Wildcat junior forward Chase Budinger returns this season as perhaps the brightest shining star on Arizona's basketball team, yet last year it seemed the shine had dulled.
In 2007 it was truly a winter of discontent -- by March of '08 changes in head coaches and team philosophy had made for a disappointing season.
Chase Budinger speaks openly with KOLD 13 Sports about what last season was like for him-- starting with the announcement of Lute Olson's leave of absence.
Q: What was your relationship like with Kevin O'Neill?
Budinger: As a coach he liked things his way. I think the toughest thing for him was to relate to each player's personality. A lot of people got frustrated throughout the year. It just killed people's morale and killed people's eagerness to play basketball.
Q: People got frustrated. You included?
Budinger: Yes there were times when I was very frustrated with how the season was going. I know guys like me, Nic, Jordan, and Jerryd were getting a lot of minutest and Coach O'Neill didn't let any other player really have a chance to step up and show what they had in games. We had to take on the load in playing 40 minutes a game. I think that tired us out throughout the season.
Q: What was more challenging? Dealing with Coach Olson's leave of absence or Kevin O'Neill's methods?
Budinger: A little bit of both. The toughest challenge was making the transition from Coach O's style to Coach O'Neill's style in such a quick period of time.
Q: The season ends in Washington, D.C. At that point, how relieved are you that '07-'08 is done?
Budinger: I wasn't relieved at the time I felt that we had a chance to go pretty far, that we had a good chance of making a run at the end. That didn't happen. I took a couple of days to look back on the season. After a couple weeks it hit me. I was glad that the season was over because it was such a roller coaster ride. I just had to think forward to the future and look towards next year.
