Coaches’ talent makes for difficult tournament

By Greg Hansen, Arizona Daily Star     Mar 29, 2003

? Coaching in the NCAA tournament is always difficult, but today’s engagement with Kansas’ Roy Williams makes it a bit ridiculous.

In the last seven tournaments, Lute Olson has opposed Williams three times, Oklahoma’s Kelvin Sampson (twice), Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Maryland’s Gary Williams, Utah’s Rick Majerus, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Kentucky’s Rick Pitino and North Carolina’s Dean Smith.

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This is contemporary college basketball, where nobody ducks nobody and the coach waiting in the next game always seems to be Tubby Smith or Jim Boeheim.

Somehow, remarkably, Arizona has gone 5-5 in that 10-game gauntlet against current and future Hall of Fame coaches. That’s why there is no longer a college basketball dynasty and never again will be.

If Jim Calhoun doesn’t get you, Rick Barnes will. The degree of difficulty is indescribable.

Gone are the UCLA days in which the final stop on the journey to the Final Four is San Francisco (four times), Pacific, Santa Clara (twice), Utah State, Long Beach State (twice) and Arizona State. Incredibly, that was UCLA’s list of Elite Eight opponents from 1964-75.

John Wooden, bless his legendary soul, made a career of it by avoiding the game’s ranking coaching masters. That’s how the mostly-regionalized game worked then.

Wooden coached just once in the NCAA tournament against Dean Smith: in Smith’s first North Carolina NCAA appearance, 1968.

Wooden never coached against Kentucky’s Adolph Rupp in the tournament, never coached against Marquette’s Al McGuire in March, never matched teams against Hall of Famer Frank McGuire in the post-season.

But Wooden did have multiple NCAA victories over BYU’s Stan Watts, Dayton’s Don Donoher, San Francisco’s Bob Gaillard and Peter Pelleta.

No more.

Today’s game is much more than the West regional final.

The presence of Olson and Willliams makes it a spectacle, assuring that Round Three won’t be forgotten any more than the absorbing 1996 and 1997 UA-KU games have been.

Friday, appearing at ease and reflective, both coaches spoke about scars from previous Arizona-Kansas NCAA engagements.

Williams still hasn’t shaken the 1997 loss to Arizona in the Birmingham, Ala., Sweet 16 and he never will. The Jayhawks took a 34-1 record into that game, the consensus favorite to win the national title.

Arizona, a young, scruffy outfit of perimeter shooters beat KU, 85-82, and became replacement champions. Olson had arrived. Williams was a wreck. One game is that powerful, that career-changing.

“That loss made me wake up and gave me a better outlook on life,” Williams said Friday. “It made me realize how stupid it is” to let the wins and losses eat you alive.

Williams insists that his goal in life is no longer to win the national title, but rather to live long enough to coach his grandchildren’s soccer and Little League games.

If only it were so.

Olson is surely more at peace than Williams. He has a 16-year edge of life experiences — and one cherished national title — over the Kansas coach. It’s unknown which is more important.

Winning the national title makes it possible to view earlier tournament failures with less sensitivity.

Olson talked wistfully about a near-upset of the No. 2-seeded Jayhawks in the 1996 Sweet 16 in Denver, 83-80, carefully remembering that UA senior starter Joe McLean became ill the night before the game because he consumed some spoiled salad dressing at the team dinner.

Williams believes KU owes Arizona one. Olson believes the record is straight.

“We’ve had other teams I felt coulda, shoulda,” Olson said. “But that’s the nature of the beast.”

On the sliding scale of NCAA heartbreak, Arizona and Kansas have been happy more than sad. But today there will be accord. Today, one will be decidedly joyous, the other inconsolably sad.

There is no easy way out.

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