New Stanford coach, South Tahoe's Jerod Haase, promises ‘an attack mentality’

When Jerod Haase played at Kansas, he dived for loose balls so often that somebody at the school created a statistic for it.

He was so upset over the Jayhawks’ 85-82 loss to Arizona in the 1997 NCAA Tournament regional semifinals that he sulked about it long afterward. The source for that information is a former waitress at a Lawrence sports bar called the Yacht Club.

“He was very upset about that game,” the former Mindy Meidinger said. That’s how she and Haase met, and they’ve been married for 17 years.

Their family — including sons Gavin, 9, and Garrett, 7, and daughter Gabrielle, 4 — was sitting in the front row at a news conference on the Stanford campus Monday as Haase was named the Cardinal’s head coach.

Haase, 41, met with his players Monday morning. “One of the first things we talked about was the idea of competing for championships,” he said. “There’s a great belief in that locker room that we can compete at a high level right away and sustain that for a long time as well.”

The former Alabama-Birmingham head coach said he hoped the players don’t watch the NCAA Final Four merely as fans. “I hope they have a pit in their stomach, just like I do, that there’s a desperate desire to get to the NCAA Tournament. That’s where Stanford basketball should be.”

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