Posts tagged LuteOlson at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

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.

Jeff Goodman of Fox Sports is reporting that Arizona men's basketball coach Lute Olson is expected to announce today that he plans to return to the team next season after missing all of this season for unexplained personal reasons.

According to Goodman, Olson will release a statement through the university that will say he was forced to skip this season for medical reasons that weren't life-threatening, but that the issue has been resolved and he is feeling back to normal. The statement will also say that the 73-year-old Olson intends to fulfill his contract, which runs through the 2011 season.

The last year has been tough for Olson, a Hall of Fame coach. In early 2007 he denied rumors that he has Parkinson's Disease. Just before the season, he announced that he was taking a leave of absence from the team. In December, he filed for divorce from his wife of four years.

Arizona is having one of its worst seasons with interim coach Kevin O'Neill running the show. The Wildcats will almost certainly miss the Tournament and are below .500 in Pac-10 play for the first time since Olson's first year.

Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson, who is taking a leave of absence for the entire 2007-08 season, has filed for divorce from his wife of four years.

No details of the contents of the court papers are available, although it has been reported that Olson paid the filing fee of $216.
Leonard Karp, Olson's divorce lawyer, told the Arizona Daily Star that the Olsons' "marriage is irrevocably broken and there is no reasonable prospect of reconciliation."

The 73-year-old Olson got married in April of 2003. Olson's first wife, Bobbi, died of cancer in 2001.

Last month Olson announced that he was taking a leave of absence, and he and the school apparently plan for him to miss all of this season but return next season.

That's not a sentence I anticipated typing today. The 72-year-old Wildcat head coach spent some time this afternoon vehemently denying rumors that he had Parkinson's Disease.

"I have gotten some calls about rumors and certain radio stations running some things about me having Parkinson's, which is a complete lie," Olson said. "I have physicals like everyone else does. There is absolutely no medical indication of any type of problem."

"There is absolutely no truth to that statement. If it has been repeatedly on radio stations then I will take the necessary actions that I need to get this stopped," he said. "It is a vicious, vicious rumor. If I need to I will get my physician to make a statement. I don't think anybody deserves that rumor to be circulating."

I hadn't heard the rumors ... I'm not in Arizona, I'm not listening to their radio shows. But if it's true (and I'm certainly taking Lute's word for it here) that is a messed up rumor to start. Dear Lord ... who does that? It doesn't get much lower than starting a rumor that a 72-year-old man has Parkinson's.

If you wanted to start a rumor that Lute Olson was impotent, or couldn't control his bladder, or got his false teeth stuck in a prostitute in Tijuana ... fine. Not the nicest thing in the world to do, of course, but playful, not all that believable, and ultimately harmless.

But Parkinson's Disease? That's just vicious. Whoever started these rumors should probably prepare themselves to burn in eternal hellfire.