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Blind-sided

Jim Livengood heard about Lute Olson's retirement the way many people did — from ESPN.

Around 9 a.m. Thursday, the UA athletic director was told to turn on the television.

It was near the time Matt Brase, the UA's director of basketball operations — and Olson's grandson — found out on television. Brase went into a staff meeting and told the Wildcats assistants.

"Somebody came in and said, 'Hey, you need to look at ESPN today because Dick Vitale's talking about what's happening at Arizona — that Lute's retired — and then went on to talk about who our next coach should be,'" Livengood said.

Livengood said he did have "some indication" Olson was mulling retirement.

Wednesday morning, Olson called and said, according to Livengood, "Hey, we need to visit." But Livengood didn't expect an announcement, much less one so sudden.

When asked what went through his head when he saw it on television, Livengood said he thought the same thing many fans and media members were thinking all day Thursday.

"Wondering, 'Why can't somebody make a decision? Why why why are we waiting all this time?'" he said. "We didn't have control of that. Nobody really did. That's a hard situation. These things just don't happen. They're not in a nice package neatly wrapped."

Allegory!

ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said Friday the transition to a new coach might be hardest on UA fans, who will find themselves noting that Olson could have done things differently.

Bilas relayed a story about his grandfather's 1963 Ford Galaxy. His grandpa kept the car in pristine condition, and passed it along to Bilas' older brother when Grandpa died.

Bilas' brother didn't keep the car as clean as his grandfather did.

"If there was a spot on it, I was like 'Hey man, you can't do that,'" Bilas said. "I remember my dad saying, 'You hold your brother to the standard your grandfather had on that car. It's not fair. It's his car now.'"

Chance meeting

Billy Packer knew Arizona would be in for a good NCAA tournament run in 1997 — and it started with a meeting with Olson in a Birmingham, Ala., men's room.

The former CBS analyst waited for the team to arrive at the arena around 9 p.m. — maybe eight hours later than every other team, due to travel issues.

"I'm thinking, 'Holy Christ, Lute is gonna be off schedule. This is not the way he operates. I hate to envision what it's gonna be like when and if he arrives here,'" Packer said.

He wanted to steer clear of Olson — thinking, "He's ready to kill someone" — once he arrived. The two saw each other in the bathroom.

"He said, 'Billy, you're not gonna believe the day we had,'" Packer said. "He was so calm, so relaxed, as if nothing had gone wrong. I thought, 'Is this guy something special?'"

The UA ran off a series of upsets that year, winning the Big Dance.

Quotable

"I was terribly surprised when he retired the first time. I was also a little bit surprised when he came back — so he surprised me again."

UCLA legend John Wooden, on Lute Olson's retirement, referencing his leave of absence last year

The Big Number

38%

Olson's 589 career wins are 38 percent of the program's all-time 1,547 victories.

— Patrick Finley