Arizona makes official the line of succession to Olson

Sometimes it seemed as if Coach O had always been at Arizona and always would be.

Now there is K.O.

With Lute Olson on leave for the rest of this season for what he described as “personal issues within my family” along with a pending divorce from his second wife, the University of Arizona announced Tuesday that interim coach Kevin O’Neill eventually will succeed Olson when he chooses to step down.

At some point -- depending on whether Olson returns next season at 74 as he has said he intends to -- the coach the players call K.O. will be the new face of Arizona basketball.

“Kevin is our coach for now, and will be our coach in the future when Lute decides to retire,” Athletic Director Jim Livengood announced. “It goes without saying, but let me say it again: the University of Arizona’s appreciation for what Lute Olson has meant to our program is boundless.”

O’Neill’s style is as different from Olson’s as his balding pate is from Olson’s head of silver-white hair. Arizona’s players would no more call Olson L.O. than O’Neill would move into Olson’s office while he is still on leave.

But the succession move is one that helps Arizona manage the uncertainty about Olson’s situation and age during recruiting, and it is one Olson essentially engineered, wittingly or not, when he brought back his former assistant during the off-season.

O’Neill said he speaks to Olson often and that the two talked about the decision for O’Neill to be designated his successor. “We were both in agreement that would be the right thing to do,” O’Neill said.

Some people close to Olson believe he will return next season. But although his request for privacy is being closely guarded and Olson said in an earlier statement his leave wasn’t because of any health scare, there are indications he is dealing with more than marital problems.

In a statement released after Olson filed for divorce, his wife of 4 1/2 years, Christine, referred to a “difficult and private” family matter and expressed support for Olson at “this difficult time in his life.”

Gary Anderson, the Long Beach City College coach who played for Olson when Olson coached at the junior college and later sent his son, Rick, to play for Olson at Arizona, spoke with him after he announced a leave of absence and said Olson is “dealing with a couple of issues.”

“The problems he has are legitimate,” Anderson said. “But I kind of think he is coming back. He’s a tough old Norwegian, and he does such a great job.”

Few have watched Olson over a longer period than Anderson, who played for Olson in his first college job after a high school coaching career that included stops at Anaheim Loara High and Huntington Beach Marina High.

Those were the days when Olson, who had five children with his wife, Bobbi, who died of ovarian cancer in 2001, used to work summers as a driving instructor or driving a gasoline transport truck so he could earn extra money.

He took a pay cut to go to Long Beach City College, where he won a state title in 1971, then coached at Long Beach State for one season before leaving to become coach at Iowa in part because he was upset with Long Beach State officials for misleading him about the NCAA probation that followed Jerry Tarkanian’s tenure.

Olson took Iowa to the Final Four in 1980, and in 1983 moved to Arizona, where the Wildcats had gone 4-24 the previous season. Two seasons later, Arizona was in the NCAA tournament. Four appearances in the Final Four followed, including the Wildcats’ 1997 NCAA championship season.

During his 24 seasons at Arizona, the Wildcats have won 11 Pacific 10 titles and been to the NCAA tournament for 23 consecutive seasons.

“Before Lute, Arizona basketball was nothing, nationally. What Lute’s done is incredible,” Anderson said.

O’Neill, more overtly intense than Olson, first built his reputation as a relentless recruiter in the days when Olson’s Arizona program and Tarkanian’s Nevada Las Vegas program frequently went head to head.

When Olson brought back O’Neill last May, 18 years after he last worked for Arizona, he said it was to resolve issues in the program -- particularly on defense after Arizona fell to next-to-last in the Pacific 10 in scoring defense after a wave of defense-first coaches arrived, led by UCLA’s Ben Howland.

“We just felt that the defense needed to be shored up,” Olson said before the season.

Olson received some criticism for hiring O’Neill, who had gone on to be a head coach at Marquette, Tennessee and Northwestern and with the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, largely because the move effectively pushed aside longtime Arizona assistant Jim Rosborough.

Though Olson and O’Neill both said O’Neill, 50, was not brought in to be Olson’s successor, he was a more viable heir than either the older Rosborough or Josh Pastner or Miles Simon, the former players who are the other assistants.

“When I came in here, this was not part of the equation,” O’Neill said. “The unforeseen circumstances of Lute’s leave of absence put that in motion. I’m honored that I’m in a position where they considered me to be the successor to Lute and carry on the tradition. But was that in the plan? No way.”

Livengood called the job O’Neill has done under difficult circumstances “not good, not great, but phenomenal” after the Wildcats upset Texas A&M; this month, and the team is now 7-2 and ranked No. 19.

In Tucson, where Olson is a beloved figure, there has been a willingness to accept his request for privacy and questions about whether he is getting preferential treatment because he is still being paid his $738,000 base salary, a decision university officials said complies with policy but did not explain.

This isn’t the first time Olson has put family and personal concerns at the forefront. He took a less lengthy leave during the final days of his first wife’s illness and a period of bereavement, and in 2002, he skipped his own induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to be at his son Steve’s wedding in Italy.

Whether he has stepped away for the final time remains to be seen.

“I guess I think this whole thing has been building up,” Anderson said. “He’ll take a year off. Now at his age, if he enjoys the year off, we may not see him. You really get in the grind. When he steps away, because he never has stepped away, he may look around and say he likes it. Or he may say, ‘I still want to coach.’ ”

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robyn.norwood@latimes.com