Coach Lute Olson is beaming while listening to star player Sean Elliott at a rally and parade at for the men's basketball team at University of Arizona stadium in Tucson after the 1988 NCAA Final Four.

 Jackie Bell / Arizona Daily Star

About 90 minutes after Arizona won its first Pac-10 basketball championship, Lute Olson and his wife Bobbi were given a ride from UCLA's Pauley Pavilion to the popular Alice's Restaurant in downtown Westwood. As they entered the front door, about 200 UA fans cheered loudly.

"Speech!'' someone yelled.

And so a few minutes before midnight on March 3, 1986, Lute Olson stood at a makeshift podium and said "this is just the beginning.''

The crowd roared.

I stood with my Star colleague Jim Elsleger, wedged into a corner by the bar, and listened as an overworked server said "they all want pizza!''

"We always celebrate with pizza,'' Bobbi Olson said when she took her turn at the podium.

Celebrating was not a ritual for Arizona basketball fans. Over the previous 33 years, the Wildcats had won two titles: the 1953 Border Conference championship and the 1976 WAC title. Career NCAA tournament victories? Two.

Lute Olson coached the Wildcats for 24 seasons with a .755 winning percentage, including the 1997 national crown.

Olson was 51 years old the night he celebrated at Alice's Restaurant. It wasn't a true "beginning'' for him; he had been in the coaching business for more than a quarter-century, capped by Iowa's run to the 1980 Final Four. But it was every bit a beginning at Arizona, a school known more for its baseball success than anything else, a school and a town starved for a winner.

Interactive timeline: Lute Olson's Hall of Fame life, career

By Christmas 1987, Arizona was ranked No. 1 in the nation and everything changed. Over the next 14 years, Arizona reached four Final Fours and was ranked in the top 10 every season. They took on all-comers: Duke, Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky. Every year seemed special.

Steve Kerr was followed by Damon Stoudamire, who was followed by Mike Bibby, who was followed by Luke Walton. Was there a better story than a hometown kid, Sean Elliott, becoming the NCAA Player of the Year?

Tucson's image as a remote frontier town was transformed into that of a winner. The Wildcats surpassed UCLA as the No. 1 basketball school in the West. The tall, handsome man from rural North Dakota, had become a force — a presence — like Tucson had never known.

In the mid-2000s, Olson and his friend Jim Slone, a former Tucson radio executive, were vacationing in France, walking down a street in Paris when, Slone remembers, "someone across the street hollered 'Hi, Coach Olson. Go Wildcats!'"

Given his silver hair, good looks and athletic 6-foot 5-inch frame, Olson might've been the most instantly recognizable college coach in America.

Lute Olson was head basketball coach at the University of Arizona from 1983-2008. He was a seven-time Pac-10 Coach of the Year, made five Final Four appearances, won the 1997 NCAA Championship and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. He died Aug. 27, 2020.

In the four years before first-year Arizona athletic director Cedric Dempsey hired Olson away from Iowa, the Wildcats had gone 40-71 in basketball. They were a pathetic 1-17 in the Pac-10 the year Dempsey boldly approached Olson after a 1983 NCAA Tournament game in Kansas City and asked if he would be available to meet the next day to discuss the coaching vacancy at Arizona.

"I wasn't sure he would even agree to discuss it,'' said Dempsey.

A year earlier, before Kansas State's Jack Hartman accepted the UA coaching job — and then changed his mind over night, preferring to stay at KSU — UA athletic director Dave Strack phoned Iowa athletic director Bump Elliott, politely asking for his permission to speak to Olson about the UA vacancy. Strack had recently overseen the resignation of coach Fred Snowden, whose program had gone flat.

Later that day, Elliott called Strack.

"Lute says 'thanks, but no thanks,''' Strack told me.

Dempsey was more prepared and persistent. He sold Olson on his vision of an overflowing McKale Center. He matched the compensation package — about $150,000 — that Iowa paid Olson. And he was savvy enough to know that Olson and his family had spent 12 years living in Southern California and might prefer Tucson's climate to that of Iowa.

Arizona coach Lute Olson and his wife, Bobbi, soak in the enthusiasm and appreciation of the UA fans while riding into Arizona Stadium a day after the Wildcats beat Kentucky to win the 1997 NCAA tournament. More than 45,000 fans attended the celebration.

On a Tuesday morning, March 29, 1983, escorted by Dempsey and UA president Henry Koffler, Lute and Bobbi walked into a crowded room on the third floor of McKale Center to make public his decision to coach at Arizona. Amazingly, Dempsey had met the Olsons for breakfast on a Saturday in Kansas City and 72 hours later introduced them to Tucson.

At that press conference, Olson famously advised UA fans to "get your tickets now.''

When he died Thursday night, Olson's legend had grown far beyond what he accomplished in 24 seasons at McKale Center. There is a statue of him outside the Hall of Champions. The playing surface carries his and Bobbi's names. The corridor adjacent to the men's basketball office has been refinished to celebrate his career.

After both the 1985 and 1989 seasons, Kentucky attempted to hire Olson. Both times, he returned to Tucson and said "this is our home.''

And now it will forever be.

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Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at 520-573-4362 or ghansen@tucson.com. On Twitter: @ghansen711