"Bear Down"

Earlier this week Lute Olson announced that he was taking an immediate leave of absense from coaching my beloved Arizona Wildcats. Apparently he won't be gone for a lengthy amount of time but this is still a very sad day. He made a statment saying that it wasn't a health issue (which is pretty impressive since he is 73 years old) but it had something to do with one of his kids. The assistant coach, Kevin O'Neill, will take over until Lute's return. Hopefully the Wildcats will be able to function without him.

We got the top two high school players in the state, Jerryd Bayless and Zane Johnson. I've never seen Bayless play, but I've seen his stats and they are very impressive. My brother's high school team played Johnson's last season and he was pretty good (even though Brian did block one of his shots...yes it was a very proud moment). He obviously didn't play much because Sinagua is no where even close to being in the same league as him. In addition to these two, we still have Budinger and McClellan. Although, we did take a big hit losing Mustafa, Radenovic and Marcus Williams.

I think we are going to be pretty good this season, but we need as much of Lute as we can get. He pretty much established the Arizona men's basketball program. He has been coaching for about 40 years and is a Hall of Famer. He brought Arizona's basketball program from nothing to a National Championship, 4 Final Four apperances, 22 consecutive NCAA tournament apperances, 11 Pac-10 Conference titles and the nation's second best winning percentage.

Lute Olson is amazing and he definitely has one loyal fan awaiting his return.