Hansen's Sunday Notebook: At first glance, Wildcats freshman Markkanen a sight to behold
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
I introduced myself to Arizona freshman Lauri Markkanen at last week’s media session, speaking slowly and loudly, naively presuming the 7-footer from Finland might have difficulty with the language.
He gave me a half-smirk. Bring it.
“He gets it, he understands everything,” said redshirt freshman teammate Ray Smith. “I think he speaks four languages fluently.”
Markkanen speaks Finnish, Swedish, German and even Estonian. He is street smart and then some.
Exactly a year ago, Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak arranged for Markkanen to make an official recruiting visit to Salt Lake City on the weekend Markkanen’s Helsinki Academy coach, Hanno Möttölä, was inducted into the Utes’ Hall of Fame. Coach K assigned Utah’s All-America center, Austrian Jakob Poeltl, to be Markkanen’s host for the weekend.
So why didn’t Markkanen succumb to Utah’s offer?
“I didn’t think Jakob would be returning” this season, said Markkanen. “I wanted to go where I would have the best chance of winning.”
Markkanen appreciated the aggressive recruiting of Arizona coach Sean Miller, who visited Helsinki, and the never-give-up attitude of UA assistant coach Joe Pasternack.
Pasternack “was always with me,” he said. “It seemed like I heard from him every day.”
Beyond that, Markkanen entered his international recruiting chase ahead of the game. His father, Pekka Markkanen, started 33 games for Kansas’ 30-5 team of 1989-90. He averaged 7 points and 4 rebounds a game for the Jayhawks and got a full introduction to college basketball in America: He started for a KU team that beat Shaquille O’Neal’s LSU Tigers and rocked Kentucky 150-95.
Recruiting in Finland is no longer a novel idea. Oklahoma last week got a commitment from 6-8 Hannes Polla, about the time Utah Valley reached agreement with 6-7 Joonas Tahvanainen to play for that WAC team. A year ago, the 6-7 Samuli Nieminen signed with midmajor power Stephen F. Austin.
Miller’s media day assessment of Markkanen confirmed what European scouting services have said about Markkanen for two years. He is a rare talent.
“He’s probably the best pick-and-pop player on the team,” said Smith.
Said center Chance Comanche: “He’s a great ballhandler; it’s almost insane for someone his size.”
I asked Markkanen how to properly pronounce his first name.
“Lowry,” he said. “Not Lorrie.”
Tucsonans will be on a first-name basis with Mr. Markkanen soon.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
As Cienega High School routed Salpointe Catholic 51-14 Friday night, I got my first extended look at Cienega junior quarterback Jamarye Joiner, who has committed to play at Arizona beginning in 2018.
Three words: Oh. My. Goodness.
Joiner isn’t a top-level passer yet — he is 31 for 61 for 695 yards in Cienega’s 6-0 start — but he is everything else. You can picture him as a shutdown cornerback, or an option QB. He is about 6 feet 2 inches and closer to 200 pounds than 180. He is a game-changer, averaging 9 yards per carry.
By my count, since World War II, only seven scholarship quarterbacks from Tucson schools have become starters at FBS colleges: Tucson’s Fred W. Enke at Arizona; Tucson’s Pat Flood at Navy; Amphi’s Jim Krohn at Arizona; Mountain View’s James MacPherson at Wake Forest; Sahuaro’s Reggie Robertson at Cal; Salpointe’s Tyler Graunke at Hawaii and Sahuaro’s Rodney Peete at USC.
Cienega coach Pat Nugent couldn’t have timed it better, going from his post as Pima College’s head coach to Cienega. How many times, especially in Tucson, do you inherit a QB like Joiner?
But it’s not like Nugent isn’t due; he left the head coaching job at CDO just as Ka’Deem Carey and that group led the 14-0 Dorados to the 2009 state championship. Cienega still has one major test — Oct. 21 against 5-1 Ironwood Ridge — before it can start thinking about the state playoffs.
