In December 1987, a time when newspapers still had silly money and serious ambition, I was dispatched by The (Louisville) Courier-Journal to Tucson for a story on Arizona basketball, a blooming phenomenon far off the beaten path of college hoops. At the time Kentucky was ranked No. 1 in the nation, nothing shocking there. Arizona was ranked No. 2, which was unprecedented.
The coach, Lute Olson, had surprisingly withdrawn from the Kentucky job search a couple of years earlier, and the blueblood hired Eddie Sutton instead. (That didn’t end well.) Our managing editor, a huge Kentucky fan, wanted to know how all of this was possible—how could anyone turn down Kentucky to stay at Arizona, and how could Arizona become this good?