ST. LOUIS -- In 2007, Alex Jensen's phone rang to begin a rewarding journey. His former coach Rick Majerus had accepted the Saint Louis job, and the mentor wanted his protegee to help create a special program in the Midwest.
At the time, Majerus had remained absent from the sideline for three years. Meanwhile, Jensen was playing professional basketball in Turkey, never having coached then seven years removed from his final season at Utah.
At first Jensen, a former forward, had little intention of following Majerus. But he felt he owed it to his friend to believe in a dream.
That July, Majerus introduced Jensen as an assistant coach by saying, "Alex's passion for the game will be evident to the players, and one day he will lead a big-time program."
"It was exciting," Jensen says now, "because it was new to everybody."
This is a time for memories. Majerus' death last Saturday has stirred many emotions across the country, most deep and poignant for a complex man. He served a variety of roles to those who knew him: A teacher and confidant, a maestro on the court and sometimes a combustible figure off it.
Majerus also was a builder. His success at Marquette, Ball State and Utah became part of his legend. But his work at SLU was a fitting finale for one of college basketball's sharpest minds.
Majerus inherited a project that was a middling Atlantic 10 Conference contender. The Billikens had won 20 or more games just once in the previous nine seasons before he was hired to replace Brad Soderberg in April 2007. The program's postseason drought was sobering: The last NCAA tournament berth occurred in 2000.
"He's brilliant in all aspects as a teacher, a coach, game-planner, clinician," says Paul Biancardi, an assistant coach on Majerus' first team at SLU. "That's the part everybody knows. But I got to see it up close and see why it was so good."
Others who saw Majerus shape SLU's program over five seasons have similar memories. He painted many masterpieces in a 25-year career, including a berth in the 1998 national championship game with Utah. But his final brush strokes with the Billikens were some of the most colorful.
"He gave me an opportunity," says former SLU guard Kyle Cassity, part of Majerus' first recruiting class at the university. "He taught me so much about the game of basketball and about how to be a better person. You're not really given anything in life. You've got to work for it. He taught you a helluva work ethic just by the way he taught and by the way he prepared. There was nobody more prepared than him."
Majerus had a purpose for each strategy, even in his earliest days at SLU. Brian Conklin, a former forward, recalls the coach's tact in pairing him and Cassity as roommates. The action showed Majerus' skill in reading personalities to draw the most from his players.
That was Lesson No. 1 with life under the venerable coach: There was reason behind each development. Leave no chance wasted.
Conklin, a two-time all-state first-team selection from North Eugene (Ore.) High School, and Cassity, a first-team all-state selection from Pinckneyville (Ill.) High School, entered as unrefined talents who grew to be senior faces of last season's 26-8 campaign that ended in the Round of 32. It was the Billikens' first NCAA tournament appearance since a 1999-2000 run under Lorenzo Romar ended in the first round. Majerus was always studying. He was always trying to make jigsaw pieces fit.
"He was able to read a person and put like personalities together," says Conklin, also part of Majerus' first SLU recruiting class, who averaged 13.9 points last season. "To be able to put us together as a cohesive unit, getting us to play defense together as a unit and getting us to know our roles in the flow of the game -- he was just a special person like that."
Majerus' mind kept working, despite early struggle at SLU. The Billikens went 16-15 in his first season, a year that included losses in five of their last seven games. But the teaching moments were subtle, and a foundation formed.
There were 18 victories the next campaign. Then there were 23 the year after that. Then, after a 12-19 season in his fourth year at the university, there was Majerus' 26-victory breakthrough. Early work produced reward.
"His attention to detail was something that surprised me the most," says Cassity, who averaged 3.3 points last season. "Every detail down to the inch was his thing. He would stop you in the middle of a fast break and move people inches -- move a foot here, hands here. That's the thing that stuck out to me the most -- just everything down to pinpoint accuracy is what he was all about. I think that's what made him such a great coach."
There was anticipation in the unknown. For assistants like Jensen, Biancardi and Porter Moser, they knew following Majerus to SLU required a full buy-in. Building a program was more a marathon than a sprint. Endurance, not speed, was valued.
"He said to me, 'I just want to get back to one more Final Four,'" says Moser, now the coach at Loyola (Ill.) University. "I remember him saying it. That was his mentality. He wasn't thinking, ‘I just want to make it in the NCAA tournament.' He was thinking, ‘I want to get back to one more Final Four in my career.' To say it at Saint Louis, it just shows you his expectations."
Those expectations were found everywhere within the walls of Majerus' program, like discussions within the staff about potential recruits. Moser recalls assistants offering names to the coach, who responded with questions such as, "Is he tough? Is he a good kid? Is he a winner?" If Majerus grew satisfied by the answers, only then did attention turn to traits such as the kid's size and skill on the court.
"Kind of the feeling (was) that everyone was embarking on a trip together," Jensen says. "They were embarking on the beginning of something that everybody felt could be pretty special."
With time, that feeling matured. Jensen, now coach of the NBA Development League's Canton Charge, watched Majerus' last game in the NCAA tournament against Michigan State with pride. This is what fans don't see: The day-to-day grind, the grueling three-hour practices, the film studies, the meetings over the years that shape a winner.
Jensen and others had lived a crawl through the desert with Majerus, a man who became a teacher of life as much as a tactician. The result was sweet. The result was the vision the coach had in mind all along.
"We were there to do a job, and I felt great that we were heading in that direction with those kind of kids," Moser says.
"He wanted to build his team around that fiber, that kind of character, then he'd mold them into the way he wanted."
Forever a builder. Forever dreaming. Forever remembered.
You can follow Andrew Astleford on Twitter @aastleford or email him at aastleford@gmail.com.
