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If Lute Olson doesn't coach again, he will close his career on an unimaginable 24-1 run against Arizona State. Not that it is considered breaking news. He opened here going 16-2 against the Sun Devils.

Scores? From 99-59 to 127-99.

Such dominion has jarred ASU's psyche, but none of the first six Sun Devils to coach against Olson went broke, was sent to jail or toppled into a corner and spent the rest of his days in tears.

Olson didn't beat up on a bunch of dummies.

Bob Weinhauer became general manager of the NBA champion Houston Rockets. Steve Patterson went on to be chairman of the Phoenix Super Bowl XXX committee. Rob Evans is an assistant coach at Arkansas, and Don Newman is an assistant coach for the NBA champion San Antonio Spurs.

Bob Schermerhorn, an interim head coach for part of the 1989 ASU season, went on to head coaching positions at three small Western colleges.

Bill Frieder? He's a part-time radio analyst but mostly counts his money from successful investment endeavors.

It is Sun Devil fans, not their former coaches, who have paid the emotional bill.

Only briefly, in 1994-95, did it appear that ASU had "arrived.'' The Sun Devils rose to No. 12 in the polls, reached the Sweet 16 and, for the only time in a quarter-century, swept the Wildcats.

Alas, it was Arizona, not ASU, that launched into a decade of greatness. After losing those two games to the Sun Devils in 1995, the Wildcats went on a 10-year run that included:

● Two Final Fours and a national championship

● Three Elite Eight finishes

● Four Pac-10 championships

● An average of 25.8 victories per year.

● A 20-1 record against ASU

Each time the Sun Devils would cry "the gap has closed,'' Olson hit the accelerator and put more distance between himself and whoever coached at ASU.

Other than the pressure to keep Olson's numbers relevant, Kevin O'Neill's head coaching debut against the Sun Devils tonight should be relatively stress free.

Arizona always beats ASU, right? Olson recruited and put this club into place, correct? And over 49 games vs. ASU, he showed everyone how it's done. So what's the problem?

Even in Tempe, where Olson always took ASU's best shot, the Wildcats went 19-5.

But now there is change, and not just change for the sake of change, transitioning from Weinhauer to Patterson to Schermerhorn to Frieder to Newman to Evans.

The difference is the short, quiet and balding gentleman coaching the Sun Devils.

Herb Sendek is a combination of Mike Montgomery, Ben Howland and Ralph Miller, three Pac-10 coaches who fundamentally challenged Olson more than any of the 42 men who coached against Olson in his Arizona years.

Sendek is structured and disciplined, a strategist whose teams have almost always been as good as they can be. The book on Sendek is that his teams take advantage of another club's weaknesses the way Miller's teams at Oregon State did, and the way Howland's UCLA team does today.

Against Sendek's chalkboard precision, the court seems to shrink, the clock seems to tick faster and suddenly you're in a 49-48 game at the four-minute TV timeout.

He is short on charisma and star-appeal, but so is Bill Belichick.

Sendek is not a miracle worker. At North Carolina State, even his best teams didn't chop up Duke, losing to Mike Krzyzewski 17 times in 19 games and, unfathomably, yielding a Sendek-rare 100 points to the Dookies twice.

But the injury-scarred, coach-short Wildcats are no longer in Duke's league.

It would have been intriguing to see how Olson's vintage up-tempo teams would have attacked Sendek's crawl-ball. Instead, the lure of tonight's game will be to see if O'Neill, who thrives on defense and discipline, can operate successfully with a thin roster.

It's on O'Neill now, a bit of bad timing inasmuch as he bumps into an emerging, 12-2 Sun Devil team that is probably at its most capable point since 2003. Then, at 17-7, they were coming off a sweep at UCLA and USC and were en route to a 20-win, NCAA tournament season.

Alas, the Wildcats entered that February 2003 game at 20-2 and were ranked No. 1.

As always, Arizona won, 92-72.

But now everything has changed. It is O'Neill vs. Sendek, not Olson vs. Anonymous Coaching Victim. The reality of the day is that Olson is no longer around to rescue the Wildcats, either by presence or savvy or reputation.

You're on your own, KO. Don't blow it.