By late-February, things were humming again.
Arizona went 9-3 in the middle stretch of Pac-12 play, with one bad loss — a 66-64 home loss to talented UCLA — setting up a crucial finale to the conference slate: the Bay Area swing.
Stanford and Cal were among the top teams in the country, and the Wildcats left their hearts in San Francisco, along with their confidence, losing back-to-back games by a total of three points.
They prepared for a thrashing from the staff that never came.
Simon: “One thing I learned from Lute is that he was usually more positive after losses. I learned this when I coached under him. Because the team was already down. We already lost the game. He was harder on teams after we won, to keep everything even-keel.”
Harris: “Lute didn’t speak to us like normal. He said the teams we played, at the caliber they’re at, two points on the road is a win.”
Pastner: “We lost to Stanford and Cal, but (Olson) felt we played really well even though we lost. When you lose two in a row, the psyche of a team is on thin ice. That’s a credit to Coach Olson. When you lose two in college athletics, you’re teetering on a dangerous line. And that line, man, you can go south in a hurry. Both times we had the losing streaks, we found a way to get out of it.”
Edgerson: “It was brutal! We just played poorly. There are no excuses for that kind of play at that time. I’m glad we were able to get out of that funk and turn things around magically. It was unexpected, something that hadn’t happened all season. It just happened at the wrong time.”
Simon: “We all wanted to win. We were a close-knit group even though there were new faces. More than anything, it was just disappointment. We were a competitive group, disappointed we lost. Stanford and Cal were Sweet 16 teams that year, and we didn’t get swept at home — lost last-second shot at Stanford and the last 30 seconds at Cal. There was nothing to hold our heads down. We felt we should win every game. That was the only down part. There was disappointment that we lost, and on our team, there was no dissention.”
Well, no, that’s not true.
Rosborough: “I’m not gonna name names, but after we lost the second game against Cal, we had a scuffle in the locker room. It was not awful, but it was not pretty. People were frustrated. That might have turned us around. We came back from that and had good practices. It wasn’t all players in this scuffle.”
Davison: “We lost the last two games, lost some close games, and then we were staying in the hotel, and there were a couple fights. A.J. and I broke the backboard.”
