Pursuing Perfection

By CHRIS DUFRESNE

Nov. 16, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The Arizona Wildcats start the season as one of the greatest college basketball teams ever assembled, but we’re much more interested in where they’ll

end up.

Let us not mince words here. Arizona is that good.

If you don’t believe it, just ask them.

“This team can be as good as it wants to be,” senior center Loren Woods says. “I think with the talent that we have, it compares up there with anybody in the nation and the history of college basketball.”

It’s big talk, but, at 7 feet 1, Woods is a big man.

Even Coach Lute Olson, the prince of wince, has thrown up his hands on this one and isn’t even trying to stop the gush from his players.

It’s sort of like plugging a dam break with a wad of gum.

“I’ve always tried with our players to be upfront,” Olson says. “I’m not going to tell somebody you’re not very good if he’s pretty good.”

You have to admire Woods’ gumption.

We complain all the time about robotic players spouting the “one-game-at-a-time” company line, and here comes a guy waggling his index finger in the air like Joe Namath in Miami.

Refreshing, as long as you deliver, right?

Woods does not come to this discussion without talking points.

In a first, all five Arizona starters are on the Wooden Award watch list. This is a lineup--Woods, Richard Jefferson, Michael Wright, Gilbert Arenas, Jason Gardner--that may have won the national title last season if not for a back injury that forced Woods to sit out the NCAA tournament. Without Woods, Wisconsin dispatched Arizona in the second round.

With Woods sound after off-season back surgery, and a bench as deep as a trench, Arizona has a chance to be special.

Pacific 10 Conference coaches do not necessarily dispute this notion.

Washington Coach Bob Bender on Arizona: “In my first seven years in the league, this is the team you look at and say, clear-cut, they’re the best. Not only in the league, but nationally.”

Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery: “I think the potential is there for Arizona to be maybe as good a team as this conference has seen in a long time.”

Oregon Coach Ernie Kent: “It’s your pick, it’s our pick, it’s the most dominant team in the conference and maybe the most dominant team in the country.”

Woods and the Wildcats are not interested in being good, however, or merely winning a national title. In the locker room and in pickup games, they are talking about posterity.

The conversation?

“It just goes like, ‘Man, we can be one of the best teams ever. If, if, if, if, if,’ ” Woods said. “It’s just fun to us. We laugh about it, we always compare ourselves to past teams that were great, like Duke of ‘92, the Fab Five, UNLV.”

Sometimes the talk gets crazy. Sometimes Woods and his teammates razz Luke Walton, a key Arizona reserve and the son of Bill, who led UCLA to NCAA titles in 1972 and ’73.

“We still get on Luke,” Woods says. “We say we can beat Bill Walton’s UCLA teams, even though they won like three championships [two, actually] and went 88-1 maybe [86-4, actually]. But those teams had what we don’t have right now, and that’s killer instinct.”

What, historically, is Arizona up against?

Seven schools have gone undefeated en route to the NCAA championship. The first was San Francisco in 1956 (29-0), followed in 1957 by North Carolina (32-0). John Wooden led UCLA on undefeated championship runs in 1964 (30-0), 1967 (30-0), and consecutive 30-0 seasons in ’72 and ’73.

It has been 24 years since Indiana, in 1976, completed the last unbeaten season, going 32-0 en route to the title.

Will it happen again?

“No,” says Bender, a bench warmer for Knight’s 1976 squad. “There are just more good teams now. There’s quality in conferences that wasn’t there before and it’s also a fact that at almost every level of athletics, the consistency of hunger is harder to maintain today.”

There are other reasons. Schools play more games today, travel farther to play them--Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico--and purposely schedule more difficult nonconference games.

Also, with the bulk of the most talented players leaving early for the NBA, teams don’t stay together long enough to make exceptional NCAA runs.

Duke was an exception in the early 1990s, and its veteran core of Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, Thomas Hill and Bobby Hurley led the Blue Devils to consecutive titles in 1991 and ’92. The 1992 team finished 34-2, the losses coming in conference to North Carolina and Wake Forest. Duke spent the entire season at No. 1 and became the first school since UCLA to repeat as champion.

And lest you forget: Despite the hype, Michigan’s famed Fab Five failed to win an NCAA title, losing the 1992 and ’93 title games, although there’s no telling what history could have been made had that group stayed together for four years.

Still, perfection in college basketball may prove to be elusive.

Times have changed.

In 1976, the year Indiana ran the table, Rutgers also was unbeaten entering the Final Four before losing to Michigan in the national semifinals.

In 1979, Larry Bird’s fabled Indiana State team was unbeaten until losing to Magic Johnson and Michigan State in the NCAA title game.

The last team to make a serious run at perfection was Nevada Las Vegas in 1991, when the Runnin’ Rebels went unscathed until losing to Duke in the national semifinals, 79-77.

The year before, UNLV defeated Duke by 30 points to win the national title.

“I don’t think anybody can go undefeated anymore,” says USC Coach Henry Bibby, a starting guard on UCLA’s unbeaten 1972 team. “Teams are too [evenly] matched up. Teams gear up for those who play well. Teams are more prepared than ever before, and there is more talent everywhere. It’s not like one or two schools get everybody. And the big schools who could do it can’t because everybody is shooting for them every night.”

