Change in basketball culture means less heavyweight battles at McKale
I was watching ESPN’s retro special on Shaquille O’Neal last week and was taken back when it showed highlights of Shaq’s home-and-home series, LSU against Arizona in 1990 and 1991.
It was the keystone to a 10-year McKale Center run in which Lute Olson boldly scheduled No. 3 Oklahoma, No. 7 Duke (and again No. 9 Duke), No. 7 Michigan, No. 13 Illinois, No. 13 Syracuse and burgeoning national champions Arkansas and UNLV in Tucson.
In that same period, Villanova, Michigan State, Pitt and Purdue played at McKale. Olson’s nonconference road schedule was just as formidable.
A day after the Shaq-ESPN broadcast, I saw a finished product of Arizona’s 2015-16 nonconference home basketball schedule: Pacific, Bradley, Boise State, Northwestern State, Fresno State, NAU, UNLV, Long Beach State and Missouri.
Mizzou is the top “name” program of the group. The Tigers went 9-23 last season and finished 14th in the SEC.
It is, without much debate, the least attractive home schedule since Olson’s third UA season 1985-86. A year later, Olson stepped up to heavyweight class. He brought his old school, No. 4 Iowa, to Tucson in February 1987. It was great theater. Since then, Arizona took on all comers, here, there and everywhere.
Sean Miller has dodged no one in his six Arizona seasons. Alas, many of those games, have been played elsewhere. Some of the problem is that in modern college basketball, too many of the marquee games are made-for-TV specials played in Hawaii and at Madison Square Garden and in other neutral settings.
The 2015-16 home schedule won’t be greeted without discontent. Those who pay expensive premiums for seats in the lower and middle tiers at McKale have been spoiled. In the 2001-02 season alone, Arizona played UConn and Kansas at McKale.
Ken Pomeroy, the basketball analytics specialist of kenpom.com, examined nonconference schedules of the last 15 seasons and Arizona ranked this way:
2015: 180th
2014: 99th
2013: 128th
2012: 145th
2011: 164th
Under Olson, Arizona ranked No. 1 in 2002; No. 23 in 2003; No. 14 in 2006 and so on.
It’s exceedingly difficult to get a powerhouse to agree to a game in Tucson, even with a home-and-home arrangement. But Kansas ranked No. 9 in nonconference strength of schedule last year and Duke was No. 23 in 2013 and No. 19 in 2012.
After Miller’s Wildcats won at Michigan two years ago, he said “you can’t win a game like this unless you play in a game like this.”
The culture of college basketball has subtly changed over the last five or 10 years. There are fewer and fewer “games like this” in Tucson and at other Top 25 arenas.
