The right-hand man: Jim Rosborough leaves behind legendary coaching career at Arizona, Pima

It's not a forever goodbye to coaching basketball, but Jim Rosborough won't be on the sidelines as much as the last five-plus decades.

Known in Tucson as Lute Olson's right-hand man and top assistant coach with the Arizona Wildcats for nearly 20 years and now an assistant for the Pima College women's basketball program, the 81-year-old Rosborough is planning to minimize his role on Todd Holthaus' staff. 

"I’m not sure it’s going to be a total stop," Rosborough said. "It’s just not going to be the full-time job like it’s been for many, many years."

Holthaus "wouldn't use the word retire, because I'm not going to be the guy that retires Jim Rosborough, so I always tell him the door is always open, because he needs basketball in his life."

"We'll always keep the door cracked," added the Pima women's basketball head coach. 

Rosborough said his semi-retirement plans include "some writing." 

"Otherwise, we’re just approaching the end of this season and we’re in pretty good shape if we can end it on a good note," Rosborough said. 

The 11th-ranked Pima Aztecs (21-4) have won 12 out of the last 13 games — and nine straight. Pima has two home games at West Campus Aztec Gymnasium before the postseason. The Aztecs face Glendale Community College on Saturday at 2 p.m., then host Mesa Community College on Wednesday, Feb. 25. 

The Region I, Division II semifinals are on March 4, with the championship on March 6. The higher seed will host both games, and Pima is currently the top team in the region. The NJCAA Division II National Tournament is from March 16-21 in Hickory, North Carolina. 

Ball is life

Rosborough was born and raised in Moline, Illinois, near the Iowa border. Moline is just as close to Des Moines as it is to Chicago. Rosborough's father, Jim, scored the first basket at Wharton Field House, an arena with over 7,000 seats, in 1928. 

“The whole city revolves around basketball, both men’s and women’s," Rosborough said. "Growing up, if you were involved in the sport, you played at a great facility there."

Rosborough remembered shooting a basketball on the hoop attached to his family garage as early as 4 years old. During the Midwestern winters, Rosborough and his friends cut off the fingertips on their gloves and played basketball in freezing temperatures. 

Rosborough played for Moline High School and "was a little scrub off the bench," he joked. Rosborough averaged 13 points and nine rebounds per game as a senior in 1962, leading the Maroons to a 21-3 record and was a fourth-team all-state selection in Illinois. After Rosborough's high school career, he launched his coaching career because basketball was a sport he dedicated his life to.  

"It was something that once it got in your system, you couldn’t get rid of it," Rosborough said. "My wife has said many times, ‘Anything you like to do, it has to have a ball.’ I’m not a guy that reads books all day. I have to have a ball in my hands."

Rosborough moved to the west side of Chicago and became a teacher and volunteer coach at Corkery School, leading its eighth-grade basketball team to a 127-22 record over four seasons. 

Rosborough was embedded in the Chicago basketball scene from his time coaching middle school basketball. Rosborough scouted a high school player for the Iowa Hawkeyes, then led by head coach Sharm Scheuerman, whose top assistant was Lute Olson. Rosborough was in communication with Olson, "which opened the door" for him to join the Iowa staff as a graduate assistant in 1973. 

The following year, Olson was named head coach of Iowa, where he coached for nine seasons and had a 167-91 record (.647). Rosborough's connection with Olson "was a relationship that lasted 27 years together on the bench," from Iowa to Tucson. 

“Fortunately, it worked out well for the both of us," Rosborough said. 

'Lute guy'

Olson was named the head coach of the Arizona Wildcats in 1983. Rosborough stayed at Iowa as an assistant athletic director for two years and then became an assistant coach at Tulsa for the 1985-86 season. 

Rosborough returned to his head coaching post, except it wasn't Chicago-area middle schoolers; it was the Northern Illinois basketball program. The Huskies were 28-56 in three years and Rosborough was fired in 1989. NIU had three athletic directors in as many years during Rosborough's tenure. 

"If you want to go somewhere as a head coach, you have to be sure there's an athletic director in your corner," Rosborough said. "That's what happened at Northern Illinois. Being a head coach, I liked it, but I felt like I had no support from the administration. I had three athletic directors in three years. I'm not here to bemoan, because I love our kids and we had some good wins and some fun. It was just tough not working for people that you thought were in your corner."

The first freshman class Rosborough assembled went on to win a school-record 25 games and reach the NCAA Tournament in 1991. Since Rosborough was fired by NIU, he never became a full-time head coach again.  

"Did I consider (becoming a head coach again)? I don't know," he said. "I raised my family here, we love Tucson, we had a good thing going, we were in the hunt every year, had good teams all the time. What do you do? Fortunately, we got through it, raised children here and we love Tucson, so that worked out pretty well." 

Rosborough reunited with Olson at Arizona in 1989, replacing former assistant Kevin O'Neill, who became the head coach at Marquette. O'Neill was also the Wildcats' interim head coach in the 2007-08 season, when Olson was on a personal leave of absence. 

"Ros just fit in perfectly, because he was a Lute guy," said former Arizona guard Matt Muehlebach, who was a junior when Rosborough was hired. 