Luke Walton, this is not your daddy’s team.

“You have to win on the road, and that’s tough,” Bibby says. “The percentages are not high for another undefeated team. It’s tough enough to get back-to-back championships.”

Luke, are you listening?

“At UCLA we were so deep,” Bibby continues. “John Wooden was the ultimate coach and we had 10 pros. Swen Nater never played much at UCLA and he was an All-ABA player. One of best players to go through UCLA and not make pros was Larry Hollyfield. He was behind so many other great players, but he could have been an All-American on many other teams. Every year we started five NBA guys. The teams today that make a run at the NCAA have NBA guys, but they still don’t go undefeated.”

So, unless you plan on finishing as the greatest team ever, one argument goes, why even bother trying to go undefeated?

Who needs the headache?

When Kansas jumped out to a 22-0 start in 1997, Jerry Tarkanian suggested it would be better for Roy Williams’ team to lose a game to relieve the pressure.

“I do think if he loses one it might help him win the big one,” Tarkanian said at the time.

Tark spoke from experience, believing his phenomenal 1991 team buckled under the burden of being undefeated when it met Duke in the NCAA semifinals.

“What happened to us is the pressure kept mounting and mounting and mounting,” Tarkanian says now. “It wasn’t necessarily being undefeated, it was just all the pressure of repeating the national championship. We were always under some criticism from somebody. The worst thing that could have happened to us was playing Duke, because we beat them by 30 the year before. It was hard for us to sell our guys how good Duke would be.”

In some ways, trying for an unbeaten season in today’s game doesn’t make sense.

In 1996, Massachusetts, led by star center Marcus Camby, started the season 26-0 before losing to George Washington, 86-76, in February.

“In the end, it was good to get the streak off our backs,” Coach John Calipari wrote in “Refuse to Lose,” his book on that season. “I’m not sure we would have advanced to the Final Four had we remained unbeaten during the regular season. Other teams would have had that much more incentive to beat us. It was that much more of a weight on our own shoulders.”

Massachusetts rebounded from the loss and raced through the NCAA tournament, losing a thrilling national semifinal game to Kentucky, which then defeated Syracuse in the title game.

Going unbeaten in today’s game is so far-fetched most coaches of title-contending schools all but pencil in potential early season losses.

No coach is so bold as to think his team can win every game. The key to a championship run is testing your team early in the season with tough games.

“You’re going to play people who can beat you in December,” says Bender, who led Washington to a Sweet 16 run in 1998. “You do it so you realize what you are going into league, and it comes back to help you. You don’t do it for exposure.

“You don’t go to the Wooden Classic, or Coaches Vs. Cancer, for exposure. Hell, every game is on television anyway. You go to find out more about your team.”

This is probably the reason Olson is letting his players get all this “greatest team ever” stuff off their chests.

Olson knows. By design, his nonconference schedules are among the most challenging in the country. He factors early season losses into the larger scheme--being at your best come NCAA tournament time.

The chances of Arizona getting through the nonconference season unscathed are highly improbable. This year, the Wildcats play Illinois in Chicago, Connecticut at Storrs, Purdue at Indianapolis and host Texas, Louisiana State and Gonzaga.

Arizona plays at least 13 opponents who advanced to last season’s NCAA tournament.

“In all my years I’ve never seen anything gained by a 30-point win other than the reserves being a little bit happier about getting playing time,” Olson says. “This schedule is the most difficult, I think, we’ve ever had.”

But you know who thinks Arizona might be the first team since Indiana to go undefeated?

Tarkanian.

“I think Arizona has a shot at it this year,” Tarkanian says. “They’re so good. They’re so deep and their depth is incredible.”

So maybe Woods isn’t blowing smoke.

If Arizona players are fazed by the lofty expectations, it doesn’t show.

Last year’s squad won a share of the Pac-10 title and a No. 1 NCAA seeding in the West Region despite playing much of the conference season without the injured Woods and Jefferson.

This season, the all-star starting lineup is in place, allowing the savvy Walton and senior forward Justin Wessel to provide reserve depth. The Wildcats also return senior forward Eugene Edgerson, a key cog on the 1997 national title team. Edgerson redshirted last season in order to complete his education degree.

What’s not to like?

“The object is to get better toward the end,” Woods says. “I think since ‘76, the talent level has been so incredible in college that it’s almost impossible to go undefeated. Because no matter where you play, you can get different referees, the atmosphere can change the way certain people play. It’s just hard, plus teams can just be lucky, be downright lucky. They can beat you on any given day. That’s just the way it is.”

Still, Woods isn’t conceding anything.

“If I can go undefeated to win the national championship, then that’s what I want to do,” he says. “I don’t want to lose to UConn at Connecticut just so we can see what we have to do to get better. We should see what we have to do to get better even when we’re winning.”

We’ll check back on Arizona’s march . . .

In March.

Staff writer Mike Terry contributed to this story.

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1939: LIU 24-0

1940: SETON hALL 19-0

1944: ARMY 15-0

1954: KENTUCKY 25-0

1956: USF 29-0

1957: UNC 32-0

1964: UCLA 30-0

1967: UCLA 30-0