MaoTosiFanClub
The problem
In the wake of getting swept by a very marginal ASU squad, most Arizona fans are looking for targets to throw blame at and rightfully so. Is it KO? The players? Officiating? Well, the reasons for this loss go back much further than the 12:30pm tip time. Arizona losing a step in the Pac-10 is a result of years of mismanagement and incompetence from the top of the athletic department all the way down to the players and fans. So I'll detail almost every involved figure's responsibility in this mess and how games like this have come to be.
1. Jim Livengood - As they say, it all starts at the top and Jim Livengood has been a poor AD his entire tenure at Arizona. He dragged his feet in getting the practice facility built which is finally scheduled to be completed this fall when it should have been done years ago to combat the negative recruiting Arizona faced with Lute's age. Livengood also torpedoed Lute's efforts to replace Jim Rosborough with Reggie Geary (currently an NBDL head coach) when Lute saw how soft, defensively poor, and misbehaving his teams had become. Geary, a very tough-nosed guy would have instilled some more toughness and not allowed the guys to screw around as Rosborough did. Anyways, Livengood intervened sparing his tennis buddy and drawing Lute's ire while the team continued to get softer on the court and more out of control off of it. Livengood also tried to derail Lute hiring KO this offseason, does anyone even want to imagine this team with Roz at the helm?
2. Lute Olson - The guy who built it also definitely has a huge hand in the falling empire of Arizona. Instead of hammering recruits and staying out of all night at AAU events to evaluate talent (directly responsible for a few high-profile recruiting misses), he spent his summers vacationing with Christine or babysitting her through their marital issues. Bobbi Olson passing away definitely played a part as well as she encouraged Lute and basketball even participating in the recruiting effort as opposed to Christine who hates basketball and the time it requires. But major college hoops requires maximum energy and effort from everyone including a guy in the HOF and Lute did not prioritize Arizona Basketball where it belongs considering the paycheck he is receiving.
3. The Assistant Coaches/Pastner - inexperienced poor evaluators who sometimes don't spend the time necessary to maintain a high-level program. Josh Pastner took over the bulk of the recruiting responsibilites once Lute started spending his time with Christine and failures in that aspect popped up almost immediately. It was Pastner that thought JP Prince and Fendi Onobun had more upside than Darren Collison and Lawrence Hill. Granted, Pastner works extremely hard and probably should not have held the power he did but the fact remains that his devotion to Houston Hoops players and infatuation with upside over talent really hurt.
4. The Assistant Coaches/Roz - Roz didn't recruit the last several years at Arizona. Only did game plans here and there. His main responsibilities were making sure the kids didn't screw up off the court and being a liason between alums and the program. The latter he did a fine job as Arizona alums in the NBA and overseas are very active in the program to this day. Arizona's elite camp is a huge recruiting weekend attended by all sorts of alums and that weekend locked down key recruits in each of the last few years. Keeping kids out of trouble off the court? Not so much. Player arrests are here and there, but kids have been seen quite frequently partying the nights before games (most notable was players at a frat house until the early morning when they had a noon tip that day, a game they lost to a bad Wazzu team) to the point Lute had to instill curfews and check the team in to a hotel the night before games even when in Tucson. This type of lax discipline has continued to the present day.
5. The Assistant Coaches/Other - Miles Simon took a decade to graduate college and his job experience consisted of Euro League and promoting for Gentle Ben's which is a bar/nightclub in Tucson for those non-UA alums. HOw does that get you a assistant coaching gig at what was at the time a top 10 college basketball program? He has yet to land a prized recruit in his time here and his inability as backcourt coach to develop Mustafa Shakur, Daniel Dillon or JP Prince has really hurt. And then there's Rodney Tention. At a time when UCLA was Lavinized Arizona only landed one elite West Coast recruit in Hassan Adams despite Zona being the 'it' program west of the Mississippi. As west coast recruiter, Tention "forgot" to offer Jon Brockman and failed to make any inroads with other West Coast players that could still be making an impact today. Check Loyola Marymount's record for Tention's coaching ability of lack thereof.
6. Kevin O'Neill - The "I'd rather lose by 20 playing man-to-man than win playing a zone" reminds me of Rob Evans' similarly stupid comment a few years back about his style of play. This team is extremely thin and needs to stay out of foul trouble, yet we have Jordan Hill our only frontcourt player worth a damn playing man against this conference's murderers row of bigs. ASU can't shoot from outside to save their life, yet Arizona allows them to pound it inside at will by playing man. Some people are better #2's than #1's and looking at KO's resume that might be the case. There's also a rumor going around that Lute wanted to sit down with KO and discuss the team dynamics a few weeks back and KO blew him off which cannot be forgiven.
7. The players - Selfish and soft are the two biggest adjectives that come to mind. There are a few exceptions (Jerryd Bayless) but the me-first attitude and complacency have cost this program numerous times. The name on the back of the jersey instead of the one on the front definitely consumes most of the players post-Gardner/Walton/Stick. Some of this is put on the coaches for not recruiting adequately or instilling any discipline but at the end of the day attitude problems are a personal thing.
So where does Arizona go from here? They'll most likely have a new AD in 2009 as Stoops and Livengood's fates are tied to this season and I'm not expecting much out of the Cats in football this year. KO will have a year of film in which to be evaluated as a head coach. Arizona is also getting a terrific class this fall. There is also Lute who might or might not return to the sidelines in 2008-2009 but if I were a gambling man I'd say no. One thing's for certain, the natives are restless and I expect some kind of major change in the offseason. Arizona Basketball is at a crossroads, decisions made in the next calendar year will decide whether Arizona fights it out for Pac-10 mediocrity with the ASU's of the world or gets back to the level competing with Stanford and UCLA. Time will tell.
