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Health & Fitness

Billikens' Season Has Been an Inspiration

March Madness

March Madness has officially arrived.  Athletic conferences within the NCAA have now crowned their league champions for the 2012-13 season, and several already have produced league tournament winners who have earned invitations to the annual scrum known as the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament.

Certainly one of the most surprising and inspirational stories among the nearly 350 universities that field Division I men’s basketball teams this season has been
the Saint Louis University Billikens.  Before the season began, drama focused on the fact that head coach Rick Majerus was entering the final year of his five-year contract with no official word about an extension for his tenure.

Given that Majerus had fielded a highly competitive squad last season, one that
defeated Memphis in the first round and took highly touted Michigan State down
to the wire in the second round of the tournament, this seemed surprising and a
bit unsettling.  Of course, that paled with the news that followed:  Majerus
would not return to coaching this season as he awaited a heart transplant.

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Tragically, that transplant never came to be, and Majerus passed away before the season began.  The players he recruited were without a leader, or so it seemed.  However, assistant coach Jim Crews, whom Majerus had coaxed out of self-imposed coaching exile to join his staff, assumed the role of interim coach and undertook the task of guiding the Billikens beyond the Majerus era.

The Bills started strong and built up momentum as they entered their league
schedule.  After a few games, they inexplicably tumbled against lowly Rhode Island in what turned out to be their season’s nadir.  From that shocking
development, Crews was able to convince the Billikens that they were better
than they appeared against Rhode Island.

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The team soon was on its way to a 16-game winning streak that catapulted the Bills into the Top 25 in the weekly Associated Press college basketball poll, heady
heights they had rarely seen in previous decades.  After stumbling against Xavier in the final week of the Atlantic 10’s regular season, the Billikens blasted stalwart LaSalle to snare their first league title since 1971 and only the fourth unshared
title in their entire history.

The championship of the Atlantic 10 tournament was the crowning achievement.

Crews’ achievements this year haven’t gone unnoticed elsewhere.  He’s been touted nationally as a viable Coach-of-the-Year candidate.  Suddenly, his status as an interim coach may work to his personal benefit, as he’ll likely be courted by any number of universities for their head-coaching job in 2013-14, including SLU.

By focusing on his players and keeping attention on their accomplishments in the
wake of the death of the beloved man who recruited and molded them as players
and men, Crews had exemplified the best of what a coach should be:  A mentor, a teacher and an example of how to live one’s life, whether in athletic competition or in general.

Regardless of how the Billikens perform in the NCAA tournament, they’ve proven their admirable mettle many times over this season.

Evan Makovsky

HOST, THE E-MAK SHOW

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