By Rick Bozich
The (Louisville) Courier-Journal

MILWAUKEE, Wis. - Nothing can make these Marquette basketball players wedge their chins against their chests.

Not a head-scratching loss at East Carolina. Not a horror-show loss at Notre Dame. Not the 24-foot jolt Louisville guard Reece Gaines gave them in Milwaukee.

Not when the Golden Eagles have an assistant coach named Trey Schwab who knows that whenever his cell phone rings it might bring the news that he can have the lung transplant he needs to survive.

"Any time you have a bad day, miss a shot or feel tired, all you have to do is look at Trey," said Marquette guard Travis Diener, who scored 6 points Saturday in Marquette's stunning 83-69 win over Kentucky that sent the Golden Eagles to the Final Four in New Orleans. "Then you don't feel so bad. You'd think we'd be picking him up, but he's so strong and positive that he's picked us up all season."

"It's not a spoken thing," assistant coach Darrin Horn said. "We've never told the players we have to win a certain game for Trey."

They don' have to be told when they see him on the bench with five tanks filled with the oxygen his body requires as Schwab fights idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable disease attacking the air sacs in his lungs.

"I'm a little anxious, but I'm not scared," said Schwab, 38. "These guys have given me so much support and the opportunity to share my story with so many people."

Schwab does not want sympathy. He wants people to consider becoming organ donors and to understand that there are at least 80,000 stories similar to his of people awaiting lungs, hearts, livers and other organs.

"Like most people, I was aware of organ donation programs," he said. "But I didn't really have an understanding of the problem and how long some waiting periods are. Without a doubt, once everything started happening I was determined to raise awareness. I can't imagine saying 'No' to any organ donation program again. I'm determined to give this disease a face."

For Schwab, the story unfolded in October 2001, weeks after he left the Minnesota Timberwolves' staff to join coach Tom Crean's at Marquette. A former coach in the Continental Basketball Association, Schwab was hired to run Marquette's video program, travel and campus recruiting visits.

A few weeks after practice began, Schwab and Crean were fighting coughs. Crean's disappeared but Schwab's didn't. Both men were diagnosed with pneumonia, but again, Crean's ailment faded while Schwab's did not.

Then, six days before Christmas, Schwab coughed up blood - and wept.

"We were all pretty shaken because like any team we'd been kidding Trey about when he was going to get rid of that cough," Horn said.

Schwab will get rid of the cough only when he gets new lungs. There is no cure for IPF, a disease that afflicts about 200,000 Americans.

First, Schwab's name had to be added to the transplant list. Then he had to shed at least 77 pounds from his 6-foot body, which had swelled to 327 pounds because of inactivity and reaction to medications.

Schwab compares his reactions to the medications, which he must deal with three times a week, to having the flu.

"Some days you don't feel like getting out of bed," he said. "But what kind of message would that send to the team if I felt sorry for myself?"

Schwab has lost more than 110 pounds, carrying his oxygen tanks and resolve to the treadmill three or four times a week. He has teamed with Connie Payton, widow of Hall of Fame football player Walter Payton; the Saturn car company; Charles Barkley, whose brother needs a new heart; and more than 100 colleges and National Basketball Association teams to sponsor organ donation awareness programs. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis never has met anybody as resilient as Trey Schwab.

And now he waits for the call that will tell him he has less than two hours to report to the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Madison for an operation that could last 26 hours and save his life.