Editor's note: This story appears in the Arizona Daily Star's NCAA Tournament guide, available on newsstands Thursday:
“W-I-L-D-CATS” (awkward points at the camera).
“W-I-L-D-WILDCATS” (mistimed points at the camera).
And so begins one of the cheesiest, how-did-this-get-made-iest few minutes of Arizona basketball history.
Thirty years ago, as the Wildcats made their first march to March Madness glory, a long-awaited Final Four berth that would portend great things to come, a local radio DJ got it in his mind to record a "Super Bowl Shuffle"-like anthem for the hometown team.
He recruited UA bench player Harvey Mason Jr., who would go on to produce and write for, among others, John Legend, Babyface and Aretha Franklin, among others.
“I think we had just been ranked No. 1, and (the DJ) had the title of the song, and that’s about it,” Mason said. “I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We wrote the song, I got the guys to come down and record it, shot a little video. Coach loved it. He was in the video!”
That’s right, Lute Olson sanctioned a rap video, mid-season, about his team.
Well, a “rap” video, because these guys weren’t exactly Public Enemy.
“We're the Cats / we play out west / and we're working hard to be our best / ask anyone and you will find / we don’t do drugs that wreck your mind,” they sang.
“It was a Harvey Mason production; you'd have to ask what he was thinking,” said then-graduate assistant Bruce Fraser. “The station came to him, he'd been dabbling, and it was an interest of his that he foresaw. … That video went viral back then, with radio and the TV, and I think it was the No. 1 song requested in Tucson.”
The song did indeed become a hit, though 30 years later, it elicits groans, even from their loved ones.
“Now when it comes back, it haunts you,” said Fraser, now a coach with his buddy Steve Kerr and the Golden State Warriors. “You've got guys who were born in 1988 laughing at you. You shake your head like, 'Yeah, what were we thinking?' Steve and I have been the butt of some jokes from Kevin (Durant) and Steph (Curry). If I could take that back...”
Would they really, though? Who else gets this kind of snapshot, three decades in the making?
“We just had fun with it,” said Matt Muehlebach, then a freshman on the team. “We had so many guys with small egos that we weren’t afraid to make fun of ourselves. It’s kind of funny, Harvey goes on to become this incredible producer, and that was one of his first things. As much as you look at it now and laugh … it was the No. 1 song forever. But, yes, it’s cringeworthy – when my daughters watch it now, they laugh at it.”
