“Nobody enjoyed 2014 more than I did,” Behrns said.
Whatever bad basketball luck Behrns had 20-plus years ago, he can’t complain now. In his 16th season as the sports information director at Loyola University Chicago, he’s part of one of the biggest underdog stories in the history of March Madness.
Everyone’s treasure
The past couple of weeks have been “absolutely crazy,” Behrns said. The Ramblers beat Miami, Tennessee, Nevada and Kansas State to earn become the fourth No. 11 seed in NCAA history to earn a spot in the Final Four — and that’s only part of the story.
The unique angle of Loyola’s success has revolved around 98-year-old Sister Jean, the breakout off-court star of this tournament. Jean Dolores-Schmidt, the team’s chaplain, has become more famous than any of the Loyola players. She may even be more popular than the head coach, Porter Moser.
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Behrns, 45, handled interview requests for Sister Jean until last week when he gave the “overwhelming” task to an assistant so he could focus on the coaches and players.
“The toughest thing is people tend to forget she’s a 98-year-old recuperating from a broken hip,” Behrns said. “For people that age, it usually spells the end, but she’s been able to bounce back. But she needs rest. Some of these days she’s logged a lot of hours. She wants to say yes and she will say yes to practically everybody. But we have to kind of be the bad guys and say, ‘No, Sister, you’re not doing that one.’ We’ve got to save her from herself from because she’s so sweet.”
Sister Jean has served as Loyola’s team chaplain since 1996. She prays with the team in private before games and leads a prayer for the entire arena at home games 10 minutes before tip-off. Behrns expected her to become a national story after Loyola upset Miami on a buzzer-beater in the first round.
“It’s been crazy,” Behrns said, “but she is such a treasure for us, not only with our basketball program. She is adored across the university because she is everyone’s little treasure.”
Sister Jean has been wheelchair-bound since being injured in November. Prior to that, Behrns said, she moved around campus like a 28-year-old, braving “sleet, snow, rain, ice, you name it.” Everyone on campus knows her, he said, and when the team returned to Gentile Arena on Sunday to celebrate a South Regional championship with its fans, Sister Jean entered first.
“The place went bananas,” Behrns said.
Special group
While this tournament run has surprised everyone, Loyola knew it had a good team entering the season, Behrns said. When Wichita State left for the American Athletic Conference after years of dominating the Missouri Valley Conference, it opened the door for the Ramblers, who hadn’t played in the NCAA tournament since 1985.
Loyola finished the regular season 25-5, then won the MVC tournament with three straight victories and have since improved their record to 32-5. That’s three more wins than the team had in 1963 when it won the NCAA championship.
“We’ve got such a special group of kids,” Behrns said. “They do unbelievable work obviously on the court, but off the court, we’re tied for the highest graduation rate with Harvard and a couple other Ivy League schools. It’s corny to say, but they’re everything that’s right about college basketball.”
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With Loyola leaving Wednesday to travel to the Final Four in San Antonio, Texas, Behrns won’t get much of a break this week. They have many obligations before playing Michigan in the Final Four at 6:09 p.m. Saturday. They did great a break from the spotlight on Monday.
“Just being the Cinderella team to this point and the underdog and who everyone is rooting for, we’ve gotten a lot of attention,” Behrns said, “which is great, but our guys need a day off to just not have a microphone in their face or a camera in their face.”
Unique place
Sports information directors handle media requests, keep track of stats, promote the team through the school’s website and on social media and often travel to every game. Behrns learned the tools of the trade as a student at Dayton, working for Doug Hauschild, who has been Dayton’s SID since 1982.
Behrns not only helped Hauschild with men’s basketball and football, he also was responsible for a number of different teams during his time at UD: golf, baseball, women’s basketball and volleyball.
“Doug was amazing and still is,” Behrns said. “I owe pretty much everything I’ve gotten in my career to the tutelage I got from him and the responsibilities he gave me and the experience he gave me as a student. It’s rare to have those kind of responsibilities. But that’s how Doug is. He’s so well respected. He certainly taught me how to be a professional and how to go about the business and deal with the media.”
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Behrns, a Chicago native, interned under Hauschild in the 1994-95 school year after graduating. He then did another internship at the University of Illinois before spending three years as an assistant SID at Illinois-Chicago. He started at Loyola as an assistant SID in 1999, became the head SID in 2000 and stayed in that position until 2013 before pursuing other opportunities for a three-year period. He returned to Loyola in 2016.
In a lot of ways, Loyola reminds him of Dayton, a school that remains close to his heart. He’s not the only person at Loyola with a Dayton connection. Steve Watson, the school’s athletic director, was Dayton’s director of marketing and promotions from 1999-2001.
“It’s definitely a unique place,” Behrns said of Dayton, “and one of those places it’s hard to even describe to people until you’ve actually set foot on campus to see what it’s really about: how welcoming and how special the people are that go there and work there. I’ve worked at a handful of other schools, and Loyola is about as close to a place as I can find to Dayton.”
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