Arnold coached Danny Ainge and the Cougars to the Elite Eight in 1981.
(George Frey | AP) Former BYU head coach Frank Arnold cheers during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game in Salt Lake City, Utah, Saturday, Dec. 4, 2010. Arnold died on June 8, 2024.
Former BYU basketball coach Frank Arnold, who led the Cougars to the program’s only trip to the Elite Eight in 1981, died Saturday.
The Ogden native was 89 years old.
Arnold coached the BYU men’s basketball team from 1975-83. During that stretch, the Cougars went 137-94, and won the Western Athletic Conference and went to the NCAA tournament three times.
In 1981, Arnold coached a team with three future NBA players — Greg Kite, Fred Roberts and John Wooden Award winner Danny Ainge — to a six-seed in the tournament.
The Cougars beat Princeton and three-seed UCLA in the first two rounds.
In the Sweet 16, Ainge scored a game-winner to lift the Cougars over No. 2 Notre Dame and onto the Elite Eight for the first time in BYU’s history.
After coaching at BYU, Arnold became the head coach at Hawaii for two seasons (1985-87) and later worked as an assistant at Arizona State.