I never thought I’d feel like that, but on Saturday, I felt bad for Lute Olson.
His Arizona team, with his “best recruit ever” Chase Budinger, was just outlasted and outmanned by a totally superior UCLA team.
He was outcoached, despite the fact that it appeared this was one game this year where he was actually coaching, calling timeouts at most of the right spots and imploring his team to get back on defense.
And he was complimentary in his postgame conference, saying UCLA is better than Arizona, and that Darren Collison is the best point guard in the country.
While I’m sure Mustafa Shakur will be pleased to hear that, I couldn’t help but feel sad at the passing of Lute.
If nothing else, this game is proof that he is done.
His team could not blitz UCLA with one of those prototypical Arizona runs at the end of a game. They could not play the kind of defense and fundamental ball that had been at least an option for the dominant Arizona teams of the past. And amazingly enough, they simply could not match the talent of the Bruins.
Remember, people were talking at the beginning of the year about how this would be the resurgent year for the Wildcats; that the talent accumulated in Tucson equaled that of any Arizona team in the past.
I didn’t really buy it considering how much the Wildcats underachieved last year, but I worried a little. Maybe Budinger really would be that good.
Then the season started, and Arizona was exposed for what it was: basically an AAU run-and-gun team with no organization or knowledge of fundamental basketball.
Hey, a run-and-gun team with the offensive talent of Arizona probably would have been first in the Pac-10 five years ago. But since Ben Howland arrived in Westwood four years ago, the Pac-10 has slowly become one of the most fundamental and defense-oriented conferences in the United States.
UCLA, USC and Washington State. The three best teams in the conference are all teams that pride defense first (although the Bruins sometimes forget what brought them to the title game last year). Arizona State will soon be a perennial 20-win team because Herb Sendek believes in defense first and a structured offense.
Arizona has not changed its style. Olson has not changed his style. When he saw the move toward more structured play in the Pac-10, he saw that as an opportunity to attract even more of his high-flying offensive recruits.
Well, as the knight says in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” after the bad guy drinks from the wrong cup of Christ, he chose poorly.
And now, even though he might recognize the need for it, it may be too late to change (but hey, at least he won’t dissolve into dust and bones for making a poor choice).
Olson is 72 years old. He might have a few more years of coaching left in him, he might not. But as far as I know, 72-year-old men are not too good at change. To expect Olson to switch his team to a defense-oriented, fundamental basketball team at this stage would probably be too much of a stretch.
I remember my freshman year when Arizona came into Pauley Pavilion and absolutely annihilated UCLA. At no time was the game in doubt, and from that day forward, I understood that Arizona was the rival of UCLA in basketball and that Olson was the devil (yeah, so I’m an extremist).
And now, it is no more. Arizona is a middle-of-the-pack team; Olson is simply an old man who has stayed in the game a couple years too long, and I actually feel melancholy, with a tinge of infinite sadness, because of it.
E-mail Woods at
dwoods@media.ucla.edu if, despite it being kind of sad, you would like UCLA to annihilate Arizona in the Pac-10 Tournament as well.