No celebration please: Morrill nabs 100th victory
It was a night of celebration for the Utah State men’s basketball team on Dec. 17.
Not only had the Aggies defeated the University of Utah 59-54 for the third straight time, Stew Morrill captured his 100th win as the USU head coach.
Yes, it was a special night. That doesn’t mean it’s anything Morrill is going to focus on.
“Last year I got No. 300 [career win] … Yeah, I’d be less than honest if I said I didn’t say, ‘Wow!’ You try not to dwell on it very long,” Morrill said.
The reason? Well, to Morrill the number of wins means three things:
1. He’s getting old.
2. He’s been in the business of coaching for a while.
3. He’s had a lot of successful players under his belt.
In the record books though, it marks a whole lot more.
In only his 135th game at the helm of Aggie basketball, he reached the 100 win milestone. To put it into perspective, it took the highly successful Utah Head Coach Rick Majerus 140 games to meet the feat.
Simply put, “Coach Morrill is an offensive genius,” said USU forward Spencer Nelson.
And he has the numbers to prove it. In his five years in Logan, Morrill has recorded three 20-plus win seasons, two conference championships, two trips to the NCAA Tournament and one to the NIT.
Not too shabby.
After Morrill’s third season, which included a 28-win year, administrators at USU offered him a contract extension. No, not a three-year extension, but an almost unheard-of 10-year extension. He immediately accepted.
Following the victory over the Utes, no public announcement was made about Morrill’s milestone. He wouldn’t have it.
No. 100 was a long time coming, though. Utah State basketball press releases following the victories in Hawaii noted that Morrill was approaching the magic number. Then came USU’s 63-57 loss at Jackson State, and its 66-56 loss at BYU.
“I was wondering if it was going to happen,” Morrill said. “They kept putting it in the press release. I’d read it, and we’d get beat, read it and we’d get beat. I told them, ‘Don’t put that in there.'”
Morrill isn’t one to look toward No. 150, or any other milestone fans would like to celebrate.
He is focused on the next game. And for the Aggies, that means a meeting with Cal Poly Thursday in the Spectrum.
–juag@cc.usu.edu