Last weekend I was down in Arizona for a football game you may have heard about if you read the papers.
After the game, I walked around the fine town of Tucson for a little bit, taking in whatever it is one takes in when strolling around a campus.
One thing that caught my eye was a certain jersey, a throwback shirt with Gilbert Arenas’ name and trademark number 0 on the back. A lot of students even wore it to the football game.
It’s good that those Wildcats have a sense of what their basketball program once was. But those basketball glory days seem increasingly like a distant memory, especially with the news that 73-year-old Lute Olson is taking an indefinite leave of absence.
Lute’s teams have been to the Final Four four times: 1988, 1994, 1997 and 2001.
The 1997 team entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed and had perhaps the most impressive run to a national title in the tournament’s history. The team, which started five underclassmen, including Miles Simon and Mike Bibby, beat three No. 1 seeds: Kansas in the Sweet 16, North Carolina in the Final Four and Kentucky in overtime in the title game.
Kansas had Paul Pierce and Raef LaFrentz and had only lost one game all year. North Carolina had Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace. Kentucky had Derek Anderson. The teams were coached by three greats: Roy Williams, Dean Smith and Rick Pitino, respectively.
And Lute’s boys beat them all.
In the 24 years Olson has spent as the Wildcats’ coach, an astounding 29 of his players have been selected in the NBA Draft. It’s a list that includes Steve Kerr, Sean Elliot, Damon Stoudamire, Bibby, Jason Terry, Arenas, Richard Jefferson, Luke Walton and Andre Iguodala.
Because of this tradition, Arizona will always be able to recruit without Olson, and by no means does his absence doom the program.
But his absence has to put an uneasy feeling in the stomachs of Arizona fans.
Kevin O’Neill, the nation’s highest paid assistant coach (he makes around $375,000 yearly), will step in for Olson.
He’s more than capable. He coached three college teams before ““ Marquette, Tennessee and Northwestern ““ and he also spent a year in the NBA as coach of the Toronto Raptors.
The thing is, with O’Neill at the helm, or even if Olson comes back quickly, Wildcat fans have to ask a question they never had to worry about during the prime of Olson’s reign:
Can this team stack up in the Pac-10?
The talent is there; it always has been with Lute selling the Kool-Aid to the nation’s best recruits. But suddenly those blue chips are not panning out nearly as often as they did 10 years ago.
Olson’s top signee in the 2003 class, Mustafa Shakur, was the type of point guard prospect that historically came to Arizona and went on to a successful NBA career. But Shakur was extremely inconsistent and never really became a star, despite his All-American potential. He is currently not on an NBA roster.
Then in 2004, Olson got another five-star, forward Jawann McClellan from Houston. McClellan hasn’t averaged more than 10 points per game in his three seasons in Tucson, although he has been hampered by injuries.
Marcus Williams had a stellar two years in Tucson but the top recruit in the 2005 class was just cut by the San Antonio Spurs after leaving school early. Another big recruit that year, Jordan Hill, has had little impact in his first two years with the team.
The problems Arizona faces are only compounded by the ascension of UCLA’s team under Ben Howland, Herb Sendek’s landing at Arizona State, and the general upward trend of the conference as a whole.
Needless to say, Arizona is no longer the top dog.
It’s not time to push the panic button, though. Arizona will compete this year. Chase Budinger can jump out of the gym, and freshman Jerryd Bayless could make a splash.
There’s also a youngster named Brandon Jennings committed to go to Arizona next year. I saw him dominate a pickup game this summer on campus against a team composed mostly of NBA players. So he’s for real.
But, again, it’s just not what it once was.
In the past four years, Arizona has only gotten past the second round of the NCAA Tournament once. And it’s clear that the Wildcats will soon need to begin the difficult and awkward process of finding a replacement for one of the most accomplished coaches in the history of the game.
If things don’t go right, if O’Neill slips or if a new coach stumbles in his first years, the Wildcats might not have another player like Arenas for a long time.
But at least they’ll always have those throwback jerseys.
E-mail Allen at sallen@media.ucla.edu.