Twenty-five years after they teamed up to win a national title, several of the branches on that vaunted coaching tree talked about what it was like to learn under Lute, and what that title run taught them.
Jon Gold Special to the Arizona Daily Star Editor’s note: Today marks the 25th anniversary of Arizona’s 1997 national championship win over Kentucky in men’s basketball.There are former assistants like Jay John and Rodney Tention, who left Arizona for head coaching positions of their own.
But Arizona’s 1997 national championship team was like a Silicon Valley incubator of coaching talent, with two current NBA G-League coaches, a long-time college head coach, a three-time state champion coach at his alma mater, and a CIF-championship-winning walk-on who was just named San Diego Union-Tribune boys basketball coach of the year.Even-keeled OlsonIf anyone on the ’97 squad was penciled in for coaching success, it was Josh Pastner.
“He is — was — a very smart coach,” said longtime assistant Jim Rosborough, whom Olson hired as a graduate assistant coach at Iowa in 1974 and who later assisted Olson for nearly two decades with the Wildcats. “He learned a lot from watching John Wooden. He was very big on even preparation. You don’t get high for UCLA and low for Washington State. You don’t want your kids freaking out. Everything was kept as near to normal as possible.
Those standards were set early in the recruiting process, from the moment Olson step foot in a prospect’s town.
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