IT TOOK ONLY a few seconds, and Utah basketball coach Rick Majerus was in full playoff form. No warmup required. For the fastest quip this side of Jerry Seinfeld, the regular season is one thing, the playoffs are another.
And so it was, Majerus was back again on center stage, Wednesday at the NCAA first round regional at Reunion Arena, leaving them laughing.Majerus is no novice at handling national press gatherings. This is a guy who makes you wonder whether he's coaching a basketball team or auditioning for "The Late Show with David Letterman." A guy who sends them chuckling all the way back to their laptop computers. So when the moderator introduced Majerus, and asked him to say "whatever comes to mind," Majerus paused. "Well, whatever comes to mind . . . " he said, ". . . what comes to mind first is I'd like to order out."
Majerus, of course, is always a big draw when national events arrive. Training a television camera on Majerus is like switching on a laugh track. His interviews include numerous serious questions, but only a few serious answers. You can save the straight-faced analyses for Dean Smith. Majerus would just as soon talk about food, history, academics, his weight, Cindy Crawford, and, of course, more food.
Consequently, Majerus handled all the questions, and even played some of them straight. He went over the sickness that caused star player Keith Van Horn to miss Wednesday's practice, and may cause him to miss tonight's game. He considered the possibility of the Utes overlooking Canisius, their first-round opponent today in NCAA Tournament. He addressed what he might do if Van Horn is too sick to play.
Soon a question arose about the Utes' 6-11, 260-pound center Michael Doleac, who has been moving like an anvil this year. "I think he got too big," said Majerus.
Without missing a beat, he added, "I can kinda empathize with that."
If Majerus, who hasn't seen 260 pounds since he had heart bypass surgery six years ago, is showing up more than ever on television sets and in papers across America this week, well, that's because it's that time of year. He spends a good share of the regular season playing the straight man, rambling on and on about academics. He can be repetitive and even occasionally boring. That, however, changes as soon as he gets in front of the national media and the quotes start showing up halfway around the world.
Consequently, Majerus is a regular on ESPN. Rarely does he make a trip to media-heavy Southern California without seeing his best quotes in the Los Angeles Times the next day. The New York Times is in town? Time for another weight gag, or maybe a jibe about his love life. Or perhaps it's time to bring in a few one-liners about the number of white players on his team.
So when someone asked him Wednesday about being the heavy favorites to beat Canisius, he said, "I think the expectations are that we would beat Canisius. I don't think the Canisians know that. I might be one of the few people in the world that understand the Canisian Theory. I actually did an adjunct term paper on the guy when I was at Marquette. I was educated by those guys."
He paused, then continued, "I might know more about Peter Canisius than most guys on the team."
Which may or may not come as good news to St. Peter Canisius, whose name the college bears. But it was definitely good news to the media members gathered in Dallas, hoping to get a good quote.
How much Majerus actually knows about Canisius - the basketball team, not the 16th century priest - is anyone's guess. But no one cared. Because soon enough Majerus was off on another subject, this time answering a question about what it would feel like to be Kentucky, the favorite to win the NCAA championship.
"That's like asking what it would be like to make love to Cindy Crawford," said Majerus. "I'd like to try that challenge. I'd rather come in with Kentucky's chances of winning than ours."
Thus went Majerus first day of the NCAA Playoffs. The kind of a day in which he left them scribbling notes as fast as they could. A day in which you weren't sure how good the Utes will be in the playoffs, but you had no doubts that Majerus would be rare form.