Arizona basketball treks back to Indy — site of '97 triumph, legend Jason Gardner's hometown

Other than maybe Las Vegas or Southern California, no one place outside Arizona probably means more in Wildcat basketball history than Indianapolis.

The city where the top-ranked Arizona will face No. 3 Purdue on Saturday is not only where the Wildcats won a somewhat unexpected national championship in 1997 but also where they planted seeds that led to arguably even better overall teams during the heights of the Lute Olson era.

Those efforts include, as the story goes, holding a practice at Indianapolis North Central High School before the 1997 Final Four.

The Wildcats could have gone just about anywhere for a pre-Final Four workout in the hoops-crazy region, but North Central just happened to have a star sophomore point guard named Jason Gardner.

“Coach Olson intentionally practiced there,” said Josh Pastner, a player on UA’s 1997 team who will work Peacock’s pregame coverage Saturday. “He wanted to make sure we practiced there knowing that we were recruiting him.”

The only problem was that rules kept the Wildcats from actually inviting Gardner in to watch, so the star recruit was forced to look through a window.

That worked well enough. Gardner’s jersey is on the McKale Center walls, after all, and he’s now the director of player relations for the current UA staff led by Tommy Lloyd.

“I don’t think that I probably could have probably been at that practice. I’m not really sure,” Gardner says now. “But definitely from the window, I was kind of checking them out. By them practicing there and playing in the Final Four, I definitely had an opportunity to watch them.”

During that practice and later during the Final Four games he watched on TV, Gardner saw how the Wildcats’ offense flowed under Olson, and it was easy to imagine how someday he might direct it.

A little over a year later, having also considered Purdue, Duke and Kansas, Gardner committed to the Wildcats. Gardner and future NBA star Gilbert Arenas arrived for the 1999-2000 season, a year after Olson reeled in a decorated 1998 recruiting class that included Richard Jefferson, Luke Walton, Michael Wright and Rick Anderson.

All of UA’s 1998 and 1999 recruits were high school stars influenced by the Wildcats’ 1997 title run, and all of them wound up becoming the core of Arizona basketball teams also considered among the best in program history: Its No. 1 NCAA tournament seeded 2000 team, its national runner-up team of 2001 and, during Gardner’s senior year, a team that held the No. 1 ranking most of the season before losing to Kansas in the Elite Eight.

Even today, those teams are often tossed around in conversations about the best teams in UA basketball history.

“I think that ‘01 team that played the national championship and I think that ‘03 team that went to the Elite Eight, we were deep on both ends, both years,” Gardner said. “We had really good guards. We had really good bigs. We had athleticism. We had length. We had shooters.

“Who was better? I don’t know. But I do know both those teams were really good.”

After an eight-year overseas pro career, and a coaching career that included a five-year stint back in Indianapolis as the head coach at IUPUI, Gardner returned to Arizona to join Lloyd’s first staff in 2021-22.

Associate UA coach Jack Murphy, athletic trainer Justin Kokoskie and Gardner are the only current staffers with ties to the Olson era, and Lloyd has said he’s glad to have added Gardner, who was back at North Central as head coach when he left for Arizona in 2021.

“Jason’s a winner, and he’s an Arizona guy through and through,” Lloyd said before the 2021-22 season. “I see great potential in him.”

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While Gardner isn’t allowed to coach on the floor – he said he isn’t focused now on whether he wants to coach again — he said he does take notes at practices and games.

His focus is mostly off the court, where he forges ties with current and former players while also playing a role this season in Lloyd’s emphasis on teaching UA history and culture.

Gardner is a living example of that history and maybe no more so than when they Wildcats are playing in Indianapolis, where Gardner grew up, watched that 1997 team and also played there in UA’s loss to Purdue during the 2000-01 season.

This weekend, Gardner said he’s bringing along his 21-year-old daughter, Jasper, who is a UA student. The game will also give him a chance to see son three other kids who live in Indianapolis: Jason Jr., a high school freshman, as well as a fifth grade son, Jacob, and a fourth-grade daughter, Jacksyn.

“I love it,” Gardner said of the trip ahead. “I’ve got a family there, a lot of friends there. I know (Purdue) coach (Matt) Painter. I’m excited to be part of it. You’ve got two really good teams, two teams that people are talking a little bit more about now.

“I’m excited about the environment and to have these conversations planning for it and to be in McKale planning for them, it’s an experience and a journey. It’s good to be involved.”

Gardner’s background as a UA standout player not only gives him credibility in telling UA basketball stories to current players and recruits but also in getting to know their parents, two other key areas of his job.

“Definitely some of the guys we’ve recruited, their parents saw me play,” Gardner said. “I think that helps as far as building that relationship. Because just as much as for the kids, it’s a trust factor for the parents to understand that their kids are going to be taken care of. It definitely helps.”

Gardner’s responsibilities also include maintaining ties with former players and getting them to stop by campus whenever they can.

“It’s getting them back for a workout, getting them back for a practice, getting them back for game back, or for a weekend when we don’t have anything,” Gardner said. “The more guys come back … they always have some type of conversation with the players that are here. Stories about where they are now and how they got there.

“And it’s not always about the NBA. It’s about guys who are having their own business, guys who are working in a corporation, guys traveling the world.”

In the biggest Lloyd-era example of a Wildcat reunion, after what Gardner said was an “all hands on deck” by staffers contacting former players, Arizona brought back Miles Simon, Mike Bibby and Eugene Edgerson from its 1997 national champion team for the Red-Blue Showcase before this season.

Jefferson and early 2000s center Channing Frye co-emceed the event, while former NBA and UA standout Andre Iguodala also showed up.

“A lot of it is building relationships with players who are here, building relationships with players that have just recently left or guys who have been away for 10 years,” Gardner said. “It’s a constantly building a relationship between the current staff and former players who don’t really know our staff or don’t know Tommy at all.”

That even includes folding in former players from the Sean Miller era that came between the Olson and Lloyd eras, though many of those players are still in the middle of NBA or overseas careers.

“Anybody who leaves here has some pride about the university,” Gardner said. “You always want to see them win. You always want to represent them. You’re always wearing a U of A shirt. Sometimes, I’ll do these cold calls (with players) I don’t know but at the end of the day, we’re all here for the same reason and that’s the Arizona jersey.

“That definitely helps get you past that first time that we’ve ever talked. We all kind of have the same common goal.”