“It was incredible. I was with him every day, 24/7. I really lucked out. That’s how I broke into the business, with Coach Majerus. And you know what that name means. It’s pretty remarkable.”

A student assistant on scholarship — a rare arrangement, for sure — Fueger took in as much basketball information as possible. After Majerus, who died in 2012, stepped down for health reasons in 2004, Fueger finished his student coaching career under Ray Giacoletti.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees before leaving Utah, spending time as a director of basketball operations at Louisiana Tech, UC Riverside and Utah State and then landing in that position at BYU, where Pope was already on Dave Rose’s staff as an assistant coach.

The duo worked together for two seasons there before Pope was hired to be head coach at Utah Valley, and he brought Fueger with him. Their first season at UK will be their 10th as head coach and assistant.

“I was lucky to go over with him to Utah Valley when he got his first head coaching job. And we’ve just developed a really good relationship,” Fueger said. “We saw the game the same way. We worked the same way. Kind of every little part of our profession — we saw the same way, and it made sense to us. And we speak the same language.”

That doesn’t mean they always agree.

“He doesn’t want yes men. He doesn’t want that,” Fueger said. “He wants to hear from everybody. He wants to know — ‘What are your thoughts? What are you thinking?’ And that was very similar to Coach Majerus. And I didn’t know anything. I was an 18-year-old. ‘All right, Cody, what do you think about him?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. Andrew Bogut seems like he’s a pretty good player.’”

Somewhere along the way — Fueger now has more than 20 years of experience working for other coaches — an obsession with offense was born. That might seem odd for someone who started learning the game under Majerus, a demanding, defensive-minded coach.

“The whole thing has always been defense and rebounding. That was Coach Majerus,” Fueger said. “And c’mon, he was a successful coach. And I love defense and rebounding. C’mon, who doesn’t? That’s truly how you win games.

“And offense — with him, it was screen, motion — it was all these things that I absolutely love. And I thought that was the only way.”

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