Discipline, wins define Olson era.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

One of these years, Lute Olson will lead his Arizona basketball team through the Willamette Valley, business as usual, and he simply won't come back.

There won't be a final retirement tour, the way Ralph Miller did it. No farewell gifts of rocking chairs, or standing ovations in road arenas, for the Hall of Fame coach who has been the dominant force in the Pac-10 Conference for the past 20 years.

The word will come out of Tucson, in one future April, and that will be that.

Except, Olson won't be retiring soon, and not nearly soon enough for all the coaches and programs the Wildcats have left in their wake.

At 71, the coach is on the verge of signing a new agreement that would keep him at Arizona for another five years, not that he won't be there even longer. Last week, Joe Paterno coached Penn State to the Orange Bowl victory at age 79.

"Oh yeah," Olson said, asked if he could envision himself still coaching at that age. "I could see that."

And so the wins will keep on coming, and the Pac-10 championships, and the NCAA Tournament appearances, for the program that, under Olson's guidance, has been the Pac-10 gold standard.

There isn't enough space here to list all the relevant numbers, but here are some of them:

Twenty-one straight NCAA Tournament appearances, in 22 previous seasons at Arizona, the longest active streak in Division I, and the second-longest ever. One national championship, in 1997. Three other appearances in the Final Four (plus one at Iowa). Eleven Pac-10 titles. Twenty-six NBA draft choices since the draft was shortened to two rounds in 1989, most in the nation, including eight lottery picks.

He just keeps going, and the Wildcats just keep going.

"I enjoy the competition," Olson said, noting that he couldn't just "sit around and do nothing," and that the offseasons - with fundraising, recruiting and camps - are tougher than the seasons.

When Arizona hired him, after a successful run at Iowa, in the aftermath of the Wildcats' disastrous 4-24 season in 1983, the other Pac-10 coaches were Miller, at Oregon State, Don Monson at Oregon, Marv Harshman at Washington, Len Stevens at Washington State, Larry Farmer at UCLA, Stan Morrison at Southern California, Tom Davis at Stanford, Dick Kuchen at Cal and Bob Weinhauer at Arizona State.

Starting with that year, the other nine Pac-10 schools have had 40 head coaches; Arizona's had the one, and only. And at times, some of those other programs have been markedly better than they were back then, and at times they've been worse, but no Pac-10 program has been as consistently good as Arizona.

Then again, who has? Going into the season, the Wildcats had the nation's best winning percentage, .802, since 1988.

"The recruiting thing is always, `Well, he's not going to be around, he won't coach you,' ' said Oregon State coach Jay John, the former UA assistant whose Beavers host Arizona on Thursday night. "Well, he's just blowing everybody away that keeps saying that in the Pac-10. He's around, and everybody else is gone.

"And they keep winning. Now, Joe Paterno says he's going to coach until he's 80. Why doesn't coach Olson keep thinking he can coach? Because what he's giving the kids is what they still need. And what kids are getting from Arizona is what they want, also.

"So it's going to keep going."

I remember writing once that if Oregon ever got it going in men's basketball, I'd want the Ducks to be a program like Arizona: Athletic, up-tempo, cutting edge, cohesive, well-coached, classy. That would have been some time in the late 1980s or early '90s, and Oregon's impressive run over three seasons with Freddie Jones and the Lukes, Ridnour and Jackson - three future NBA first-round picks - before the Ducks fell back last season and this one, simply underscores how consistently excellent Olson and Arizona have been.

In a way, it's been a business deal. Olson recruits great players, who are guaranteed discipline, but also virtually guaranteed wins, and a chance to go to the NBA, where former Arizona players are more often successful than not, because they understand coaching, and team basketball, and fundamentals.

Which leads to Arizona getting more great players. Just remember that, back at the beginning, the coach was there before the great players were.

"I enjoy working with college-age students," Olson said. "I think we're still able to make a difference with them. I feel like we're still effective in having an effect on their lives, and helping them mature. It's not always easy ... but usually what's happened is that the ones who have been the most difficult to deal with have also been the most appreciative."

An example that John uses is Richard Jefferson, who went from being benched to being a lottery pick by the Houston Rockets. An example that Olson uses is Tom Tolbert, a cornerstone of the 1988 team that reached the Final Four, and now a prominent TV analyst and radio talk-show host.

"I was very, very tough on Tom here, and needed to be tough on him, because he needed to mature, and he's just done a great job," Olson said. "I'm very proud of everything he's accomplished, and he's probably as close as anyone in this program to the program."

Said John: "Kids know they need discipline. Sometimes they may not like it, and they rebel against what it is, but they all know inherently they need discipline. Then it's a matter of how much they want it. If somebody doesn't want it - you can't coach them, you can't teach them - then it's not a good fit. And that's why some people transfer from Arizona.

"But you never see the best players leave."

Olson said he's been asked a lot "how have kids changed" over his 48 seasons coaching, from high school to junior college to major colleges.

"I don't think kids have changed a whole lot," he said. "I think the circumstances of how they've been brought up has changed and, in my opinion, not for the better. The discipline is not there as it was before, in the home. Now, you find if a kid has problems at school it's the teacher's fault, or the counselor, or the administrator.

"You go back a generation, and if a kid got in trouble at school, he had more trouble at home (because of that). It wasn't going to be a case of anyone siding with the kid, unless it was a blatant problem. ...

"I think once they get here, and they get through the initial shock, I think they want discipline, they want direction. They want fair treatment, but down deep I think they are craving that discipline and direction."

For the Wildcats, under Olson, that direction has been a consistent march toward 20-some wins, his Arizona teams playing well into March for 21 straight Marches now, with Marches yet to come.