Arizona Questions Timing, Not Intent, of Great Eight

The inaugural Great Eight basketball tournament begins tonight and who better to throw out the first complaint than Arizona Coach Lute Olson, who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the Palace at Auburn Hills.

Olson has nothing against the idea of bringing the final eight teams of the previous year’s NCAA tournament together for a two-day, four-game event, but he hates the timing and the tail-wagging-the-dog philosophy adopted by Great Eight organizers.

“I was not in favor of participating in the Great Eight,” said Olson, whose team spent Sunday night and Monday morning traveling home from the Great Alaska Shootout. “I think it’s wrong that we schedule things based on television and we don’t take into account that these are student-athletes.”

Boston College faces Florida in tonight’s opening game, followed by Connecticut--a replacement for Arkansas--against Duke. Wednesday night’s schedule features Purdue vs. Missouri and then Michigan vs. Arizona.

To arrive in time, Olson said, the Wildcats will practice in Tucson at 7 a.m. today, attend classes, board an afternoon flight to Detroit and, if there are no delays, arrive at their suburban hotel by midnight. In all, Arizona’s players will miss two full days of classes.

“I personally don’t think it’s right and I objected to it then and I’m objecting to it now,” Olson said. “I think this should be a Saturday-Sunday kind of affair. I’m not in favor of it and I expressed that to our administration at the time it came up.”