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Sierra Tucson Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Administrative & Professional Tucson Urban League CEO/President Administrative & Professional Jorgensen Brooks Group Counselor Trades/Construction RANCHO RESORT MAINTANANCE POSITION Mechanical Komatsu Equipment Co Resident Field Mechanic Health Care Dependable Health Services Physical Therapists Sales and Marketing Everready Glass Sales Reps UA SportsOpinion by Greg Hansen : Arizona vs. Stanford likely to be a battle of coaching willsTucson, Arizona | Published: 01.17.2008
Collectively, Kevin O'Neill and Trent Johnson have been in the coaching business, college, pro and high school, for almost 60 years and 3,000 games.
Combined, they have gone through more than 20 jobs.
In all that time, their paths have crossed once: In December 1986, Johnson, then a first-year assistant at Utah, coached on a staff that beat Arizona 68-67 at McKale Center. O'Neill was in his third game at Arizona.
They would not recognize each other if they sat together on a bus.
Some of it is understandable. Johnson is a West Coast guy: He coached in Idaho, Utah, Washington and Nevada. He played at Boise State.
O'Neill is an East Coast guy: He coached in New York, Toronto, Chicago, Milwaukee and in Delaware, among other places. He played in Montreal.
When they greet each other before tonight's UA-Stanford game at Maples Pavilion, they will be relative strangers, yet ironically, they could chat at length about their common bond and impossibly difficult appointments.
No two Pac-10 basketball coaches (John Wooden coached in the Pac-8) are more mutually linked than O'Neill and Johnson. Perhaps ever.
Both have replaced titans of the coaching industry and both have discovered how lonely and difficult it is going to be.
Johnson is in his fourth season at Stanford. He followed the esteemed Mike Montgomery, who went 30-2 in his final college season, was four times the Pac-10 coach of the year, directed the Cardinal to the 1998 Final Four and was ranked No. 1 nationally during three seasons.
None of that is likely to happen again at Stanford, although you cannot reasonably expect Cardinal fans, spoiled by 18 seasons of Montgomery's success, to understand.
O'Neill stepped in for the stately Lute Olson, whose numbers (and national status) are greater than those of Montgomery. But who's quibbling? Over the last 20 years, Olson and Montgomery were to West Coast basketball as Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Calhoun were to East Coast hoops.
Johnson is 51; O'Neill 50. Their expectations are similar, yet they could not be more different.
Johnson has a gruff exterior, regularly barks at the refs and wears his emotions on his sleeve, but is extremely well-liked by his players. He's a real softie inside. Johnson mostly deploys the deliberate Montgomery system, although he has given his players more offensive liberty.
Whereas Montgomery won .702 percent of his Stanford games, Johnson suffers by comparison at .601. None of his first three teams won 20 games or seriously challenged for the Pac-10 title.
You can safely assume he has taken an enormous share of hits from critics and will continue to be an easy target. He opened 6-7 in his first 13 Stanford games and the locals began to miss Montgomery in record time.
O'Neill is a grinder, but a gentleman on the sidelines. Behind the locker room doors, he is not afraid to hurt feelings. He holds the reins tight and prefers a crawl-and-a-free-throw to a sprint-and-a-dunk. He does not use the Olson system.
When the Wildcats lost to Oregon, and then at Arizona State, O'Neill for the first time became a topic of criticism. His honeymoon lasted all of 12 games.
Much like Johnson, whose early days at Stanford were scarred by injuries to standout players such as Dan Grunfeld and Matt Haryasz, O'Neill's progress has been stunted by injuries to Jerryd Bayless, Fendi Onobun and Bret Brielmaier.
Critics of college basketball coaches — of any coach, anywhere — do not factor injuries into the equation. Show me the scoreboard is what counts.
The first O'Neill vs. Johnson match is tempered somewhat by the presence of UCLA, which has vaulted past Arizona and Stanford and become the league's power franchise. That's what makes replacing Montgomery and Olson even more imposing.
To acquire a full appreciation of what it was that Olson and Montgomery accomplished — and how difficult it will be for anyone to duplicate their successes — consider these numbers:
In Montgomery's 18 years at Stanford, he was 125-37 in Pac-10 games at Maples Pavilion. That includes 18-0 against Oregon, 17-1 against Washington and 16-2 against Cal.
Olson was the only man to crack Montgomery's grip at Maples. Arizona went 11-7 in that intimate house of basketball horrors and it remains a testament to the success of both coaches.
When Olson's teams were good enough to beat a Montgomery team, it meant they were good enough to win anywhere. For 18 years, one against another, they reflected and fed off each other's success.
The UA-Stanford series is no longer a battle of styles, one TV coaching star versus another, but rather a battle of wills.
All that matters now is the scoreboard. The personalities on the sidelines have not yet become a story as big as the game.
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