They’re three of the most famous words in Arizona Wildcats history.
Simon Says Championship.
Nearly 30 years later, Billy Packer’s phrase still delivers goosebumps to Arizona fans old enough to remember the 1996-97 Wildcats win the national championship. For younger fans, it’s an entryway into the Arizona lexicon, right underneath Bear Down and Go Cats.
Miles Simon, the subject of the phrase, hears it every March from Arizona fans.
“It still gives me goosebumps if I’m watching like a highlight of the
end moments of the game when I caress the ball and go down on the floor,” Simon said this week. “And hearing that iconic phrase will never get old. It’ll never get old for me.”
Simon will hear it time and again over the next couple days as he and members of the 1996-97 team reunite at McKale Center at ALKEME Arena for this Saturday’s Red-Blue Showcase. The annual intrasquad scrimmage tips off at 2:30 p.m. MST and streams on ESPN+.
Simon is expected be joined by by Mike Bibby, Jason Terry, A.J. Bramlett, Eugene Edgerson, Bennett Davison, Jason Lee, Quynn Tebbs, Josh Pastner and others from the team as they celebrate the 30th anniversary season.
Simon said he and his former teammates regularly text about their former coach, Lute Olson, who passed away six years ago. Tuesday would have been Olson’s 92nd birthday.
“I think about Lute quite often when I think about this team,” Simon said. “Obviously Coach Olson will be dearly missed this weekend.
“Lute put this all together in the ’80s by one day deciding to leave the University of Iowa and come to Tucson, which had no real basketball lineage at that time. And then (for) him to make it into what it is now is tremendous, and we’re just fortunate to still be a small part of that 30 years later after winning the national title.”
Simon was the main point person in arranging the 96-97 team to make it to Saturday’s Red-Blue game. He said he remains in contact with nearly everyone from the team.
The timing of the reunion was convenient for Simon and other members of the team, many of whom still work in and around basketball.
“When I presented the idea, it was actually much easier than I thought,” Simon said. “The guys were all for it. They wanted do it. They wanted to be together. The program is in such a great place. Thirty years it’s still at the top, coming off a Final Four.”
Simon, who works as a color analyst for Fox Sports and CBS college basketball broadcasts, says winning a national title has paid dividends throughout his non-playing career.
When he helps out as a volunteer coach at his alma mater, Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., he garners respect from teenagers far too young to remember his playing days.
On TV broadcasts, his background as a former Most Outstanding Player of a Final Four gives him an added sense of credibility.
“t definitely helps because it gives you a level of respect anywhere that you go, because ‘Oh this dude did it at the highest level,’” Simon said.
As Simon gets older — he turns 51 in November — what makes him most proud of that 1997 title run is how the accomplishment stands out among the many great teams that have come through Arizona before and since.
“It’s still the most special basketball moment in my life,” Simon said. “It was something I had dreamed of as a kid to win the national championship, like probably even more so than making the NBA. That’s how I kind of grew up just loving college basketball. And to be on that stage and perform and succeed and win it all is just something I’ll never forget.”
