Senior Satalowich Continues to Be Plagued by Injuries, Bad Luck

As sneakers squeaked and voices echoed throughout Cal State Fullerton’s morning shoot-around before Tuesday night’s game at Colorado, the only thing emptier than the arena was the feeling in Todd Satalowich’s heart.

After two back surgeries and torn ligaments in an ankle, this was supposed to be Satalowich’s season. And this was supposed to be his trip.

Satalowich’s mother, father and brother are in Colorado this week from their home in Missouri. His aunt made the trip to Boulder, Colo., from her home in Wisconsin.

The gathering had been planned for months. Satalowich is a senior, and this would be sort of a last hurrah. His family members would see him play at Colorado and at Colorado State on Thursday.

That was before fate intervened. Satalowich suffered what he thought was a minor toe injury in May, but it hasn’t healed. The torn ligaments and cartilage in his right big toe gave him trouble throughout preseason practice, bunions on his foot prevented further healing, and two weeks ago his back started hurting again.

It seems that, after returning to practice and playing only two minutes against St. Mary’s on Dec. 10, he threw out his back because he was favoring his sore foot.

Now, he can’t play this week and fears he is out for the season.

“I don’t know,” Satalowich said. “I don’t understand it at all. I keep asking myself why. I don’t understand why this keeps happening to me. I don’t understand how I can go from a great high school career to this.”

As if this week isn’t enough of a letdown, Satalowich took some negatives of his senior picture in the Fullerton media guide to a drugstore last week. He wanted to get some enlarged as Christmas gifts for his mother, aunt and grandmother.

The drugstore lost them.

“They said they had no record of sending them in to get developed,” Satalowich said. “So now, not only are there no pictures, but there are no negatives even if I wanted to get them made again. So I’ve got to start my Christmas shopping from scratch.

“Even the little things aren’t going right.”

That was Monday morning. Monday afternoon, as Fullerton was set to depart for Colorado from Los Angeles, Satalowich was clutching an envelope containing pictures of himself with Coach Brad Holland and guard Greg Vernon and a few mug shots. He figured he could at least give those to his parents in Colorado this week.

“They handed out our per diem (at the airport) and I put it in the envelope with the pictures,” Satalowich said. “I put it on the table we were sitting at, got up to go to the plane and . . . “

Yep. He left the envelope sitting right there on the table. Those pictures are gone, too.

“Monday was a great day,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know, my mind just hasn’t been right lately.”

In high school in Columbia, Mo., Satalowich made the all-state team after averaging 22 points and 12 rebounds his senior year. After a couple of fruitless years at Missouri and two back surgeries, he transferred to Fullerton. He averaged 0.8 points and one rebound in 1991-92 and 0.7 points and 1.7 rebounds last year.

Now, he can’t even get a picture made. At least he is on target to graduate in May with a degree in kinesiology. After that, he figures he’ll get a master’s degree and, maybe, coach someday.

“I’d like to say I’d like to coach, but I don’t know,” he said. “The way things are, I may want to get away from basketball for a little while . . .

“But basketball is just a great game. As many things that have gone wrong for me, it still has given me a world of great times. I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”

*

Four inches of snow are on the ground in Boulder, Colo., it snowed most of the day Tuesday and the temperature, which doesn’t get above freezing during the day, dips into the teens at night.

So Holland is wearing that heavy tan overcoat this week to keep warm, right? Not quite.

“Whenever I wear it, we have good weather,” he said. “That’s why I brought it. When I don’t bring it, it snows, and we freeze to death.”

It goes back to his days as an assistant at UCLA.

“We were at Iowa and it was the first time I hadn’t brought an overcoat,” Holland said. “We had a lot of snow, we lost, and the next day we were taking the bus to Des Moines to fly home and the bus had no heat. I absolutely froze.

“So the coat is an insurance policy. It’s insurance that we’ll have good weather.”

As of Tuesday, the battle between Mother Nature and Holland’s coat was too close to call.

*

Former Fullerton player and assistant coach Donny Daniels was in town Saturday with Utah and, he reports that working for Ute Coach Rick Majerus helps recruiting.

“The one thing I tell recruits is that Coach is in charge of the training table,” Daniels said, laughing. “He’ll tell you where to go to eat.”

*

Utah is one of the few “name” basketball schools to make an appearance in Titan Gym. Besides Big West Conference teams, only two WAC teams (Utah and Colorado State), only three Southwest Conference teams (Houston, Texas Tech and Rice) and one Pac-10 team (Washington) have played there. No teams from the Big Ten, Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East or Big Eight have appeared in Titan Gym.

Titan Notes

The women’s basketball team, which played Monday and Tuesday in the California tournament at Berkeley, is off until after the holidays. The Titans resume play Jan. 3 at UC Santa Barbara. . . . Titan softball Coach Judi Garman will host her 20th Softball Clinic for Coaches on Feb. 5-6 at Fullerton. Featured speakers are Linda Wells, coach at Arizona State and Dr. Dorothy (Dot) Richardson, a 10-time American Softball Assn. All-American and four-time NCAA All-American. . . . Repair work has started on the track (turning it into a 400-meter oval rather than the current 440-yard track) and on the softball complex (to fix drainage problems).