Cretaceous Cats: Arizona Dino-Sized ‘Wildcats’ Talent From the Jurassic Film Era

1993 Jurassic Park

The one that started it all is by far the greatest in the franchise. What made it so great is you didn’t see the dinosaurs very often. Stevie Spielberg took a play out of his Jaws playbook and scared us with dinosaurs by not actually showing us the creatures that much. When they finally appeared, it was a huge payoff.

This movie was scary. It had goat legs falling on top of vehicles, Samuel L. Jackson lost his arm, and Newman from Seinfeld died a slow and painful death because a cute dinosaur became un-cute in a hurry, and spit poison in his face.

1992-93 Arizona Wildcats 24-4

The 1992-93 season for the Wildcats was also scary.

The regular season was not scary at all. They dominated the Pac-10 with a 17-1 record and finished the regular season 24-3.

Going into the tournament the sky was the limit.  The Cats were a No. 2 seed and were matched up against the No. 15 seed Santa Clara Broncos. 

Arizona was looking to go on a huge run for Chris Mills‘ final NCAA Tournament.

That’s when things got scary. For the second straight year Arizona lost in the first round and all was not well in Mudville.

Arizona Wildcats

But Lute and the boys had the last laugh. The next season, with the best backcourt in the country, the Cats went all the way to the Final Four, before losing to the eventual National Champion Arkansas Razorbacks.

Player/Character Comparisons

Kevin Flanagan/Brontosaurus  

Flanagan was one of the most popular bench players of the 1990’s. It didn’t hurt that every girl in Tucson was in love with him. He broke a thousand hearts when he wed former Wildcat and current NFL Network reporter, Alex Flanagan.

So why would I compare Kevin Flanagan with the Brontosaurus near the beginning of the movie? Because that Brontosaurus has Dr. Allen Grant and his counterpart Dr. Ellie Satler, looking up in complete awe the first time they see the creature. It is much like the looks, the girls of Tucson gave Flanagan when he was a Wildcat. 

Damon Stoudamire and Khalid Reeves/Velociraptors duo 

It wasn’t until the 1993-94 season that Stoudamire and Reeves really dominated as a duo but they were still pretty good in 1992-93. Their quickness and killer instinct on the court mimicked the Velociraptor duo in the first film.

Near the end of the movie, the Raptors teamed up and cornered animal trainer Robert Muldoon before eating him alive. Stoudamire and Reeves teamed up as a duo to eat up Pac-10 defenses from 1991-1994. Oh yeah, and Stoudamire played for the Toronto Raptors, so I guess that was an easy one.

Joseph Blair/Dr. Ian Malcolm

Blair Down is Joseph Blair‘s mantra. Dr. Ian Malcolm prefers to subscribe to chaos theory. Either way they both are amazing guys with an cool sense of style and humor.

In the pantheon of Arizona Basketball big men I feel that Blair is often overlooked for what he accomplished on the court. In his Arizona career he averaged 10 points and 7 boards a game. What always impressed me about Blair was how well he ran the floor as a big man on fast breaks.

Have you ever seen the videos Blair and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson put together? I imagine these videos are an underground cult phenomenon in Tucson.

Sometimes they were hard to watch but I couldn’t ever turn away. Like Ian Malcolm, Blair was sometimes nutty and weird, in the videos. It probably didn’t help that Rondae is a nut too.

In Jurassic Park, Malcolm is seriously injured by a T-Rex. 

According to the above video(1:41), Rondae Hollis-Jefferson injured Blair on the forehead and the long scare remains. In this scenario, Hollis-Jefferson is the T-Rex.

If you keep reading you will see why I compare Hollis-Jefferson to the T-Rex in Jurassic World.

Next: 1997 : The Lost World