The Wildcats leap from the bench during the end of the second half of their NCAA NCAA Championship game against Kentucky in Indianapolis. Playersl from left to right, are: Quynn Tebbs, John Ash, Josh Pastner, Jason Lee, coach Lute Olson, Eugene Edgerson, A.J. Bramlett, and Miles Simon. Assistant coach Jessie Evans is at far right.

 David Sanders, Arizoan Daily Star 1997

How was the 1997 team Arizona’s only champion, and the Pac-12’s last one?

Whenever the members of the 1997 Arizona national title team get together with their non-title-winning Wildcat brethren, they can’t help a little ribbing.

“Every year we come to Tucson for the Lute Olson Fantasy Camp, with Reggie Geary and Joseph Blair and Pete (Williams), Iggy (Andre Iguodala), and it’s funny because I’ll start messing with people,” Bennett Davison said. “The whole bus turns around — we know! We know! We weren’t the most talented team, but we ultimately won.”

No, there’s been plenty of talent in Tucson.

Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott and Tom Tolbert and Jud Buechler in 1988. Damon Stoudamire and Khalid Reeves and Reggie Geary and Joseph Blair in ’94. Gilbert Arenas and Luke Walton and Loren Woods and Jason Gardner in 2001 and Walton and Gardner and Salim Stoudamire and Hassan Adams and Channing Frye two years later, and Gardner and Adams and Frye and Mustafa Shakur two years after that.

T.J. McConnell and Aaron Gordon and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Kaleb Tarczewski and Brandon Ashley and Nick Johnson in 2014 and McConnell and Hollis-Jefferson and Tarczewski and Ashley and Stanley Johnson the next year.

Bennedict Mathurin and Christian Koloko and Azuolas Tubelis and Kerr Kriisa in 2022.

Heck, even Mike Bibby and Miles Simon and Jason Terry and A.J. Bramlett, themselves, one year later.

So what was it about the 1997 Arizona team that left them the last men left standing? How is it possible that no other Pac-12 team has won it all since the Wildcats did 25 years ago?

“Coach Olson had some incredible teams — better than our 1997 team — and they didn’t win it,” said Josh Pastner, a freshman walk-on on the 1997 team. “The 2001 team was really good. His ’88 team. And Sean Miller had some incredible teams who were on the brink. But the point is, it’s very, very, very hard. It’s so hard to win a national championship. One off game abruptly ends your season. We had a bad game against Utah in ’98, didn’t play as well as Duke in 2001, in 2005 we’re up 15 with under 4 minutes left and we lose the game. How many times did Sean Miller go to the Elite Eight?

“It’s not easy.”

It took a special blend of a half-dozen factors, none more important than the other.

“When you talk about a secret recipe, the mixture of being physically tough, mentally tough and free-spirited — we had a mixture of all three of those,” 1997 forward Eugene Edgerson said. “That led to a lot of success. You had to have that unique blend.”

Said A.J. Bramlett: “The one thing we all were was winners. We were fierce competitors. … That year, nobody had an agenda, and that’s what made it so pure. No one thought we’d have any run at all. We took that as fuel and as fire.”

Here’s how they did it:

Seeding

Much is made of a team’s seed going into the NCAA Tournament.

It’s almost a badge of honor, even if it can provide a false sense of either security or scarcity.

But the really important factor is not just seeding but the opposition seeding, something that plagued Arizona this year.

“I suppose Arizona and Gonzaga would’ve preferred playing teams less physical this year,” longtime UA assistant coach Jim Rosborough said. “The committee who seeds these teams, if you sat down and looked at it, was Gonzaga the best team in the country? All that seeding stuff is really funny — it’s kind of the luck of the draw. Committee does as good a job as they can, but sometimes it’s inaccurate.”

How much would things have been different if Arizona got a No. 4 seed in another region in 1997?

Luck

Let’s be fair: The Wildcats benefitted from a bit of fortune during their run, even if they had to chop down three No. 1 seeds.

First, College of Charleston took out a talented Maryland team that included four future NBA players in the first round.

Then, eventual Elite Eight foe Providence, a No. 10 seed, defeated No. 2 seed Duke in the second round, and the Wildcats avoided a potentially scary matchup with Trajan Langdon, Jeff Capel and Co.

Finally, Arizona faced a walking wounded Kentucky team in the finals, one missing its second-leading scorer and future first-round NBA draft pick Derek Anderson, a sizzling guard who suffered a torn ACL in his senior season.

So did a bit of luck factor in?

“Absolutely,” Pastner said. “Without question. People could’ve said, well next year… Nope. That following year, we should’ve won back-to-back. Everybody’s fortunes — their life path — changed. That’s not to say they wouldn’t have done good things in their life. But do you get the same player two years later? Does Coach Olson decide to take another job at some point? I think everybody’s life would’ve been different. That’s where it’s a game of inches.”

UA stars Miles Simon and Mike Bibby get a ride following their victory over Kentucky in the 1997 national title game.

Attitude

There’s a thin line between confidence and cockiness, and Arizona walked that tight rope like a Flying Wallenda brother.

Never too high, never too low, even when their resolve was tested.

