One afternoon in 1991, Randy Rahe was given a set of basketball game tapes and asked by a potential employer, the new head coach at Colorado State University, to break them down and report back in the morning.
"I was so nervous about it, I went home and basically stayed up all night, devoured those tapes inside and out. I had probably 15 to 20 pages of diagrams and triple-checked it, quadruple-checked it," Rahe said.
"I thought this was my one opportunity."
Stew Morrill glanced briefly through Rahe's diagrams, 12 to 14 hours' worth of work dissecting and charting offenses and defenses, and tossed them in the garbage can.
Rahe was stunned.
Morrill hired him on the spot.
Fast forward to this Saturday night, when Morrill, now the head coach at Utah State, and Rahe, now the head coach at Weber State, will meet again on the basketball court, reluctant rivals who are more family than foe after 13 seasons of coaching camaraderie.
"Anything good that's happened to me in this profession, it's because of coach Morrill. That's the bottom line. I owe everything to him," Rahe said.
"I wish I was as good a coach as him, because they don't come any better than him. He's as good as there is in the country, I don't care what level."
Two top teams
Morrill's Utah State Aggies have won three consecutive regular season Western Athletic Conference titles.
With four returning senior starters, led by preseason WAC player of the year Tai Wesley, the Aggies were again picked first in the preseason polls by league coaches and media.
Rahe coaches a Weber State Wildcats team that has won back-to-back Big Sky Conference crowns, led by reigning league player of the year Damian Lillard. The Wildcats were also chosen by the media and coaches as likely to repeat.
Tipoff is at 7 p.m. in the Smith Spectrum in Logan.
Since being named Weber State head coach in 2006, Rahe has been named Big Sky coach of the year in three of the past four seasons, employing a system and style similar to the one he helped Morrill develop at Utah State.
"The things that attracted me to coach Rahe way back when I hired him at Colorado State were his enthusiasm, his ability to motivate kids, his knowledge of the game," Morrill said.
"He had the potential to be a very good coach a long time before he ever came to work for me. Randy's his own man, and I'm as proud of him as I could be."
After so much time together and watching each other's families grow, neither Rahe nor Morrill enjoy competing against the other's team on the basketball court.
"(Randy) is more than a former assistant. He's family. That's why it's always so difficult to play (against him)," Morrill said.
"I'm glad we're not in the same league. It makes that game very difficult when you have that strong a connection."
At Fort Collins
In their younger days in Fort Collins, however, they competed fiercely on the tennis court.
Winning is what motivates Morrill -- at everything, Rahe said.
"He's ultra-, ultracompetitive. No matter what he's doing," Rahe said. "He loves to win."
Fear of failure is the flip side of that coin.
"It doesn't matter how many games he's won, doesn't matter what he's done the game before or if he's won 10 in a row, he does not want to drop that next game, or he doesn't want to fail," Rahe said.
"I was around him for 13 years, so I've got the same situation he does. I'm along the same lines. Fear of failure is a very strong motivator."
Morrill is also a worrier, a trait Rahe said he inherited.
"I think that's also what makes him so prepared," Rahe said. "He worries about everything, so he's on top of everything. Nothing ever slips through the cracks."
In his 25th season as a college head coach, Morrill is revered in Logan and, most of all, in the Smith Spectrum, where the Aggies and their fans have created a home-court advantage and college basketball atmosphere on par with any in the country.
Utah State's record at home under Morrill is 176-13, a .931 winning percentage.
Rahe will be remembered fondly in the Spectrum -- before and after the game, not during.
Sticking around
Morrill and Rahe have each endeared themselves to their schools' fans by passing up potential opportunities to move on to coaching jobs with bigger paychecks in higher-ranked conferences.
After leading Utah State to a school-record 30-5 mark in 2008-09, Morrill ended discussions with Washington State of the Pac-10, eventually signing a contract extension with USU through 2015.
Rahe did the same last spring when Boise State of the WAC came calling, inking with the Wildcats through 2017.
Those decisions may offer insight into why Rahe stayed on as an assistant with Morrill through 13 seasons and why neither has jumped at chances at a higher-profile job.
"Coach Morrill has had quite a few offers over the past few years, a lot of them that people probably don't know about," Rahe said.
"One thing he's always said is, he really loves the kinds of kids he gets to coach at Utah State, the kind of kids he gets. He doesn't have to recruit Top 50 players in the country and all the stuff that goes with trying to recruit those kinds of guys.
"He gets guys that are hungry, that want to play and that fit his system and are good people. He loves where he lives. I can't speak for him why (he hasn't left), but there's a lot of things out there other than money."
Rahe said his situation and support from the administration at Weber State are similar.
When Rahe was in discussions with Boise State last spring, he was on the phone daily with Morrill.
"He's always given me great advice," Rahe said.
"He has a way of bringing a lot of common sense in making a decision: If you like what you're doing, you love your kids, you like where you're living and if you feel you've got a good opportunity to win, don't make money the deciding factor to take a job, because money won't buy you happiness."
Rahe said his decision to leave Utah State to work for then-University of Utah coach Ray Giacoletti in 2004 "was the hardest decision that I'd ever had to make in my profession."
Rahe is not alone in his loyalty to Morrill.
Idaho coach Don Verlin worked for Morrill for 15 seasons and turned down the Vandals once before finally accepting the position that pits him against his former boss in two WAC games each year.
Current Utah State assistant Tim Duryea is in his 10th season with Morrill. Two other former Morrill assistants, Jeff Jackson at Furman and Blaine Taylor at Old Dominion, are Division I head coaches.
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