Long-time Oregon and Idaho men’s basketball coach Don Monson died earlier this month in Spokane, Wash. He was 92. He twice thought he would be Arizona’s basketball coach.
In the late stages of the 1982-83 college basketball season, Monson was the hottest name on the coaching market. He had coached Idaho, of all teams, to an AP poll ranking as high as No. 6 and went 52-7 in a two-year period. When Arizona parted ways with Fred Snowden, it was widely speculated Monson would be Arizona’s next coach. He phoned me one day at the Star and told me he had talked to UA athletic director Dave Strack and wanted the job. Alas, Strack hired Grand Canyon’s Ben Lindsey, who was a disaster, finishing 4-24 and getting fired.
After Lindsey was fired, I phoned Monson and asked if he was still interested in the UA job. He was. But new Arizona AD Cedric Dempsey had a bigger view of the UA job and instead hired Lute Olson away from Iowa. About a week before Arizona hired Olson, Monson became the head coach at Oregon. How’d that go? In nine years, he never went to the NCAA Tournament, never won 20 games, and went 3-17 against Olson.
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Monson was a good man and a good coach whose timing was wrong. He went to Oregon before the Ducks were infused with money by Nike’s Phil Knight. Imagine how different Arizona’s athletic history would be if either Strack or Dempsey had hired Monson. Let’s just say there would be a lot of vacant space where all those championship banners now hang in the McKale Center rafters.
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