You don’t need GPS to find Porter Moser’s home in Wilmette. Just follow the red-brick road until you come upon the toilet paper.
Friends and neighbors, drunk on Loyola’s unbelievable Final Four run, turned the Moser’s front yard into something you’d see if a tornado tore through a Charmin factory.
Not that the family minds. Porter, wife Megan, daughter Jordan, 16, and sons Jake, 15, Ben, 13, and Max, 11, are loving the attention as much as the Ramblers love sharing the basketball.
The other day Jordan was pumping gas when she noticed Loyola highlights on the little TV screen and nearly fainted: “Mom!” she shouted. “Look!”
There’s no too-cool-for-school vibe in this cheery house, where Moser’s Missouri Valley Conference coach of the year trophy rests, for now, on the dining room table.
Just six weeks ago, the Ramblers played before a home crowd generously listed at 2,091.
Now?
“How cool is this?” Moser said, pointing at a Tuesday night NIT game on the living room TV. “Nonstop Loyola stuff is coming up (on the crawl).”
Moser shared a picture of his parents’ grave site in Naperville. Near some flowers, a fan posted laminated images of Loyola’s wolf mascot and the NCAA 2018 Final Four insignia.
Moser also marveled at how “GO LOYOLA” was spelled out in lights across the top of the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Tower on Lake Shore Drive.
“I remember seeing ‘GO CUBS,’ ” he said of his favorite professional team.
The Ramblers are so old-school, Moser said they have no dunks through four tournament games. They’re so team-oriented, they most likely have no future NBA players.
As shocking as their run through four higher-seeded teams has been, Moser’s lifelong friends and longtime admirers are not surprised with his success.
Blackhawks executive vice president Jay Blunk recalled how his fellow Wilmette resident would tell him: “ ‘We’re building something. We have this great little arena and we will great this place rockin’. I want to show it to you.’ … Porter is different. He’s sincere and has a genuine interest in you. He draws you in, and you’re hooked.”
Said Bulls general manager Gar Forman, who coached at Iowa State when Moser was at Texas A&M in the late 1990s.“He just gets it. His drive to succeed, his work ethic, his intensity. You can spot which guys will make it and which ones will fall to the side.”
Todd Eisner, a college coach who played with Moser at Creighton in the late ’80s, told his friend recently: “I know you’re getting only 2-3 hours of sleep a night. When this is over, you’re gonna need to hibernate.”
Moser replied: “No, I need to be on the road recruiting.”
Told that story, Moser noted the arduous April recruiting calendar and said: “I’ll sleep in May.”
‘One of the guys’
Don’t get the wrong idea about Moser, who turns 50 in August. Only part of him admires Nick Saban, the Alabama football coach who called recruits within hours of winning the 2016 national title.
“Now that is obsessive,” Moser said, “and I’m 100 percent not that guy.”
The well-rounded Moser is either an incredible husband and father, or Megan and their kids can teach Meryl Streep a thing or two about acting.
All four were wearing Loyola gear Tuesday night, and Moser had to laugh when Max described his tightly wound dad as “cool” and “chill.”
They all play travel basketball, and Jordan said she actually enjoys the rides home from games: “I’ll say, ‘How do you think I did?’ He says: ‘I thought you rebounded really well, but on defense make sure you use your legs to get in a slide.’ It’s always a bunch of positives, the coolest balance. I don’t feel a lot of pressure from him. I love getting the inside tips.”
Moser is so clean-cut that he half-jokingly declined to confirm that Miller Lite is his favorite beer. And after it was revealed that he and Megan met at a Texas A&M bar where she served drinks, he called the spot “an establishment.”
He emerged from the basement with this offering of drinks: “I have Diet 7UP, diet cranberry, water and Gatorade.”
He served orange Gatorade on the rocks in a Jake Arrieta souvenir Cubs cup.
Said Megan: “He loves his job. I know there are days that are terrible and days that are great. He comes home from traveling for three days and watching film till 1 in the morning and says: ‘OK, let’s play some games, go to dinner … what do you guys want to do?’ Basically, he’s just so fun.”
