brian is an excellent captain and great leader. We have some pretty good height. I think our two freshmen are surprising relative to their maturity level and their ability. John Manning, a legitimate 6'11" man from Washington, D.C., who is showing toughness, and the other one would be Grandy Glaze, who what he lacks in basketball acumen, he makes up for in tenacity. He's from Toronto, Canada.
TIM SIMMONS: You played this type of format last year in Cancun. Do you see an advantage of playing two days, off a day, then playing the final day?
COACH MAJERUS: Well, if you recall in Cancun, Rob Loe got food poisoning. When I was chastising him for not being tough, the next day I got food poisoning (laughter).
I'm flattered and honored to be a part of their tournament. I think it will give us a chance to get together in terms of bonding with a team from a lot of disparate backgrounds. We have kids from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Greece on the team. That will be a nice week together.
TIM SIMMONS: Coach, you play Boston College in your first game. Have you had much time to study Boston College?
COACH MAJERUS: I try to take it one game at a time, just like every other coach will say to you. We're at Southern Illinois, we have Washington at home, not to mention a tough Tennessee State in an opener. That game seems light-years away.
Over the years when I did watch them play, I believe they lost four or five starters. They've got a guard, a phenomenal three-point shooter. I think he may have led their team in three-point shooting. He sets his feet, almost has NBA range. I did watch them play. They're extraordinarily well-coached. Coming from Cornell, I saw their teams play there and was impressed with their patience and poise.
TIM SIMMONS: We'll open it up for questions.

Q. Rick, was wondering how Kwamain looks in practice and has shaken the rust off of himself after the year off?
COACH MAJERUS: That's a great question. When he had the year off, he was out of school for the entire first semester, joined us for the second semester, but didn't really get to practice. So it's been a tough transition for him. Practice year off was not a year off spent in the gym. When you're totally away from the team in basketball, he did a great job with his community service work, with his academics in that half a year off, he did a wonderful job working as an intern working for Lammi Sports Management.
He took a bad problem and made it into a good thing. But definitely you can tell that he's been off a year.

Q. Do you see kind of a renewed motivation with him to try to atone for last year and lead you to where you want to be this year?
COACH MAJERUS: I see him in better condition and physical maturation, along with we have a terrific strength coach, Eric Short. Together they've done a good job on his body.
I think Kwamain, I can't say that he looks like he's a committed player, he's a dedicated player, but I haven't seen that fire in the belly like, I'm going to show you. To him, that would be scoring. I'd rather have a setup where the two-man, three-man, post play get off. I'm happy to have him. In fact, I will play him at two and off guard this year in spite of his small size.
TIM SIMMONS: Coach, did you get to see any of the World Series?
COACH MAJERUS: No, I really didn't. I had tickets. We were practicing. I brought in two different coaches, Jim Cruz (phonetic), and Jim Weitzel (phonetic). So having two new coaches on the staff because two of my previous coaches got head jobs, I was more concerned about basketball.
But I know La Russa. He lives in the hotel in which I live. He's a great guy. I know he retired this morning. He's exemplar in terms of what a coach and manager should be relative to commitment to the game. He's very cerebral. I congratulate the Cardinals but especially La Russa. He's inspirational to me in terms of his dedication, passion and singleness of purpose. The guy is unbelievable, particularly at age 66, 67.
If anything, I used to watch him with the White Sox. He may be perhaps even more passionate in these later years, not that he wasn't in those early years. In your mid to late 60s, that's hard to do.
TIM SIMMONS: Can you compare him at all to Al McGuire?
COACH MAJERUS: Totally different. McGwire didn't love the game of basketball. McGwire loved competition. He was an excellent recruiter, motivating players, getting teams to play together. That was Al's strength. He had a great assistant named Hank Raymonds. Raymonds did a lot of the fundamental work with the players. In those days Al used to say, I can count to 20 wins. Although they played in what was not perceived to be a very good division, they let their games do their talking for them for the most part.
I see both of them as consummate competitors. But that's probably where they would part ways after that.
La Russa is a manager's manager. He's detailed to a fault. He's precise. Just study him, talking to players that played against him and with him, and for him especially, with La Russa there's no detail left untouched.

Q. I was curious how you got to know Tony a little bit and whether you ever had him come in and talk to your team before?
COACH MAJERUS: I'm not a confidant of his or a close friend. Our seasons conflict. Although he lives in the building I live in, he goes home to his home in Oakland in the off-season. I go and operate in Milwaukee with my mother's health and eventual passing in August.
I'll tell you an interesting story about him. My secretary, Rachel, sister of Travis, was taking my laundry up to my room one day. La Russa said, Let me help you with that. I'll be happy to take it. She didn't know who he was. That always struck me. He has that reputation of where we live of being an every man, a great guy.
I'm not any type of a confidant of his. I know he would do it if I asked him. He is away from his family so much, I never wanted to impose on his time.
I watched his quotes. What I try to do is tell our players, If you ever see Pujols in the batting cage, you're seeing artistry at work. I think that was impactful to our players to get a chance to look at him when they did have that opportunity.
Look forward to the tournament. We're honored to be on ESPN.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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