Lute Olson, a Basketball Hall of Fame coach who took the University of Arizona to the 1997 N.C.A.A. championship and 23 consecutive appearances in the postseason tournament, died on Thursday in Tucson, Ariz. He was 85.
His death was announced by the university. He was hospitalized in February 2019 after he had a stroke and had been in hospice care.
When Olson was named Arizona’s coach for the 1983-84 season, the Wildcats had been in only three N.C.A.A. championship tournaments and had gone 4-24 the previous season. The state of Arizona was hardly an outpost for collegiate basketball.
His first Arizona team went 11-17, but he went on to turn the Wildcats into a collegiate power. His Arizona teams won 589 games and lost 187, and he had an overall record of 781-279.
Olson’s squads made four appearances in the national tournament’s Final Four and had 20 consecutive seasons with at least 20 victories. He won 11 Pac-10 championships.
He coached more than 30 players who went on to the N.B.A., among them Steve Kerr, now the coach of the Golden State Warriors, and Luke Walton, the coach of the Sacramento Kings.
His future pro players also included Mike Bibby, Jason Terry, Damon Stoudamire, Richard Jefferson, Gilbert Arenas, Channing Frye, Chris Mills, Andre Iguodala and Miles Simon.
Olson was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 2002.
His signature moment came when Arizona defeated three top-seeded teams in the 1997 N.C.A.A. tournament, climaxed by an 84-79 overtime victory over Kentucky in the final to win the championship.
Rather than emphasize a specific style of play, Olson adjusted to the talents of his players, though he usually favored a free-flowing, up-tempo offense.
In the 1997 N.C.A.A. championship game, the Wildcats had quick guards in Bibby, Terry and Simon, all consensus All-Americans later in their collegiate careers.
“The way they want us to play is the way we want to play,” Olson told The New York Times, referring to Kentucky’s defensive pressure on the eve of the championship game. “We want it wide open. We want the court spread. Our game is to go at people. The toughest games that we have to deal with are the ones where people are going to slow the thing down.”
Robert Luther Olson was born on a farm outside Mayville, N.D., in the far eastern part of the state, on Sept. 22, 1934. His father, Albert, died of a stroke when Lute was 5 years old, and his mother, Alinda, moved the family to several towns before settling in Grand Forks, N.D. Olson led his high school team to the 1952 state championship, then played basketball, football and baseball at Augsburg College in Minnesota.
After coaching high school basketball, he was the head coach at Long Beach City College in California. He then coached at Long Beach State for one season, posting a 24-2 record, and at the University of Iowa for nine seasons, his teams there going 168-90.
Olson took the Hawkeyes to the N.C.A.A. tournament in his last five seasons, including a trip to the Final Four in 1980, when Iowa lost to the eventual champion, Louisville.
Olson had a reputation as a dogged recruiter, bringing him the nickname Midnight Lute for his ability to sign a player just when an opposing coach thought he had succeeded.
Upon Olson’s death, Stoudamire, an All-American at Arizona who went on to a long N.B.A. career, wrote on Twitter: “I told Denny Crum I was coming to Louisville. Midnight Lute called. We talked for 3 hrs! He changed my mind, then changed my life! Never truly in my eyes got the credit he deserved.”
The Lute Olson Award, bestowed since 2010, goes to the nation’s’ leading Division I player as voted by a 30-member committee.
Olson’s survivors include his third wife, Kelly Pugnea, whom he married in 2010. He had five children with his first wife, Bobbi (Russell) Olson, who died in 2001. His second marriage, to Christie (Jack) Toretti, whom he married in 2003, ended in divorce in 2007. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
Olson took a leave of absence before the 2006-7 season and was expected to return the following season, but he retired because of health problems.
The Arizona basketball arena, the McKale Center, includes the Lute and Bobbi Olson Court.
Olson had an impressive shock of silver hair that he kept impeccably groomed. Even amid the tension of Wildcats games, it never seemed out of place.
But when Arizona won the 1997 championship, one of Olson’s forwards, Bennett Davison, had the courage to go up to him and muss his hair. Olson managed a smile.
When Arizona unveiled a statue of Olson outside the McKale Center in April 2018, he was pleased by the depiction.
As he put it, “They got the hair right.”
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Lute Olson, Who Put Arizona on College Basketball Map, Dies at 85 - The New York Times
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