"When I was growing up and watching him, he was my hero... "
Kansas freshman guard Stephen Vinson about Kirk Hinrich
2B • THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Inside Sports
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2003
Marquette coach awaits life-saving lung
The Associated Press
MILWAUKEE — Trey Schwab sits on the Marquette bench, breathing oxygen from a tube connected to a portable tank. He wears a cell phone on his hip, and he checks it every so often to see whether he's missed the call that could save his life.
The 38-year-old assistant coach has a disease that is deteriorating his lungs, and a transplant is his only hope for survival.
Schwab is at the top of a waiting list for a donor lung, and if a match is found, word will reach him through a vibration on his cell phone. He then would have just two hours to get to the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Madison for the operation.
This waiting game is not only tense for Schwab, it's an inconvenience because his team is playing in the Final Four in New Orleans. The Golden Eagles play Kansas in the first national semifinal Saturday afternoon, and Schwab left for the Big Easy yesterday to help with logistics for the team's trip.
"The coach in me would like to put all this on a back burner for another week and not worry about it," Schwab said. "But this is life and death, and it'll happen when it's supposed to happen,
and there's not anything any of us can
do about that."
A private jet will be waiting to whisk Schwab away from New Orleans should the call come while he's there.
"We're actually pushing the two-hour window a little bit," Schwab said. "But hopefully we'll have a little bit of leeway if they find a lung for me."
There was just no way he was going to stay back in Milwaukee after Marquette reached its first Final Four since Al McGuire led the urban Jesuit school to its only title in 1977, McGuire's last game as coach.
He's ready — and hoping — for his phone to go off in the middle of the game at the Superdome, or in the middle of the night.
"It's stressful on the bench and being so far away," Schwab said. "But I'd probably be in more stress if I had to sit at home and watch it on TV."
For the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament, Schwab had a prop plane ready to take him from Indianapolis or
Minneapolis, both of which were about an hour's flight from Madison.
"He's everywhere we go lately. A jet is all part of the travel itinerary," coach Tom Crean said. "I hope he's there for the game, unless he can get it ahead of time. It's a no-lose situation for him."
With New Orleans so far from Wisconsin, a faster airplane was needed to get Schwab back quickly enough for transplant surgeon Robert Love to perform the operation that could last up to 24 hours.
"We're going to just have to drop everything and get to the airport as fast as we can when the phone rings," Schwab said.
Shortly after Schwab arrived at Marquette last season, he and Crean developed a nasty cough they couldn't shake, and both men were diagnosed with walking pneumonia. But as Crean got better, Schwab only got worse.
After numerous tests, doctors told Schwab that he had a rare, incurable disease called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis that attacks the air sacs in the lungs, hindering the body's ability to process oxygen.
After six operations and 15 months on the portable oxygen tank, Schwab moved near the top of the organ transplant list in February. When a donor
match is made, the transplant surgeon will determine Schwab will receive one lung or two.
Doctors began cutting back on some of his medications in preparation for the operation, sapping his strength and stamina.
"Even healthy people get run down and tired this time of year," Schwab said. "So I've really had to get my sleep and take care of myself."
He feels guilty because other members of the staff have picked up the slack. But not once has anybody complained. Crean said.
Indeed, Schwab has become a source of inspiration to the Marquette's players and coaches in this special season.
"Every time we think things are tough, you look at him and see a man who isn't breathing on his own," Crean said. "You can't help but draw inner strength."
Guard Dwyane Wade said, "You can't really think that you're having a bad day if you think about what Coach Schwab is going through."
"When I first got here, Coach said you have to lay it on the line every day, and I said, 'How can you do that every day?'" Wade said. "Well, I see how you can do that every day because what he's going through, he has to be strong every day."
Doherty resigns as men's basketball coach
The Associated Press
Matt Doherty resigned yesterday as basketball coach at North Carolina, ending a bumpy three-year run marked by his failure to lead a storied program back to national prominence or even the NCAA Tournament.
The Tar Heels failed to make the tournament in two of his three seasons. He leaves with three years left on a six-year contract that paid him $855,000 a season.
Doherty's resignation came after athletic director Dick Baddour held a series of meetings with players and parents, some of whom complained about the coach's intense practices and drastic mood swings. Three players transferred last season and others talked about it this year.
But sophomore Jawad Williams
defended his coach and his methods.
"Any coach across America has an anger problem. You have
The 41-year-old Doherty was a Tar Heel fixture long before he took over the program, having played with Michael Jordan in the early 1980s.
He left Notre Dame and returned to North Carolina to succeed Bill Guthridge, and for the first season, things were fine. North Carolina went 26-7, but it slipped to 8-20 last season — the worst record in the program's history.
This year, his youngteam finished 19-16
baddour picked the inexperienced Doherty after Roy Williams — former assistant to Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith — turned down UNC to remain at Kansas. It's unclear whether Williams, whose team is in the Final Four, will be a candidate again.
But there was tension from the start, especially when Doherty didn't retain Phil Ford, Dave Hanners and Pat Sullivan as assistant coaches. Instead, he brought in his own staff from his lone season at Notre Dame. That move disappointed Smith, Guthridge and others at North Carolina.
