Until George Raveling became USC’s basketball coach, media day in the Pac-10 was eight hours of lifelessness.
UCLA’s Walt Hazzard always seemed to be mad at somebody. Cal didn’t care about basketball. Few in the crowd could correctly identify Arizona State’s coach, and no Pac-10 team had finished in The Associated Press’ Top 25 for two years.
Over three seasons, the Pac-10 had gone 1-8 in the NCAA Tournament. The only victory was against Central Michigan.
But on Nov. 5, 1987, at the LAX Marriott, Raveling sounded the bell for a new age of Pac-10 basketball. When it was his turn at the podium, Mr. Personality held aloft a copy of the Arizona Daily Star sports section.
Coach Lute Olson is beaming while listening to star player Sean Elliott at a rally and parade at for the men's basketball team at University of Arizona stadium in Tucson after the 1988 NCAA Final Four.
It was a copy of a column in which I suggested Arizona could go 30-0 in the 1987-88 regular season.
“I wanted to photocopy this article as the condition of surrender,” Raveling said. “I figure I have nothing but a prayer.”
Everybody laughed.
Could this man, who had coached the Trojans to a 9-19 record in his first season, help infuse the League of Lute with a personality?
“I’m drafting a letter to Commissioner Tom Hansen to suggest that we rename the conference the Pac-9,” Raveling said. “None of the rest of us are good enough to compete with an elite team like Arizona.”
Raveling suggested he would tape every Arizona game and save it for “historical record.”
His exaggerations became fact.
Arizona outscored its opponents by 20.9 points per game, which remains the league’s widest differential from 1972-2018. On New Year’s Eve, a day after Arizona beat No. 9 Duke, inestimable CBS analyst Billy Packer declared that Lute Olson’s team, ranked No. 1, had the greatest nonconference season in college basketball history.
Here’s why:
On Nov. 28, Arizona beat No. 9 Michigan.
On Nov. 30, Arizona beat No. 1 Syracuse.
On Dec. 12, Arizona beat No. 4 Iowa.
On Dec. 30, Arizona beat No. 9 Duke.
Only one of those games, Duke, was played at McKale Center.
If you comb through the last 30 seasons of Arizona basketball, the game with the most intrigue — beyond any Final Four — remains, in my opinion, the December 1987 game at Iowa.
The 30 years that have passed haven’t dimmed the moment.
It was Olson’s return to Iowa City; he had coached Iowa to the 1980 Final Four. The Des Moines Register wrote that the Hawkeyes, coming off a 30-5 season and ranked No. 3, could’ve sold 50,000 tickets had the Olson-inspired Carver-Hawkeye Arena been built with such a capacity.
A day earlier, Arizona announced it had signed Olson to a five-year contract, unprecedented for any coach in the state.
Guard Steve Kerr addresses a huge crowd during a rally and parade at for the men's basketball team at University of Arizona stadium in Tucson after the 1988 NCAA Final Four.
When the Wildcats arrived in Iowa City, lifetime Hawkeye fans Bill and Judy Condon held a reception at their home. Olson was the guest of honor.
Not everyone was prepared for Arizona’s run to No. 1. On the night of the Iowa-Arizona game, ESPN’s college basketball doubleheader featured Missouri-Memphis, followed by UNLV-Houston.
Arizona’s introduction to prime time was slow to arrive.
When Olson walked onto the court two minutes before the Saturday night tipoff, the crowd’s reaction was thunderous. Thousands booed. Thousands yelled “Luuuuuute!” He waved to the crowd as one of the most riveting games in the history of both schools commenced.
Arizona won 66-59, and nobody referred to it as an upset.
UA point guard Steve Kerr, always intuitive, paid attention to Iowa’s 59 points. The Hawkeyes entered the game leading the nation in scoring, 93 points per game.
“I’d bet 10 bucks — no, 100 bucks — that Iowa hasn’t scored in the 50s since (coach) Tom Davis has been here,” he said.
As always, Kerr was correct. Davis’ Iowa teams had never scored as few as 59 points in a game. The Hawkeyes had rolled Kansas 100-81 a week earlier, and scored 124 against UC Irvine.
But in ’87-88, no threshold was too high for Arizona. The Wildcats scored a still-standing school record 133 points in the season opener, against Duquesne, and would win Pac-10 games with ridiculous ease. It beat ASU by a combined 68 points and even took the smirk off Raveling’s face, beating USC 103-68 and 92-48.
His preseason joke of “surrender” had come back to haunt him.
Arizona’s ’88 basketball team, 35-3 overall, might not be the most dominating team in school history. Some of the national champions produced by softball coach Mike Candrea and baseball coach Jerry Kindall — and Arizona’s sweep of the 2008 NCAA men’s and women’s swimming championships — were supremely good.
But Olson’s ’88 basketball team remains the most beloved in school history.
After the Wildcats lost to Oklahoma in the Final Four, Kerr was honored the next afternoon as the NCAA’s “Most Courageous” player. Less than 24 hours after the bitter loss, Kerr joined his mother and brother at a ceremony at a downtown Kansas City hotel.
He stood behind the microphone and tried unsuccessfully to fight off the tears.
“I’ve enjoyed every moment of my career at Arizona,” he said. “I’ll remember it forever.”