“We just had this confidence, no one was talking about us, but we’re just as good,” Edgerson said. “We thought it was East Coast bias. They weren’t paying attention to the caliber of players we had. We lost a couple games at the end of the Pac-12 season, but we always felt we were a good team, we just hadn’t played well. Then all of a sudden it was time to put up or shut up.”

Losing two straight before the NCAA Tournament helped keep Arizona’s heads in check, as well.

“I don’t even know if it was swagger,” Davison said. “We were trying to survive.”

Survive and advance has become the rallying cry of NCAA Tournament champions for decades, but the Wildcats helped themselves by not jumping to conclusions.

“We didn’t think of it as a gauntlet, because we never looked too far ahead,” Miles Simon told the Star in 2016. “We saw who was the No. 1 seed in our bracket, but it’s not like we were looking at the Final Four. We saw South Alabama, and in our minds we thought we’d beat them fairly easily. I for sure knew COC was good, I knew Thaddeous Delaney and Anthony Johnson. But we weren’t gonna fear anybody. We just wanted to play. More so, teams needed to fear us because we had really good players.”

Chemistry

As Lute Olson’s lead assistant for almost two decades, Rosborough saw the difference between teams year after year.

And in 1997?

By the time the Tournament started, the Wildcats had come together and were ready to take on all challengers.

“They liked each other,” Rosborough said. “They absolutely loved each other. These guys started to understand what was at stake and they started enjoying each other more.”

Most importantly, guard Jason Stewart says, the team’s NBA-bound players all put their egos and dreams aside for the betterment of the team.

“That person who can score 30 points a night, they have to make a decision to trust the process,” he said. “If they’re alphas, they just want to shine. They want ‘Ball is Life.’ And the machine feeds that. The algorithm feeds that. If you’re a parent, your proud. We all make fun of the kid who gets his ankle twisted.”

With a focus on family and a chip on their shoulders, the Wildcats’ bond would not break or even bend in that March run.

“It’s easier to be an underdog — you can get into people’s heads,” Stewart said. “The No. 1 seed has all the pressure; the five has no pressure.”

Only in the opening game against South Alabama, Terry said, did the Wildcats sweat the opponent.

“That first-round matchup is the toughest,” Terry said. “You don’t have time to prepare for the height of the moment, the expectations — it all comes into your mind. You’re playing really tight. Shots you would normally hit aren’t going in. Guys you’d lock up, they’re making shots. That time of adversity, all the doubt creeps in. But being as loose as we were as a team, we never allowed it to creep in.”

Coaching

In a six-game sprint spread across three weeks, the key is making the first chess move in six straight games.

“You have to have a good system that you’re running that is difficult for others to adjust to,” Rosborough said. “There was a zone offense that we knew and used. In the first place, we were going to do our stuff and make people adjust to what we were doing. We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel for our own stuff. When we got ready for South Alabama, for College of Charleston — we picked out four or five things the opponent did that we didn’t practice every day. But in the tournament, you’ve got an hour and a half on the court, and the whole point is they need to adjust to us.”

It wasn’t just about scheme, though. It was about highlighting the Wildcats’ strength.

“The plan for Coach was the following year,” Pastner said. “That was when we had a chance to make a run. Not in ’97. We weren’t built to win a national championship. But things happened because of our guard play. A recipe in the NCAA tourney is guard play, and we did have really good guards.”

Style

The Wildcats had to adjust to other teams, but they didn’t let that change themselves.

“We faced different styles of play, right?” Edgerson said. “You had the team that slowed it down and didn’t shoot the damn the ball until a damn second left on the shot clock. You had run-and-gun teams. Teams that mixed it up. You had to be disciplined.”

With a scintillating backcourt featuring three future NBA players and the freedom to act within a non-restrictive motion offense, the Wildcats had the speed to act first.

“I’m not going to sit here and say it was easy,” Terry said. “It’s hard to do. In the tourney, you don’t have enough time to prepare. For us, it was about us. How can we impose our will for 40 minutes? How can we be an irritant to the other team? We were up-tempo, we were high paced, we wanted to get up and down and run.”

Added Stewart: “Our speed was phenomenal. People didn’t understand how fast we were. You had Jet who is lightning fast and Miles who is not the same speed, and Bibby was in between. Bennett and A.J. protecting us down low. How do you prepare for three agile guards? How do you prepare for Mike Dickerson? He’s a ballerina in the air. This guy was like the Black Batman. He was doing crazy stuff. He was such an athlete, and it was graceful. The teams didn’t have enough time to adjust.”

But most importantly, Arizona’s rotation featured complimentary players with varied skill sets that meshed together.

“All of us were so different in how we played,” Simon told the Star in 2016. “Bibby is such a great passer and became a great shooter. He was a sneaky good defender, especially off the ball. JT was just a monster all around, a future player of the year off the bench? He could change the whole pace and tempo of the game. He could take their best player out of the game. Mike Dickerson, as explosive a scorer there has ever been. I remember an assistant coach, now a friend of mine, said we were the hardest team to prepare for. We just ran motion, and all the guys were so smart. We were always moving, and in different places.”

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