In 2001, when Doherty was The Associated Press' coach of the year, the team won 18 games in a row and was ranked No. 1 nationally. But even that team fizzled down the stretch, going 4-5 over its final nine games, including a second-
round loss to Penn State in the NCAA Tournament.
Off-court problems surfaced when star sophomore Joseph Forte decided to go pro, citing his inability to get along with Doherty as one of the reasons for leaving.
Then came the disastrous 2001-02 season. The team lacked the overall talent of past North Carolina clubs because of the recruiting gap that stretched from the end of the Guthridge era to the start of Doherty's program. Still, many believe the Tar Heels should have been better.
Three transferred - Adam Boone, Brian Morrison and Neil Fingleton - and some of Doherty's initial recruiting class also contemplated leaving.
After the team's final game last Wednesday night, most of the players said they would return and supported their coach.
Williams deflects questions about North Carolina
The Associated Press
Kansas coach Roy Williams deflected attention from himself as a candidate for the opening at North Carolina, requesting the focus stay on his Jayhawks trip to the Final Four.
Williams said yesterday afternoon that he had heard rumors swirling about Matt Doherty's potential resignation as Tar Heels coach, which officially came a few hours later.
But Williams said he would not discuss whether he was considering the North Carolina job for himself.
"This is a very satisfying, exciting time for me and my players and the University
"I'm not letting anybody bother me with any junk if it doesn't do anything with Kansas basketball, my players, great places to eat or rivers to spit in."
Roy Williams Kansas men's basketball coach
of Kansas and our basketball program," Williams said. "I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this week and I'm not letting anybody bother me with any junk if it
doesn't do anything with Kansas basketball, my players, great places to eat or rivers to spit in.
"I'm not messing with anything else. This is too exciting a time for me and our kids and our program. That's the extent of my conversation about any other job, whether it's North Carolina or anybody."
Williams has dodged questions about the North Carolina position at times throughout the season as Doherty struggled to lead the Tar Heels to success. It was familiar territory for Williams.
Williams was considered the Tar Heels' top choice the last time the position was open. After Bill Guthridge retired following the 1999-2000 season,
Williams took a trip to Chapel Hill to have dinner with athletic director Dick Baddour and play golf with his mentor and North Carolina legend Dean Smith.
North Carolina chancellor James Moeser speculated at the time that Williams left campus with the intent to take the position but could not break it to his Kansas team.
Instead, a crowd estimated at 16,300 people — matching the capacity of Allen Fieldhouse — turned out for a news conference at Kansas' football stadium that Williams began with the words, "I'm staying."
Within a week, Doherty was named the new coach of the Tar Heels.
kansan.com Where would you rather be for Kansas
POLL
Final Four game?
At the game in New Orleans
At the game in the restaurant In Lawrence watching in a bar or restaurant
With friend at a game-viewing party
I'm not watching the game
Log on to www.kansan.com to cast your vote
Kansas Athletics Calendar
TOMORROW
THURSDAY
Softball at Wichita State, 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Track at Texas Relays,Austin,Texas,all day
FRIDAY
Baseball vs. Nebraska, Hoglund Ballpark 7 p.m.
Track at Texas Relays, Austin, Texas, all day
SATURDAY
Basketball vs. Marquette, Louisiana
Superdome, 5 p.m.
baseball vs. Nebraska, Hoglund Ballpark,
2 p.m.
Track at Texas Relays,Austin,Texas,all day
Softball at Texas Tech, Lubbock, Texas, 2 p.m.
Tennis vs. Tulsa, Robinson Outdoor Tennis Courts, noon
SUNDAY
Baseball vs. Nebraska, Hoglund Ballpark,
1 p.m.
Softball at Texas Tech, Lubbock, Texas, 5
n
Tennis vs. Colorado, Robinson Outdoor
Tennis Cours, 11 a.m.
Free forAll
I would just like to let coach Williams know that when I was in New Orleans last month for Mardi Gras, me and my friends spit in the Mississippi River, so we like to think we had a small part in KU making it back to the Final Four. Go 'Hawks!'
devouring our differences.
--devouring our differences.
Congratulations, Nick Collison, on being named First Team All-America. You're so awesome.
I sure am glad the Duke women are getting the job done in the women's tournament, because the guys sure as hell didn't.
Hey Free For All, MU rules. Hey Free For All, April Fool's.
All scholarship hall residents are nerds
All greek students are drunks.
Resident hall students are immature.
Off-campus students just don't care.
EAT SPAGHETTI. STOP STEREOTYPES.
Join us for a FREE spaghetti dinner April 16th 6 p.m. at the ECM Freshmen and sophomores from residence halls, scholarship halls, greek houses and off campus are invited.
email registration and questions to sass@ku.edu include name and housing affiliation registration deadline is Thursday April 10th
HURRY! ONLY 60 SPOTS AVAILABLE.
hosted by students against spreading stereotypes
School of Fine Arts
K
TODAY'S PERFORMER: EVAN GROSSHANS, BARITONE (ALDERSON AUDITORIUM, 4TH FLOOR)
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