Friends say Megan is as crucial to Moser’s success as the man himself.
“We’re partners in everything,” Moser said. “People talk about me having high energy. She has a glow that makes you feel good to be around. I don’t want to say she’s one of the guys …”
Megan: “That’s fine.”
Porter: “She can talk sports, drink a beer with the guys, kid with them. I’ll go out with the guys and the next think you know, they’re mingling with her.
“I’ve talked to so many coaches who say: ‘My wife is killing me about my job; she says I’m gone too much.’ We’ve been married over 20 years and I’m not exaggerating. Not one time has she complained about my job. She is 100 percent all-in, so understanding.
“I’ll get back from a three-day trip, and she’ll have a meal waiting for me. And when you have a partnership like that, I’ll try to take something off her plate — I’ll race from Loyola to pick one of them up from AAU practice.”
Megan: “You fill in the gaps instead of keeping score.”
Porter: “That’s a great line.”
Wait, is there also a Wall of Culture in the Moser home? Sort of. There’s a family group chat on which Moser posts inspirational quotes or links to inspiring stories.
Jordan can quote her dad’s favorite line about the scourge of self-pity: “How you think is how you feel, how you feel is how you act, and how you act is what defines you.”
This is a man who, to help his kids wake up in the morning, created a Spotify mix with songs that contain the word “happy” in the title.
This was a boy who provided so much light, his mother, Sandy, would see him and say: “Here comes ‘Sunshine.’”
Sandy so often stressed the need for a “positive mental attitude” that “PMA” became a family mantra. It’s also how Moser monograms his shirts.
“I have horrible initials,” he explained. “My middle name is Andrew.”
A ‘two-dribble limit’
Normally on the Friday preceding the Final Four, Moser and coaching buddies such as Eisner (Division II Winona State in Minnesota) and Phil LaScala (Lake Forest High School) embark on a mission to find the perfect sports bar to watch the Saturday semifinals.
“Never the popular places,” Eisner said. “We want to watch the games and hear the TV announcers, not be somewhere crowded and noisy. Unfortunately our minds never turn off. We want to see what the teams are running, so we find a hole-in-the-wall spot with a lot of TVs and cold beer.”
Eisner joked that he will feel like “a lost puppy” this weekend in San Antonio because Moser “ruined the trip by taking his team to the Final Four.”
He added: “I’ve never been more excited for a game.”
Moser, Eisner and Matt Roggenburk formed the Tony Barone’s first full recruiting class at Creighton. Moser arrived as a walk-on but never acted as if he were lacking anything.
“He woke up every day saying: ‘I will prove I belong here and earn a scholarship,’” Eisner said. “That fire you see from him now is what we saw when he was 18 years old … He was an unbelievable shooter. He had a torch, as my players would say. He could really stroke it from deep and he would fight you (on defense). But he was not the most gifted athlete and had a two-dribble limit.”
Moser said it was more like a zero-dribble limit. Players would hand off to him in the layup line.
He and LaScala formed a backcourt at Benet Academy that helped maintain the school’s 102-game home winning streak from 1975-87.
“He would always have the boombox, playing everything from Michael Jackson to Ozzy Osbourne before and after practices and games,” LaScala said. “That thing was huge.”
Moser naturally stood out as a rising ninth-grader at Ray Meyer’s summer camp. In front of all the campers, Meyer had Moser stand up and announced: “If everyone worked as hard as this kid … I guarantee he will get a college scholarship.”
Added LaScala: “We were like, ‘Whoa!’”
LaScala spent the week on a Mexican cruise that docks at Galveston, Texas. Needless to say, he will make it to San Antonio.
So will Eisner, who said he normally has access to tickets that require binoculars to see the floor. Not this time. Not with the best man at his wedding coaching against Michigan in the first game.
“I’ve been going to the Final Four for 27 years,” Moser said. “It’s a great time to see friends in the profession in a more social atmosphere. But I can tell you unequivocally that I’m so happy that I’m going to prepare and compete.”
He can sleep in May.
tgreenstein@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @TeddyGreenstein
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