USC Big Ten Tour: Before building Arizona, Lute Olson took Iowa to the Final Four
Before he became a Pac-10 legend at Arizona, Lute Olson was already beloved in Iowa City. Olson took the Iowa Hawkeye men’s basketball team to the Final Four in 1980. Iowa went to Indianapolis and lost to eventual national champion Louisville in the national semifinals.
Yes, that run to the 1980 Final Four was a fun and special ride for Iowa and its fans, but what makes that run even more special, 43 years later, is the reality that Iowa has never gotten back to the Final Four since then. The closest the Hawkeyes came was in 1987, when they reached the Elite Eight but lost to UNLV and Jerry Tarkanian in Seattle.
Lute Olson is widely known and remembered in Pac-12 country (we refer to him as a Pac-10 legend because his coaching career ended before the Pac-10 became the Pac-12). Yet, it’s important to know how much of an imprint he made on Iowa basketball before he journeyed to Tucson and created a Western college basketball powerhouse.
Hawkeyes Wire editor Josh Helmer helps us remember Lute Olson, the Iowa years, on the latest edition of our USC Big Ten Tour summer series podcast.
(CORRECTION INSIDE THE PODCAST: We mentioned on the podcast episode below that Fat Lever was part of Iowa basketball. That is incorrect. He played at Arizona State in 1980.)
