Posts from the Arizona Basketball Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

You know, for all the stability that Coach Lute Olson's official return from taking the season off was supposed to bring to Arizona, there is an awful lot of stuff that suggests anything but stability. The extended soap opera swirling around Lute Olson took another very public turn.

It all started Friday morning with a call into the JohnJay and Rich Radio Show.

Lute Olson wanted to discuss his divorce from his wife Christine.

He also addressed a complaint, filed by Christine, that he transferred money out of a joint account, the day after he filed for divorce.

Lute says the claim is an attempt by Christine to ruin his reputation.

Christine was listening to the broadcast and called in.

Yes, it has come to this. Both sides are actually attacking each other directly on radio shows -- you can listen here.

A very public divorce involving one of the biggest names in Arizona naturally will get a lot of media attention. Any court filings accusing each other of doing bad things will of course be reported. The divorce has hardly been amicable from the get go, so naturally there are going to be nasty accusations in the filings.

Expect this to continue for some time.

It's very likely the two haven't seen each other much before this, but the Arizona Athletic Department wanted to make sure Kevin O'Neill wouldn't even be in the same wing as Lute Olson with this move.

Athletic director Jim Livengood said O'Neill will be a "special assistant'' to him for the balance of this fiscal school year, which ends on June 30.

O'Neill, 51, will work in the development area and on fundraising, Livengood said.

"I'm under the direction of Jim Livengood and I'll do whatever I'm directed to do," said O'Neill on Wednesday.

Arizona sophomore forward Chase Budinger will enter the NBA Draft. He will "test the waters" and not hire an agent ... opening the door for him to return to the Wildcats.

"I don't disagree with him doing that," Arizona coach Lute Olson told FOXSports.com. "Some guys can really benefit from the experience and gather a better understanding of what they need to do and I think that'll be the case."

"I think he could be a high lottery pick in next year's draft," Olson added. "The way we're going to play, it could happen."

This really sounds like Budinger will be back at Zona next year if he isn't projected to go very high. One of the nice things about "testing the waters" is that you can get some instruction on how your game may translate to the next level and what a player may need to work on to increase his stock.

Many draft sites see Budinger as a mid-first round pick.

Arizona freshman Jerryd Bayless has already declared for the draft.

Arizona guard Jerryd Bayless, who led the Wildcats in scoring and made several All-American teams, will declare for the NBA Draft. The likely high-lottery pick has hired an agent and will therefore lose his remaining three years of eligibility. Bayless leaves Tucson without having played for Lute Olson, the coach who recruited him to Point Guard U.

This isn't too much of a surprise for anyone who watched Bayless this season. He's able to get into the paint at will, has one of the best pull-up jumpers in the nation, and has the skills to excel at point guard at the next level. Both DraftExpress.com and NBADraft.net have him as a Top 5 pick, and it's hard to believe that his workouts would drop him much lower than that.

The Wildcats will obviously miss Bayless's presence in Tucson, but the arrival of freshman point guard (and flat-top enthusiast) Brandon Jennings should offset some of the damage. The real issue here will come if Bayless's decision opens the floodgates in Arizona. Both Chase Budinger and Jordan Hill would go in the first round of the draft, so it's possible that they would declare before the deadline. Those three players carried Arizona this season and would be sorely missed. If Budinger and Hill return, then the Wildcats should be one of the best teams in the Pac-10 next year.

Arizona, in the space of a single year has gone from one of the most stable consistent programs in the country, to a complete and utter soap opera. Plot twists, betrayals, backstabbing, torn lovers -- the works.

You had Kevin O'Neill brought in last year as an assistant to improve the increasingly porous Wildcat defense. To do that, Head Coach Lute Olson pushed out his longtime assistant Jim Rosborough.

On the eve of the season, Lute Olson abruptly disappeared with only a press release, saying he needed time away. It stressed that it was a personal matter and it was not a health issue for the 73-year old Olson. It was expected to be a temporary thing so O'Neill was named the temporary interim coach.

Three weeks later, he was still not back and things remained muddled and unclear. A couple weeks later, it came out that Olson was divorcing his second wife. After that, it was announced that Olson would take the entire season off.

By mid-December, Arizona decided to elevate O'Neill from interim coach to coach-in-waiting. The reasoning seemed sound. Promote stability for the program, shore-up recruiting and just make public what many suspected would be the long-term plan when O'Neill was brought back in the first place.

Of course the best laid plans...

After all that has happened this season at Arizona, things continue to be weird. It started with Lute Olson taking an unexpected leave, Assistant Coach Kevin O'Neill taking over on an interim basis, then being named coach-in-waiting, followed by a slew of injuries, then Lute Olson apparently returning and holding meetings with the players and undermining O'Neill.

When Olson made it public that he was coming back as the coach next year, the speculation was that Kevin O'Neill was toast. His relationship with Olson appeared soured. The whispers were that he was not going to go back to being an assistant and that Olson didn't want him back.

Well, at long last Olson and O'Neill met this week. By Wednesday, all was declared fine.