Olson and Rosborough had a "good guy-bad guy" dynamic, and Rosborough "was the good guy to a lot of guys," said Muehlebach. 

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Rosborough introduced Muehlebach to the Rialto Theatre, one of Tucson's popular concert venues. Muehlebach, who's now an ESPN broadcaster and general counsel at Crest Insurance, last saw Rosborough at a yacht rock concert hosted by Crest Insurance at the Rialto Theatre. Muehlebach recounted conversations about music and tennis, among other topics.  

"As much as he has been a basketball guru for a million years, he always had different interests and was a really good guy to be around," Muehlebach said. "He had an unbelievable feel for the team. He always understood the team and what they were going through. ... He was the right guy at the right time, good or bad." 

During the time Rosborough was at Arizona from 1989-2007, the Wildcats had 18 straight NCAA Tournament appearances, three trips to the Final Four and one national championship in 1997. The Wildcats also had 25 NBA Draft picks during that stretch, and had international games in South America and Australia, which Rosborough said were "terrifically good years."

"We were loaded and had great talent. We didn't always go far in the NCAA Tournament," he added. "We were in the tournament all the time and we were always in the hunt. ... It was a great run. We had good kids, we worked hard and you get to associate yourself with some pretty cool guys. Generational years that were excellent for everyone involved."

The secret to the success?

"One word: recruit," Rosborough said. "You had to have players. We were fortunate to get kids out of Southern California. We had good kids. When you get them, some of them may not always be perfect, but that's why you're a coach.

"You get them to learn your system, learn to play with each other, learn about teamwork and so on. I think we did a pretty good of being involved at a distance with their personal lives, too. We just made sure they were happy and didn't have problems, talk to them about other things besides basketball. It wasn't just basketball, it was about making sure they had a good experience here. The whole key is you have to have players. You need to have good players and then coach them."

Rosborough was briefly the head coach of the Wildcats in 2001, when Olson's wife, Bobbi, died following her battle with ovarian cancer. The Wildcats went 3-1 in the two weeks with Rosborough as the interim head coach — the same season Arizona lost to Duke in the national championship.

"It was tough, and I know it was tough on (Olson)," Rosborough said. "The biggest thing, when he left, you just didn't want it to fall apart. I wanted to coach them and give them a chance, but that was the whole deal: we didn't want the program to fall apart.

"We handled that situation about as well as you could. ... We kept the lid on and things didn't fall apart."

Rosborough didn't return for the 2007-08 season, and Olson retired before the 2008-09 season. Rosborough joined Pima College's men's basketball staff under Karl Pieroway, before becoming an assistant for Vicky Maes with the UA women's tennis program from 2010-14. 

Rosborough played tennis growing up in Moline. He befriended longtime music promoter Jeb Schoonover in Tucson, and the two became tennis partners. 

"My wife will give credit to Jeb for keeping me alive, because it was a huge stress relief," Rosborough said. "We would get over there and act crazy and stupid and get loud and all kinds of crazy stuff. It was a great stress relief and we would do it all the time."

In the four seasons Rosborough helped out with the UA women's tennis program, the Wildcats went to the NCAA Tournament three times. Some of the players "have remained really good friends, so it was a great experience," Rosborough said.  

Pima's practice guru

Roughly a dozen years ago, Holthaus invited Rosborough to a Pima women's basketball practice to help introduce a 1-3-1 zone defense.

Rosborough knew Holthaus from when the Pima head coach was an assistant under Joan Bonvicini at the UA. Holthaus "wanted me to come out to introduce the 1-3-1 and it kind of went from there." Rosborough became one of Holthaus' assistant coaches in 2015 and hasn't left Pima since. 

Rosborough's forte is the practice environment. Olson had an influence on Rosborough's mental approach in basketball practices. Olson "is one of the greatest practice coaches of all time," said Rosborough.

"Lute was immaculate with that kind of stuff and he would have a schedule; we stuck to the schedule and taught and taught and taught and demanded," he added. "After a period of time, things started to click. Coach Olson was the master of practice, and nothing got by him. Anything we didn't want, it was stopped and corrected. That was key to his success. A great practice coach covered everything we were going to see in games. There were no surprises, really. Then you get out and play and we had talent." 

Holthaus said Rosborough is "one of the best when it comes to practice."

"Practice is where you build everything," Holthaus said. "Harping on the details and holding kids accountable to those details is the reason we've had so much success over the years." 

The Aztecs are 251-88 (.740) since Rosborough joined Holthaus' staff. 

"We've had a lot of fun over the years and a lot of success," said Holthaus, who grew up in Iowa and is a lifelong Hawkeyes fan. "It's been awesome for me, because Ros is a lifelong basketball guy. For me to be able to absorb as much as possible, it's probably been the highlight of my career."

Holthaus isn't taking the next four weeks for granted. 

"I'm not sure if this is totally the end, but in terms of full-time stuff, Todd will have to take a look at it and see how it's going to go," Rosborough said. 

Rosborough's career "has meant everything" to the coach.

"It's been my profession, it's how I had the funds to raise my family and live a decent lifestyle," Rosborough said. "Really, basketball has been everything to me and my family. It's really been everything and a lifelong thing.

"I know I'm going to miss it when it totally ends, but I couldn't have asked for a better experience with basketball."