Stew Morrill's last fan luncheon

AggiesForever offers what transpired during retiring Utah State Coach Stew Morrill's last fan luncheon. The subjects covered are interesting:

This was kind of bittersweet today. I know there are some here who are not big fans, but he has run a clean program and, by all usual means, will go down as the most successful coach in USU history. Did he win the national championship? No. Could he have. Probably not. Could he have gone farther than he did by recruiting better? Maybe. Would he had as many players graduate? Probably not. Would any of us ever have been totally happy short of winning it all? Probably not. Are some of us delusional? Maybe. That's why they calls us fans.

Anyway he said this has been a very fun team to coach. At the first of the year, he did not know if that would be the case. But as the season has wore on it has become really obvious that they like each other and they like playing for him. He said when he looks back on his career 27 of the 29 teams he has coached will be worthy to have their pictures on the wall of his den. He also said 15 of the 17 he coached at USU would be worthy, so any ideas which two won't make the cut? Probably his first team, which just wasn't very good and had few players he recruited, and last years bunch which he rarely talks about at all, and had more backstabbing and bickering than probably any other team he ever coached. But he didn't say that, that's just my observation.

He was asked who his favorite player of all was, and he went off on a long discussion about how hard it is to single out players. Then he said, "But of course, Spencer Nelson . . . . . and his voice kind of trailed off, and he got tears in his eyes, and he couldn't say anything for a moment. Then he pounded his fist on the podium and after another pause said . . . "Spencer Nelson is a special kid. He could make everybody happy just by showing up." So I think we know who the favorite was. Then he went on to also name Jaycee Carroll, Shawn Daniels, and Tai Wesley. "Tai Wesley was a hard nosed sonuvagun, and turned himself into a really good player," he said.

He said Desmond Pinegar recently came back as a highlighted player beofre a game and told Vicky how much Stew changed who he was and impacted his life in many meaningful ways, and Vicky said, "Why don't you go tell Stew that." So after the game, Desmond grabbed Stew and told him how he would have never played 12 years as a professional player, including parts of two in the NBA, if it wasn't for him. And Stew asked him if he remembered the time he got mad and called Pinegar the "most selfish sonuvabitch I have ever coached?" Desmond said he remembered, but that was something he really needed to hear. Stew said, "I still probably shouldn't have said that . . . even if it was true. Do you guys really know how good Desmond Pinegar was? He had 25 and 12 versus Kansas in the N-C-2-A's. He was a really special player."

Somebody asked him what is the biggest thing he has learned as a coach over the years? He said "I learned this from Jerry Tarkanian. If you really want to win, all you need is 8 really good players and then four others who can cheer like crazy!" He said he remembered the first time he had a team in the NCAA tournament at Montana, they went in as a 16 seed against 1 seed UNLV. He said, "I told my team, we have our usual challenge today so here's the defensive assignments. You get Larry Johnson, you get Stacey Augmon, you get Greg Anthony, and you take George Ackles . . . and on it went. I think we got beat 98 to 60 or something like that." He said it was really hard to isolate a favorite USU team, because there were so many factors that played into it. 

He was asked about this years team, and he said they just love to play basketball. He said Jalen Moore is the most even-keeled player he has ever coached-- always the same no matter what. He said Chris Smith is one of the happiest players he has every coached, and that ticks him off sometimes. He would like him to be a little meaner. He said, "I told Chris he is pretty damn lazy sometimes, and he said, yeah I know coach and laughed it off. He's just a really happy guy." 

He said one time after UNLV beat a team he was coaching by a bunch, it was learned that two players at UNLV (don't remember the names) admitted to shaving points in that game. Then he laughed and said, "When we played down in Vegas this year, I wondered if that is what our team was doing, the way we lost down there. We're up by 7 points with 52 seconds left-- you usually think you have a win in that situation." But he said this team is steadily improving and with all of them coming back next year (except Sean Harris) and the addition of Lew Evans and Grayson Moore, and then a few guys that will be back from missions and brought in by the new coach, next year has the potential to be pretty special.

He said no matter where he goes, whether he stays in Cache Valley or not, he will cheer for USU. "USU has been very special to me. Sometimes, you get coaches who get fired or stay too long and leave mad. Then they spend all their time hoping the new guy loses every game. But not me. I will always be for the Aggies. USU has treated me so well. I could have never asked for a better situation." Probably why he stayed 17 years.

I asked him if he still had the cowpie Ross Peterson gave him at the Juniper Inn after the first time he grabbed a mic and uttered a famous four-letter word on the basketball floor his first or second year at USU. He related the story about the fans throwing stuff on the floor and him jumping up, grabbing the mic and saying, "Hey, why are quit throwing s*** on the floor!" He said as soon as he said it, he wondered if he would get fired since he knew USU was a conservative community. He said Vicky was driving home from a volleyball game and was listening on the radio when she heard the "diatribe" carried live on KVNU, and she wondered, "What in the hell were you thinking when you said that?" It was all pretty funny.

He told the usual jokes and it was funny. We'll probably never see another coach at USU, with the longevity and the ability to let loose with the fans like Stew. He said the "slickness" of coaching now days is changing the way things are done. He also said AAU basketball has changed the way things are done and, in many ways, that's not all bad either, though there are some bad elements to it. He got two standing ovations from the audience and it was a great final luncheon for him in SLC. There were about 70 people there, too bad there were not more.