College basketball

Rick Majerus, the jovial coach who led Utah to the 1998 NCAA final and had only one losing season in 25 years with four schools, died Saturday of heart failure in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 64. Majerus had been hospitalized there for several months. Saint Louis, Majerus’s final coaching stop, announced Nov. 19 that he wouldn’t return because of the heart condition. He ended the school’s 12-year NCAA tournament drought last season with a team that won its opening game and took top regional seed Michigan State to the wire. The Billikens were ranked for the first time since 1994-95. Majerus was 95-69 in five seasons at Saint Louis and finished with a career mark of 517-216. He had his most success at Utah, going 323-95 from 1989-2004. He also coached at Marquette (1983-86) and Ball State (1987-89).