1. Jim Livengood - As they say, it all starts at the top and Jim Livengood has been a poor AD his entire tenure at Arizona. He dragged his feet in getting the practice facility built which is finally scheduled to be completed this fall when it should have been done years ago to combat the negative recruiting Arizona faced with Lute's age. Livengood also torpedoed Lute's efforts to replace Jim Rosborough with Reggie Geary (currently an NBDL head coach) when Lute saw how soft, defensively poor, and misbehaving his teams had become. Geary, a very tough-nosed guy would have instilled some more toughness and not allowed the guys to screw around as Rosborough did. Anyways, Livengood intervened sparing his tennis buddy and drawing Lute's ire while the team continued to get softer on the court and more out of control off of it. Livengood also tried to derail Lute hiring KO this offseason, does anyone even want to imagine this team with Roz at the helm?
2. Lute Olson - The guy who built it also definitely has a huge hand in the falling empire of Arizona. Instead of hammering recruits and staying out of all night at AAU events to evaluate talent (directly responsible for a few high-profile recruiting misses), he spent his summers vacationing with Christine or babysitting her through their marital issues. Bobbi Olson passing away definitely played a part as well as she encouraged Lute and basketball even participating in the recruiting effort as opposed to Christine who hates basketball and the time it requires. But major college hoops requires maximum energy and effort from everyone including a guy in the HOF and Lute did not prioritize Arizona Basketball where it belongs considering the paycheck he is receiving.
3. The Assistant Coaches/Pastner - inexperienced poor evaluators who sometimes don't spend the time necessary to maintain a high-level program. Josh Pastner took over the bulk of the recruiting responsibilites once Lute started spending his time with Christine and failures in that aspect popped up almost immediately. It was Pastner that thought JP Prince and Fendi Onobun had more upside than Darren Collison and Lawrence Hill. Granted, Pastner works extremely hard and probably should not have held the power he did but the fact remains that his devotion to Houston Hoops players and infatuation with upside over talent really hurt.
4. The Assistant Coaches/Roz - Roz didn't recruit the last several years at Arizona. Only did game plans here and there. His main responsibilities were making sure the kids didn't screw up off the court and being a liason between alums and the program. The latter he did a fine job as Arizona alums in the NBA and overseas are very active in the program to this day. Arizona's elite camp is a huge recruiting weekend attended by all sorts of alums and that weekend locked down key recruits in each of the last few years. Keeping kids out of trouble off the court? Not so much. Player arrests are here and there, but kids have been seen quite frequently partying the nights before games (most notable was players at a frat house until the early morning when they had a noon tip that day, a game they lost to a bad Wazzu team) to the point Lute had to instill curfews and check the team in to a hotel the night before games even when in Tucson. This type of lax discipline has continued to the present day.
5. The Assistant Coaches/Other - Miles Simon took a decade to graduate college and his job experience consisted of Euro League and promoting for Gentle Ben's which is a bar/nightclub in Tucson for those non-UA alums. HOw does that get you a assistant coaching gig at what was at the time a top 10 college basketball program? He has yet to land a prized recruit in his time here and his inability as backcourt coach to develop Mustafa Shakur, Daniel Dillon or JP Prince has really hurt. And then there's Rodney Tention. At a time when UCLA was Lavinized Arizona only landed one elite West Coast recruit in Hassan Adams despite Zona being the 'it' program west of the Mississippi. As west coast recruiter, Tention "forgot" to offer Jon Brockman and failed to make any inroads with other West Coast players that could still be making an impact today. Check Loyola Marymount's record for Tention's coaching ability of lack thereof.
6. Kevin O'Neill - The "I'd rather lose by 20 playing man-to-man than win playing a zone" reminds me of Rob Evans' similarly stupid comment a few years back about his style of play. This team is extremely thin and needs to stay out of foul trouble, yet we have Jordan Hill our only frontcourt player worth a damn playing man against this conference's murderers row of bigs. ASU can't shoot from outside to save their life, yet Arizona allows them to pound it inside at will by playing man. Some people are better #2's than #1's and looking at KO's resume that might be the case. There's also a rumor going around that Lute wanted to sit down with KO and discuss the team dynamics a few weeks back and KO blew him off which cannot be forgiven.
7. The players - Selfish and soft are the two biggest adjectives that come to mind. There are a few exceptions (Jerryd Bayless) but the me-first attitude and complacency have cost this program numerous times. The name on the back of the jersey instead of the one on the front definitely consumes most of the players post-Gardner/Walton/Stick. Some of this is put on the coaches for not recruiting adequately or instilling any discipline but at the end of the day attitude problems are a personal thing.
So where does Arizona go from here? They'll most likely have a new AD in 2009 as Stoops and Livengood's fates are tied to this season and I'm not expecting much out of the Cats in football this year. KO will have a year of film in which to be evaluated as a head coach. Arizona is also getting a terrific class this fall. There is also Lute who might or might not return to the sidelines in 2008-2009 but if I were a gambling man I'd say no. One thing's for certain, the natives are restless and I expect some kind of major change in the offseason. Arizona Basketball is at a crossroads, decisions made in the next calendar year will decide whether Arizona fights it out for Pac-10 mediocrity with the ASU's of the world or gets back to the level competing with Stanford and UCLA. Time will tell.
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