MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. - Three months removed from the drawn-out death of his wife Bobbi, the same question continues to trail Arizona coach Lute Olson.
Sometimes it is phrased directly: "How hard was the loss of Bobbi on you and your team, and what inspiration does she still provide?" Other times it appears slightly more veiled, something along the lines of, "is the motivation different this year than in years past?"
In any case, the reply is always the same. First a pause, almost like a moment of silence for his wife of 47 years, then the tears. For the most part, Olson conceals the tears, but they are still perceivable, welled up in the corners of his baby blue eyes. His answers are stilted, as if in disbelief that he still has to field questions about his wife on the night of the national championship game, three month to the day since Bobbi Olson succumbed New Year's Day following a two-year bout with ovarian cancer.
"There have been some difficult times along the way, but I think that has been documented enough," Olson tells one reporter, one of many who asked the inevitable last weekend in Minneapolis.
Surprisingly, Olson's stature as one of the game's all-time great coaches has not been documented nearly as well. By his own accounts, nearing the point of exhaustion, Olson came up short of his quest for
The legendary John Wooden may have been the Wizard of Westwood, but these days the West Coast's yellow brick road leads directly to the McHale Center in Tucson, Ariz. Despite his defeat in last night's national championship game, no active coach has done more than Olson when beginning with less.
And Olson did it twice-first at Iowa, then at Arizona.
It took a little less than a miracle when Olson raised the Hawkeyes from dead last in the Big Ten to five straight 20-win seasons from 1979-1983, highlighted by his trip to the Final Four in 1980. But just as quickly as Olson rose to the top, he chose to start again at the bottom, leaving behind what he called a "lifetime contract" at Iowa to accept a one-year deal with lowly Arizona, then just 1-17 in the Pac-10 conference.
Everyone, from Olson's friends to his assistant coaching staff, laughed at him and called him foolish, and with a fair share of hindsight Olson can comfortably admit that his decision was a little on the crazy side. But, as he continued to do for the next 18 years, Olson made his choice not because of contracts, or money, or what made sense-he did
And the first year was tough, as Olson began building his team out of the also-rans and leftovers that Pac-10 powers UCLA and Southern Cal balked at.
"There weren't a whole lot of kids from around the country that had dreamed of playing for a 1-17 team," Olson recalls, adding that the team would have been a "perfect 0-18" if Stanford's last-second game winner had not been disallowed.
Soon the wins began to pile up for Olson and in only his second season, the 'Cats received a bid to the NCAA tournament. They have not missed one since, giving Olson 17 consecutive appearances, the longest active streak in the nation.
Olson admits some of his team's dramatic rise in prominence may have been the product of luck, as recruits like 1989 national player of the year Sean Elliott, a native of Tucson, practically fell into his lap. Still, even the modest and reserved Olson will be the first to say that his good fortune had a little bit more to do with effort than chance.
"There were lucky things that happened along the way," he says, "but I've always been a believer that the harder you work, the luckier you get."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.