D'Amato: Al McGuire, Hank Raymonds, Rick Majerus had different styles, similar success
Marquette University has had 17 head coaches in the first 100 years of its storied men’s basketball program and no doubt will have many more in its next 100.
Some had, and some will have, brilliant basketball minds.
But there will never be a triumvirate quite like Al McGuire, Hank Raymonds and Rick Majerus, who took the Warriors – as they were called then and, to some alums, forevermore – to great heights from 1964-’86.
Raymonds and Majerus were assistants under McGuire and each later took turns as the head coach.
Together, they compiled a 477-165 record and gave Marquette fans a lifetime of memories, including a national championship in 1977.
They had distinctly different styles, brought different strengths to the table and were beloved in the Marquette community and respected nationwide. McGuire died in 2001, Raymonds in 2010 and Majerus in 2012.
McGuire was a cocky, street-smart Irishman from Queens in New York City and among the most charismatic figures in college basketball history. He wasn’t necessarily organized or detail-oriented – that was Raymonds’ job – but he had a feel for basketball that went beyond X's and O's.
Such was the magnetism of his personality that McGuire could have made a mint selling cars or washing machines, which made him a recruiter with few equals. He was as comfortable sweet-talking the mother of a recruit from the Chicago projects as he was selling Marquette in upper-class suburbia.
“When he came to my mother to recruit me he said, ‘The most important thing is that your son gets a degree from Marquette,’ ” said Bo Ellis, who played in two Final Fours under McGuire. “He said, ‘I’m going to make sure he does that no matter how many years it takes him.’
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“I was being recruited by everybody. They were telling me how great a player I was. I didn’t need to hear that because I knew I was good. Coach wanted to make sure I got a degree. He cared about me as a person, not just as a basketball player.”
McGuire, who compiled a 295-80 record before walking off into the sunset with that ’77 title, also had a knack for motivating players that was Lombardi-esque.
Jim Boylan, a point guard on some of McGuire’s best teams in the mid-’70s, tells a great story from the championship year.
In the last regular-season game, against third-ranked Michigan, Boylan relaxed on a jump ball in the final minute. A Michigan player slid behind him, got the tip and went in for a layup. The Wolverines won, 69-68.
“After the game, Al was just livid,” Boylan said. “He got in my face and yelled at me, it seemed like forever. He was literally face to face with me, yelling at me. The guys behind, they were kind of smirking and laughing. Finally, he walked away and I went into the shower.
“I’m under the shower, washing my hair and I open my eyes and there he is, standing there, fully dressed. He starts yelling at me again. Now, I’m getting angry. I said, ‘Get away from me.’ That was the thing with Coach, you could get angry back.
“Later, we were getting on the plane and as I walked past him he grabbed me by the wrist, forcefully, and pulled me down and said, ‘We would have never been here without you.’ That’s how Coach was. He was an emotional guy but he was your guy. He had your back. I walked out of practice many a day cursing him out, but I knew he would do anything for me. Anything.”
Raymonds was McGuire’s right-hand man and in many ways his alter-ego. McGuire trusted him implicitly with the practice schedule, the game plan and the everyday minutiae of running a basketball program.
“Coach Raymonds was the professor, the organizer, the detail man, the guy who had everything on paper worked out,” Boylan said. “There is great value in that.”
Beyond that, Raymonds’ warmth and kindness, and his calm demeanor in the eye of the McGuire storm, was of great comfort to the players.
“Hank really, really cared about you,” Boylan said. “Al was a guy you admired and saw him as the leader, but Hank was the father figure and the guy you could go to with a problem. Hank would figure it out with you, sit down, talk about it.”
Raymonds took over after McGuire retired, coached for six years, took Marquette to the NCAA Tournament five times and compiled an excellent 126-50 record. The Warriors never quite reached the great heights they had under McGuire, but Raymonds was among the most respected and well-liked coaches in America.
Then it was Majerus’ turn.
A gym rat to the nth degree, Majerus was a young assistant under McGuire and did anything and everything to help the program. He’d always battled a weight problem and wasn’t much of a player himself, but he knew the game inside and out.
“When I got to Marquette, Rick was just getting started,” Ellis said. “He was the freshman coach, but his role was starting to grow.”
Said Boylan, “He was the workhorse of the team. He spent hours and hours and hours with (center) Jerome (Whitehead), working on Jerome’s game. And Jerome went on to have a 12-year NBA career.”
Majerus took the reins from Raymonds and went 56-35 over three seasons at MU. He went on to a highly successful career at Ball State, Utah and Saint Louis, compiling a 517-216 career record. Eight times, his teams finished inside the top 20 in the final Associated Press poll.
All three coaches contributed in ways big and small to Marquette’s only national championship.
“We had amazing coaching from Coach McGuire, Coach Raymonds and Coach Majerus,” Boylan said. “We had a special group and we took advantage of that combination, and we were able to accomplish something extraordinary.”
