Jim Rosborough has been one of Lute Olson’s top assistants for most of the last quarter-century, starting at Iowa in the 1970s.
But nothing in their long association could prepare Rosborough for a meeting before an Arizona game Dec. 30 at the McKale Center. Olson strode into the dressing room and called the players together. Then he broke down as he told them he was taking a leave to be with his wife, Bobbi, who was in the throes of a 2 1/2-year struggle with ovarian cancer.
“I’ve been with him since 1974 and I’ve never seen anything like that,” Rosborough said.
Few have. Olson wears his Scandinavian stoicism like a cloak. About the only time Olson has ever let his hair down, so to speak, was when his players mussed his immaculate white coiffure in the jubilant celebration following Arizona’s victory over Kentucky in the 1997 national final.
“He’s just steady, steady, steady,” Rosborough said.
After the teary-eyed Olson made his announcement, the stunned Wildcats went out and lost to Mississippi State 75-74–Arizona’s first loss in the 16-year history of its Fiesta Bowl Classic tournament.
“Coach is such a strong man,” forward Luke Walton said. “To see him in the locker room and the state he was in, it was sad.”
Bobbi Olson, Lute’s wife of 47 years, died New Year’s Day at 65. No one knew when Olson might return to work, and no one in the Wildcats’ basketball office was pressing him.
Rosborough, a former head coach at Northern Illinois and Arizona’s associate head coach, assumed control of day-to-day operations.
There were murmurs around college basketball that Olson, 66, might retire, leaving more than four years on a contract that expires in 2005. After all, how much more pain could one man endure?
Two years ago, Olson had mourned his first Arizona assistant, Ricky Byrdsong, who was murdered by a gunman in Skokie.
Then last summer, another former Olson aide, Scott Thompson, stepped down as head coach at Cornell to battle colon cancer.
But those closest to Olson always knew he’d be back. Olson is a coach. Coaches coach.
Olson told the Tucson Citizen he decided to rejoin the team when his oldest daughter, Cindy, took him aside and said, “Mom would have wanted you to get back, so you need to get back.”
The Olson clan has a strong presence here–four of the Olsons’ five children and 10 of their 13 grandchildren live within 15 minutes of the patriarch’s home. As family members began resuming their routines in the days after Bobbi died, Olson realized that working would be the best thing for him.
“Once I got back, it’s been very good because I’ve been very busy,” Olson said during a break from practice last week. “It’s been good for the family too, because it’s been a distraction for them to come to the games. We’re still doing all the same things family-wise that we’ve done in the past.”
Olson rejoined the team Jan. 15. As Olson conducted a practice on the newly renamed “Lute and Bobbi Olson Court,” the players and coaches marveled at his businesslike demeanor.
“I’ve never seen a person who is able to let things just slide off his back like he does,” said Rosborough, who went 3-3 during Olson’s absence.
Away from work, though, Olson has struggled to cope with the sudden void in his life.
“It hits you and makes you sick to your stomach,” Olson told the Citizen. “In talking to people who have been in similar situations, it’ll feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience. It just hits you. It could be driving my car or sitting at home. I don’t think it’ll go away.”
Olson said it helps to have game films to fill the late-night hours, when the house may seem emptiest. But his friends and colleagues know he’s having a rough time adjusting.
“I think it’s affected him tremendously,” Arizona State coach Rob Evans said. “He knows he’s got to move on. He can work as hard as he can; there’s so much to do running a basketball program. But then you’ve got to go home.”
Married in 1953, Olson and Bobbi had grown into constant companions. The Wildcats basketball media guide has a photo of a beaming Olson with his arm around Bobbi at the airport celebration for the returning national champs in 1997.
She was rarely more than an arm’s length away from Olson, either on trips or at official functions.
“I go on the road with him because it makes him feel like he’s at home,” Bobbi once told an interviewer. “It gives him something normal in his life. One time I missed a road game and I got four calls asking me to be there for the next game.”
Bobbi’s chipper demeanor would lighten the mood on the bus or the plane, players said.
“When times are hard, when you’ve lost or you’re frustrated, she’d be the one who would always tell you, `Hey, it’s only a game,'” Walton said. “She was like everybody’s mom.”
Arizona officials have said Bobbi’s customary seat in McKale’s Section 16 will not go into the general ticket pool, and there’s talk on campus that the seat may be turned into a memorial.
Meanwhile, a fund has been established in Bobbi’s name at the Arizona Cancer Center, where she had undergone treatment since being diagnosed in June 1998.
The players have decided to try to honor her memory in a different way–with a national championship.
“We definitely talk about it,” Walton said. “I definitely want to win for myself and for the team, but also for her.”