"I'm back to being an assistant coach and Lute is the head coach," O'Neill said. "He is making all the decisions with the program and should be. Any time you get a Hall of Fame coach back it has to be a major league plus for a program."

It all sounds great. O'Neill says he'll go back to being an assistant and the "coach-in-waiting." Well, maybe not.

Sure Tyreke Evans took home the MVP at the McDonald's All-American High School Basketball Game, as his East squad beat the West 107-102. And sure Evans still hasn't decided between Memphis, Villanova, UConn and Texas.

You can talk about the lack of solid defense, lots of highlight reel individual moves and dunks. The typical stuff. Arizona commit and one of the top point guards, Brandon Jennings stood out differently. Not because of the 12 points and 9 assists (there would have been more assists but many of the passes were fumbled by surprised teammates). Not because he was one of the fastest players on the court.

No, Jennings stood out for sporting a classic high top fade haircut (yes, that's him on the right). A staple in the 90s, that hasn't been seen in some time. That was practically hypnotic.

Conference: Pac-10
Record: 18-14, 9-11 Pac-10
RPI: 40
How They Got In: At-Large Bid
Seed/Bracket: #10 in the West

Mascot: Wildcats. The name caught on in 1914 when a Los Angeles Times article stated that the team "showed the fight of Wildcats" in a football game against Occidental College.

Big Wins: Texas A&M, at USC, Washington State (home/away)

Notable Losses: at Kansas, at Memphis, Arizona State (home/away), Oregon (home/away)

Player You Should Know: Jerryd Bayless is one of the most dynamic guards in the country and a sure-fire lottery pick in June's NBA Draft. He's fantastic off the dribble and has one of the best pull-up jumpers in the game. Some people are surprised that the Wildcats got into the tournament, but it'll be worth it just to see Bayless on the game's biggest stage.

Outlook: Arizona lost both games to Arizona State this season, but this team legitimately deserves to be in the field. They had some horrible injury luck with both Bayless and Nic Wise going down for significant stretches of the season. Having the highest strength of schedule in the country doesn't hurt either. The Wildcats look very impressive at full strength and can be a handful when their stars are at their best. Arizona's not tremendously deep, but they have enough talent to win in the first round and give someone a serious scare in Round Two.

The Pac-10 had one of its best seasons ever this year, with every team (including UCLA) beating each other up for the entirety of the last few months. Nowhere is that parity more clear than in the fact that seven teams enter this week's conference tournament as locks or legitimate contenders for the NCAA Tournament.

That sort of speculation isn't West Coast bias, either; Joe Lunardi's latest Bracketology has six Pac-10 teams in the field, with Arizona State just outside of the field as part of the "Last Four Out" group. Lunardi's list obviously isn't gospel with a week of tournaments left, but the fact remains that this year's Pac-10 Tournament holds a lot of import for more than half of the field. With that in mind, let's take a look at what's at stake for all ten teams:

1. UCLA (28-3, 16-2 Pac-10): Making the championship game will probably lock down a top seed in the West region. An early exit like last season's quarterfinal loss to Cal could result in a drop down, but the Bruins might have too many quality wins to fall.

2. Stanford (24-6; 13-5 Pac-10): Last weekend's tough weekend in SoCal could knock the Cardinal out of a protected seed and pod placement in Anaheim, but one win this week would probably keep them in California for the opening weekend of the Big Dance. Their opening game will probably come against Arizona, a team they beat twice by a combined five points.

3. Washington State (23-7; 11-7 Pac-10): The Cougs already have an at-large taken care of, but they could improve their seeding up to a #5-seed (and maybe higher if they win the tournament) with a prolonged run. They'll start on Thursday against an Oregon team that usually struggles away from Eugene.

More analysis, including that of the conference's bubble teams, after the jump:

The Pac-10 announced its season awards today and, unsurprisingly, UCLA was the big winner. The Bruins picked up the hardware for Player of the Year (Kevin Love), Freshman of the Year (Love again), and Defensive Player of the Year (Russell Westbrook). The only trophy that failed to go to Westwood was Coach of the Year, which was won by Stanford's Trent Johnson. The Bruins also placed three people on the Pac-10's three All-Conference teams.

It's hard to argue with any of these choices. Love was pretty clearly the most consistent offensive player in the league this season, although his defense is not up to the level of likely runner-up Brook Lopez. Regardless, Love was a deserving winner of both his awards. Westbrook's win is a little easier to question, but he's certainly one of the two or three best wing defenders in the conference (although I prefer Washington State's Kyle Weaver), and Stanford center Robin Lopez's blocked shot totals probably weren't high enough to give him the trophy. As for Coach of the Year, that one's always emphasizes performance relative to expectations, so it's not surprising that the admittedly deserving Johnson beat out Ben Howland.

The Pac-10 recently changed their All-Conference team from one 10-person group to three five-man teams, and that was probably a good decision given the conference's strength this season. The first team included Love, Brook Lopez, Ryan Anderson, OJ Mayo, and James Harden. I'm a little surprised that Jerryd Bayless didn't beat out Harden, but it's possible that the coaches wanted to honor Arizona State for their surprisingly solid season. Other than that, though, the rest of the All-Conference teams played to form.