Utah State coach Stew Morrill link to Gonzaga’s past

Stew Morrill, by his own account, had never laid eyes on a priest before he set foot on the campus of Gonzaga University.

He had grown up – all the way to 6-foot-8 – in Provo, Utah, the heart of the Latter-day Saints culture and, yes, 35 years ago that was cause for him to attach some apprehension to his enrollment at Spokane’s Jesuit encampment. But Gonzaga’s basketball staff, Adrian Buoncristiani and Dan Fitzgerald, assured him, hey, no big deal. Only a few still teach classes. You won’t get the full-court press.

This is what’s known as recruiting.

On his first day of classes, Morrill strolled into Philosophy 101, and the Jesuit at the blackboard looked at his new flock and asked:

“Why is there man?”

And Morrill thought to himself, “Oh-oh – where am I?”

Turns out he was off on a journey that this week brings him full circle back to Spokane for the NCAA basketball tournament – the closest thing to a sentimental favorite in the eight-team pod at the Spokane Arena that many were convinced would include the current Zags and not just a solitary alum.

A solitary distinguished alum.

With 512 victories spread over 24 years, Morrill is 19th among active Division I coaches – and for more than a decade he’s averaged 25 wins a season at Utah State, which faces Texas A&M in Friday’s second game. The kind of company on that list – from Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Calhoun at the top to Rick Majerus and John Calipari a few rungs below Morrill – speaks to his stature even in a career spent at under-the-radar basketball outposts like Montana, Colorado State and USU.

His professional pursuit has not been the big score, but the perfect fit – and he’s found it in Logan, where he’s not only won games but raised four children with his wife Vicki and provided a temporary home to more than 70 foster children over the years.

He has been content to work in humble circumstances – relative to the overblown, consuming environments at schools which bogart our attentions – because he launched his career in circumstances even more humble.

“Where,” he said ruefully, “we were terminated.”

Morrill had played two years at Gonzaga after transferring from Ricks College, then a year in France before joining Buoncristiani’s staff. In 1978, the coach known as “ABC” was clumsily canned – the only basketball coach to be fired at Gonzaga in the last 59 years.

Remarkably, his assistant was interviewed to succeed him. So was Fitzgerald, who had left Gonzaga for an assistant’s job at Santa Clara in the interim.

Fitzgerald died suddenly this past January of a suspected heart attack, but of the many stories he loved to tell and retell, among his favorites involved his interview for the head coaching job – when he stayed at Morrill’s house … and was ferried to campus in Buoncristiani’s car … driven by Morrill.

“It’s true,” said Morrill. “It was a different time. Coaches were closer in those days. Certainly Fitz was very special to me. He showed me the ropes. I stayed at his house when I was down in the Bay Area. I was so saddened when he passed, but I had to laugh about some of the sessions with him – sitting in the car all night, listening to those stories. Nobody held court like Fitz.”

Morrill is a link to a Gonzaga that the majority of the nouveau fans – some of whom crowd the lower bowl at McCarthey Athletic Center to be seen as much as see – have no idea ever existed as they grouse about NCAA seedings they deem an insult.

“It’s unbelievable what they’ve done,” Morrill said. “I never would have imagined that Gonzaga would be such a name on the national scene, and that’s a great credit to Fitz who got it going and Mark (Few) and the others who have raised it to an even higher level.

“I look back and remember as a young assistant selling a 2-for-1 coupon book for our recruiting budget. When I went to California, I stayed with alumni and it could get a little uncomfortable – I would borrow their cars to recruit.”

If he didn’t know it in 1978, he came to know it later: He wasn’t ready to be a head coach. Instead he drove 200 miles east to become part of a remarkable lineage at Montana, where from 1971 until today only once has a head coach been hired who wasn’t already part of the family – that one time being a brief, but unmitigated disaster.

Four of those coaches – Morrill, California’s Mike Montgomery, Old Dominion’s Blaine Taylor and Montana’s Wayne Tinkle – have teams in this year’s tournament. The first three were on a staff together, and Tinkle played for them. The godfather of it all, Jud Heathcote, will watch Morrill’s team Friday from a seat in the Arena.

For all that, Morrill’s ultimate niche will forever be Utah State. Beginning with back-to-back 28-win seasons his second and third years in Logan, he has built one of those self-sustaining programs based on continuity and commitment – with rosters that annually reveal an oddly harmonious blend of Utah homegrowns and big-city juco recruits.

His success the last decade has made him an attractive prospect for more than a few schools in college basketball’s power leagues – Washington State sniffed around just last year.

But Stew Morrill doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

“It’s the right level for me,” he said. “I understand the profession at this point in my career. The kids we get are not spoiled and they’ll put up with me. And here, they leave me alone and let me run my program.

“The only reason I would leave is money – and I just haven’t found that to be a good enough reason.”

Sounds like something he might have picked up in Philosophy 101 at Gonzaga.