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It was early August when he walked into a hospital room at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and met a young man who was a casualty of the Iraq War.

"It was an eye-opening experience to meet a soldier who, when you walk in the therapy room, has lost three limbs," Rohrssen, the men's basketball coach at Manhattan College said during MAAC Media Day on Tuesday. "The one limb that he does have is a right hand and he puts it out and shakes your hand and says, 'Thanks for being here, thanks for coming to see me.'

"And then to look at him and when he describes that he walked over a bomb and he says, 'I can't understand what you're saying because I'm deaf and I haven't learned to read lips yet. But I'm working on it and I'm trying. If you speak slowly, I may be able to understand. But I just want to tell you, 'Thanks for thinking of me.'"

Rohrssen hadn't even left the country yet and he was already amazed at the courage of the American soldiers in Iraq.

The trip, called Operation Hardwood V and sponsored by the United Service Organizations, ultimately brought Rohrssen and a group of fellow Division I coaches to Kuwait and Iraq.

"The experience was unbelievable," recalled Rohrssen, 48, a Brooklyn native known as Coach Slice. "It was eye-opening and you can't say enough about the dedicated and brave men and women who serve and defend our country."

Rohrssen was joined on the trip by Brian Gregory (University of Dayton), Tom Schuberth (Texas-Pan American), Tom Pecora (Hofstra), Fran Fraschilla (formerly of Manhattan and current ESPN announcer), Jerry Wainwright (DePaul), Jeff Jones (American) and Reggie Minton (National Association of Basketball Coaches).

From Washington, it was on to Kuwait, and then Iraq.

"From Kuwait, we flew in a C-130 cargo plane into [Camp Victory in Baghdad]," Rohrssen said. "You enter through the rear of the plane, into the belly, and there are benches. Two benches run along the side of the plane and two run down the middle.

"When we go to the airport here, they hand you a boarding pass. At the airport in Kuwait, they handed us body armor and a helmet."

While in Baghdad, Rohrssen helped organize an eight-team basketball tournament held on a wooden floor inside the Liberty Fieldhouse.

Also during their time in Iraq, the coaches took a tour of what had been Saddam Hussein's property.

"They gave us a tour of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces," Fraschilla recalled by phone. "The 'Victory Over America Palace' that he was building in honor of the first Gulf War and obviously it was bombed on the first day of the second assault on Iraq in '03.

"There was a room in that palace that was 100 yards long. The palace itself was the biggest home I've ever seen. It's sort of rubble now. The audacity of someone to spend all that money on himself at the expense of the people he was supposed to be leading was obscene, but powerful."

Fraschilla said he also came away from the trip with a profound respect for the American soldiers and the work they're doing.

"It blows you away when people are explaining to you their jobs," he said. "There's a 19-year-old kid who's in charge of making sure satellites are up and running so everyone in the military can communicate. I can't even get the DishTV guy to come to my house."

Fraschilla has known Rohrssen and Pecora for years, but came away from the trip feeling a tremendous bond with all his fellow coaches.

"There's a lifetime of friendship that comes out of spending a week on a trip like that because of what you're sharing and seeing how it's bonding you," he said.

Rohrssen said the trip has changed his worldview and impacted how he interacts with his team.

"Our players aren't getting too much sympathy anymore," Rohrssen said with a smile. "Even before this trip, one of the things you like to educate them on is not to take things for granted. Any one of those soldiers that we saw that lost a limb would do anything to come in and play hard for a two-hour practice.

"We're trying to motivate guys to play hard or to run hard. You want them to understand that there's a lot more going on out there besides the small narrow world that we live in sometimes in athletics. There's a much bigger and larger picture that goes on."