“And I dig it, man. I love it. That’s super exciting.”

On that charge — being described as a coach who wants to pursue offensive tactics to the very extreme of the sport — Fueger didn’t push back one bit. He’ll readily own that truth.

“We want our guys to play fast and free,” Fueger said, his smile widening as he looked forward to the possibilities. “And we need 35 3s a game — that’s our goal.”

Origins of an offensive mindset

Fueger (pronounced FEE-gurr) grew up in the Milwaukee area, and though Majerus is best known as the longtime head coach at Utah, he was also raised in Milwaukee, graduating from Marquette University and beginning his coaching career as an assistant there under Al McGuire before ultimately becoming the school’s head coach for three seasons.

Even after Majerus left Wisconsin, he kept close ties to the state, including hosting a basketball camp that Fueger started attending when he was 8 or 9 years old, returning every summer through high school.

As he got to know him better, Majerus asked the kid to instruct at the camps.

“There was no connection or anything like that to him,” Fueger said. “It was just going to his camps, and I was the kid that worked hard and dove on the loose balls and took charges — did all the stuff at camp that Coach Majerus loved.”

After Fueger graduated from high school, Majerus wanted him to walk on at Utah. But — young for his class and nowhere close to 6-feet tall at that point in his life — Fueger knew there was no real future for him as a player.

“And I was too cheap,” he said. “I didn’t want to pay out-of-state tuition. And he knew I wanted to coach down the line, because I was coaching his camps. Then he said, ‘All right, come work for me, and I’ll give you a scholarship.’ So that’s kind of how I got started.

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