CHICAGO - Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald is from southwest of Chicago, born and bred, from Illinois from high school at Carl Sandburg to college at Northwestern.

So no surprise that he paid attention when Chicago White Sox pitcher Mark Buehrle was in the midst of throwing a perfect game against Tampa Bay last week.

Except as the satellite television in his office struggled to calibrate, he had to run to another office to catch the ending.

"(A) coordinator came down to my office I think in the eighth, said Buerhle is having a pretty good game, you might want to turn it on," Fitzgerald said. "I was trying to turn it on and I'm not going to lie, I haven't been turning on the TV in my office, so it didn't work. So I had to go into one of the other offices and I was like 'He's having a pretty good game. He's throwing a per..."

Someone interrupted: "Don't jinx him."

Fitzgerald's response: "Trust me, he's not going to hear me and I'm not going to impact anybody."

Later that night, Fitzgerald and his sons, Jack and Ryan, taped everything about the game on DVR.

"They were going crazy with it," Fitzgerald said. "They loved it."

Michael Rothstein covers University of Michigan basketball for annarbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2558 or by e-mail at michaelrothstein@annarbor.com.