Patrick Reusse: Life in the small time suits Cobbers coach

Rich Glas was the men's basketball coach and the athletic director at Willamette University in Salem, Ore., in the early 1980s. The Portland Trail Blazers held training camp at the school.

Jack Ramsay was coaching the Blazers. He would make the short drive to Willamette to use the facilities in the summer.

"I would open the pool for him, and we also would take a run together," Glas said. "He would be saying, 'We have to figure out how to get that Olajuwon.'"

Houston wound up with the first choice in the 1984 draft and took Akeem Olajuwon, the star center for the hometown Houston Cougars.

"That left Michael Jordan for the Blazers, but Ramsay kept saying, 'We need a post guy,'" Glas said. "They brought Sam Bowie to Willamette for his workout. ... Ramsay would shake his head and say, 'This guy has a lot of work to do,' but the Blazers took him, and that left Jordan to go to Chicago."

There you have it: Rich Glas has been around the game long enough to get an up-close view of the worst decision in the history of the NBA draft -- Bowie ahead of Jordan.

Glas, 60, has returned to Minnesota coaching this winter for the first time in three decades as the men's coach at Concordia in Moorhead. The job opened when Duane Siverson announced last season that he would be retiring.

Glas called Larry Papenfuss, the athletic director at Concordia. Five days later, Rich was in charge of a program again.

On Saturday, Glas was in Bethel's Robertson Center, the same gym where he worked his first game as a 25-year-old head coach for Minnesota-Morris in 1974.

"That was win No. 1," he said. "We were hoping it might be 498 today."

Concordia gave a strong hint that wasn't going to be the case by scoring once in its first 14 possessions. The Cobbers scored 19 points in the first half, played better in the second half, but the final was 67-59 for Bethel.

Glas' team is now 4-10 in the MIAC with a game this afternoon at Hamline.

No matter the challenge, Glas showed that the fire remains. A string of marginal calls went against Concordia in the second half and he started working over a veteran official with persistency.

"We didn't have a chance if the game was physical," he said. "And I thought it was called that way."

Glas caught the coaching urge as a kid in Bemidji, watching the legendary Bun Fortier run the huddle with the Bemidji High Lumberjacks. After high school, Glas played at Bemidji State.

He was an assistant at Minnesota-Morris when Jack Haddorff quit after the 1973-74 season. His first recruit was Randy Schwegel from St. Cloud. He became so influential to Morris' success that Rich and his wife, Sandy, named their daughter Randy.

Morris was competing in the Northern Intercollegiate Conference (now the Northern Sun) in that era. The Cougars won the title in Glas' third and fourth of five seasons.

And then in 1988, Glas was hired as the coach at North Dakota. He took the Sioux to eight Division II tournaments. He quit in 2006 as North Dakota was headed toward Division I. He's now in Division III -- no scholarships, small egos -- and says he's loving it.

For now, it's tough love.

"I think the stat for Concordia basketball is 16 winning seasons in 53 years, but we're going to change that," Glas said. "The message [to recruits] is the same as we had for Randy Schwegel. Come on out and live the dream with us."