Upon Jerry Kindall’s retirement as Arizona’s baseball coach in 1996, the school contacted Andy Lopez, who had just coached the Florida Gators into the College World Series.
Bad timing.
Arizona persisted. In the summer of 2001, the Gators unexpectedly parted ways with Lopez, even though he was in the prime of his career and, at 47, had coached Florida to two College World Series and had not had a losing season.
Andy Lopez is one of just a handful of college coaches to win national championships at two schools. He also took home a title at Pepperdine in 1992.
This time, Lopez said yes. The former UCLA shortstop who coached Pepperdine to the 1992 College World Series title moved back West. In his third season, Arizona was back in the College World Series for the first time since 1986.
Lopez, No. 79 on our list of Tucson’s Top 100 Sports Figures of the last 100 years, is the son of Mexican immigrants. His father, Art, was a longshoreman in San Pedro, California, and if nothing else, gave his personality-blessed son an education in work ethic and responsibility.
As a shortstop at UCLA in the early 1970s, Lopez would walk into Pauley Pavilion and watch John Wooden coach the Bruins’ legendary basketball teams. “I’d go to practice and be in awe,” he said.
At 36, he started his coaching career at the bottom, the head coach at Cal State Dominguez Hills. That’s a long way from winning two national championships on college baseball’s biggest stage.
On the weekend of May 25-27, 2012, at Hi Corbett Field, 14,055 Tucsonans watched what was surely the most unforgettable UA baseball series since the 1980s. In a Friday night Game 1 against 13th-ranked ASU, the Wildcats and Sun Devils went to the bottom of the ninth, scoreless.
That’s when Robert Refsnyder scored from first base on Seth Mejias-Brean’s double to left-center, ignoring a stop sign from the UA third base coach, sliding safely as 5,451 fans roared.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been part of something like this,” said Lopez. “I love Robert.”
Two days later, Arizona beat ASU on a walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth, clinching the Pac-12 title.
“I felt like it was the College World Series,” said All-Pac-12 pitcher Kurt Heyer. “Oh, dude, all hell broke loose.”
What followed was unprecedented in UA baseball history. Lopez’s Wildcats went 10-0 in the NCAA playoffs, including a 5-0 run through the College World Series, sweeping two-time defending champion South Carolina in the championship series.
The numbers spoke for themselves. It was Arizona’s first national championship since 1986 and its third Pac-12 title in 33 years.
Coach Andy Lopez addresses players as they gather for opening day of practice at Hi Corbett Field in 2015.
It was the peak of Lopez’s coaching career. A year later, he underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery. He was never able to recover his 24/7 energy. He retired after the 2015 season at age 61.
“Losing kills me, maybe more than winning feels good,” he said upon retirement. “My God, I can’t stand losing. It builds and it builds, and it builds.”
As a press conference announcing his retirement, I wrote how Lopez was singularly focused on winning: “He takes it home with him. He takes it to lunch. He takes it to bed.”
Yet Lopez’s career wasn’t about losing at all. At Arizona, he had 12 winning seasons over 14 years. The Wildcats went to the NCAA tournament eight times. He was the national Coach of the Year in 1992, 1996 and 2012. His career record: 1,177-742.
After leaving the UA, Lopez has remained in Tucson, working as motivational speaker, serving as a counselor at baseball camps and clinics and working as a TV analyst. In 2018, he was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame.
