Arizona fans have no one to blame but themselves

Midwest Regional | Edge: Louisville-Michigan State

INDIANAPOLIS -- This is what happens when a coach overstays his welcome. This is it. Look carefully, Arizona fans. Don't you dare turn away from what you wrought. That's right. You.

You did this. You insisted Lute Olson should stay as long as he wanted. Through his health issues. Through his deteriorating coaching competency. Too long he stayed, with Arizona fans not just allowing it to happen -- Arizona fans ran interference. And this is the result.

A 39-point loss. In the Sweet 16. Humiliating. But this is what you wanted. You wanted Lute Olson's fingerprints on this program for as long as he wanted them there, and this final smudge, this 103-64 loss Friday night to top-seeded Louisville, is the lesson that should linger.

On the bright side, it can't get any worse. On the down side, I just lied to you. It can get worse, and it will. Friday night's loss to Louisville was just the flush of the toilet.

Just wait until the program spirals down those pipes.

Don't tell me it can't happen. I watched the North Carolina basketball team go 8-20 in 2002. I watched Indiana go 6-25 this season. Nobody is untouchable, least of all an Arizona basketball program that wasn't even playing basketball Friday night. Arizona was playing hockey.

This was a power play. 5-on-3. That's all Arizona has, three high-quality players, and the 12th-seeded Wildcats tried to beat Louisville 5-on-3. Didn't happen. Wasn't ever going to happen. Even an idiot knew how this game was going to go.

Nic Wise might opt to go to the NBA instead of staying with Arizona. (Getty Images)

And now that idiot will tell you how next season will go.

It'll go Indiana basketball bad. Notre Dame football bad. New York Mets baseball, 1962, bad.

Arizona has three good players, and two of them are gone. Maybe all three. Junior center Jordan Hill will turn pro, even if he did play his way out of the first round -- but into a Charmin endorsement -- Friday night. Junior small forward Chase Budinger will turn pro. Junior guard Nic Wise doesn't need to be turning pro, but like Taurean Green left the Florida Gators two years ago simply because everyone else was getting out of Dodge, I can see Wise hitting the road, too.

But let's be nice to Arizona. Today is a day for sympathy and kindness, and I'm all about sympathy and kindness. So let's say Wise returns for his senior season.

Even with Wise, Arizona might not win 10 games next season.

Isn't that sympathetic and kind?

So what. It's true.

Once Hill and Budinger are gone, Arizona will have very little in the cupboard and nothing coming in. And nobody is even going shopping right now, and I'm being figurative. No UConn recruiting jokes, please. But with Russ Pennell an interim coach with no chance at the position permanently, Arizona has basically taken a year off the recruiting trail -- at the worst possible time.

Budinger, Hill and Wise combined for 50 of Arizona's 64 points Friday night. Nobody else on the team had more than three. So Arizona's best players are going to leave the program early. It has no recruits of note coming in. And nobody is recruiting right now. This is Indiana minus the Kelvin Sampson scandal. Tom Crean had to start from scratch, which is how Indiana went from being ranked in the top 10 late last season to going 6-25 this year.

The thing is, Arizona could have avoided this fate, but nobody at Arizona was strong enough to tell Lute Olson that his player development was eroding and his leadership was evaporating and his program was going under. It was far easier for the people who should have been safeguarding Arizona's future to look at Lute Olson's past and stick their fingers in their ears and say I can't hear you, I can't hear you. No succession plan was in this place, and soon Arizona will wish it could secede from the Pac-10 and join the Big Sky Conference.

Friday night was the first step down for Arizona, and it didn't have to be this ugly. But Pennell is an Arizona State radio guy pretending to be the Arizona coach, and he had his shorthanded team do the unthinkable -- he had Arizona press Louisville! Hahahahaha. I mean, honestly. Arizona would prefer to play five players, and only five, and only because Pennell can't play just the three legitimate high-major players on his roster. But Arizona decided to press Louisville midway through the first half and keep it up, intermittently, the rest of the way.

This might stun Pennell, but his team wore down.

Arizona trailed 24-17 when the roof caved in. They were tired and started to miss shots on offense and foul on defense. Soon it was 43-21. Then 60-33. It was at that point when I started laughing.

I'll tell you why. Louisville's best player, Terrence Williams, had just grabbed a defensive rebound -- and in the same motion, as he was floating back to the floor, made a 360-degree circle with the ball behind his back. As he was coming down with a rebound, mind you. And then he passed the ball up the court to Earl Clark for a 3-pointer that made it 60-33. I laughed. What else was there to do? I was laughing with Terrence Williams, and I was laughing at Arizona.

The pity comes next year.