But if Joiner is your QB, you’ve got a chance against anybody.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Collegiate Baseball magazine ranks Jay Johnson’s first full Arizona recruiting class No. 4 nationally. It lists ASU No. 1. The intrigue is that the Sun Devils’ class includes former UA infielder Jackson Willeford, who played under Andy Lopez in 2013 but only started six games before injuring his elbow and transferring to Cypress College in Southern California. Willeford, a fifth-year senior, has one year of eligibility remaining and indicated he would like to return to Tucson. But Johnson chose to give a more substantial scholarship package to Las Vegas infielder Nick Quintana, who is ranked as the nation’s No. 6 overall recruit in the Class of 2016 by Perfect Game Baseball, and No. 2 overall in the Pac-12.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Wolfgang Weber, who has coached Salpointe Catholic’s boys soccer teams to six state championships, is recovering from triple bypass heart surgery at Banner Health UMC. At 69, Weber, the Father of Tucson Soccer, remains active with Tucson Soccer Academy, as a board member and coach, and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if he returns to coach the Lancers when they open the season just after Thanksgiving. We wish him the best.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Pam Reed, director of December’s Tucson Marathon, had a remarkable month of competition in September. She was the eighth overall American woman to finish the Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc near Chamonix, France — a 100-mile run that reached into Italy and Switzerland — requiring 38 hours and 40 minutes. She also ran the 100-mile Wasatch Front race, third of all women in 31 hours and 38 minutes. Next week Reed, 55, will compete in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Amazing.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Salpointe grad Donny Sands is at the New York Yankees fall instructional league camp this week, working with, among others, Alex Rodriguez. The Yankees are making Sands a catcher; he was mostly a shortstop/pitcher at Salpointe in 2015 before the Yankees made him an eighth-round draft pick. Sands finished the season with a batting average of exactly .300, catching for Pulaski of the rookie Appalachian League.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Pima College men’s basketball coach Brian Peabody began the season Saturday, believe it or not. The Aztecs played in the ACCAC Jamboree in Phoenix. Before the regular season begins next month, Peabody’s Aztecs will play a scrimmage against Hillcrest Prep Academy of Phoenix on Oct. 22 at 4 p.m., in the PCC gymnasium. Hillcrest’s top player, of course, is 7-foot Arizona commit DeAndre Ayton. Peabody’s top player this season is likely to be Empire High School grad Deion James, a 6-7 wing player who has received interest from recruiters at UTEP, Washington State, Grand Canyon, USF and New Mexico State, among others.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Sean Miller agreed to be part of the Final Four’s “Read To the Final Four” program, joining the Phoenix-based committee’s schedule on Tuesday. He will read to third-graders at Roskruge Bilingual K-8 School near the UA campus.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Former Sabino High all-state tight end Matt Bushman was back at his alma mater last week, helping coach Jay Campos’ bid for a state title by mentoring the Sabercats. Bushman returned from a LDS mission to Spain last month and plans to enroll at BYU and play football for the Cougars in 2017.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Pima College’s women’s basketball team, which finished No. 3 in the nation under coach Todd Holthaus last season, began official workouts Saturday morning. The Aztecs are loaded. Sophomore point guard Sydni Stallworth of Palo Verde High was recently offered a full scholarship by Alaska-Anchorage coach Ryan McCarthy, whose team finished 38-3 last year and reached the NCAA Division II Final Four. I think McCarthy finished No. 2 to Adia Barnes in Greg Byrne’s search for a women’s basketball coach at Arizona.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Late Friday afternoon, in the heat of the day, I was in a line at the Randolph Golf Course driving range with 20 or 30 other golf wannabes. The only golfer who seemed out of place was UA junior Krystal Quihuis. She hit range balls for about an hour and then went to work on her short game. Friday should’ve been a day off for Quihuis, a two-time state champion from Salpointe Catholic, and the Pac-12’s 2015 Freshman of the Year. She had returned from the Annika Intercollegiate near Orlando, Florida, a day earlier, and is preparing for the Windy City Collegiate Classic near Chicago that begins Monday. Except for sophomore standout Haley Moore, a potential first-team All-American, the Wildcats didn’t play well under ex-Wildcat Annika Sorenstam’s gaze last week. To her credit, Quihuis got right back to work in an attempt to help her team back into the top 10 polls.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
When Arnold Palmer was 76, he worked with Tucson’s First Tee program while in Tucson to christen the nine holes he designed at Starr Pass Golf Club. The Conquistadores presented Arnie with a gold-plated Conquistadores helmet that day in 2005, emblematic of his victory at the 1967 Tucson Open. In his fabulous career, Palmer played in the Tucson Open seven times, beginning in 1955 at El Rio Golf Course. (He didn’t win a penny that year.) My favorite Tucson-related Arnie story is that after playing his new layout at Starr Pass, he sat with noted Tucson golf writer Jack Rickard and spoke about golf, his management firm that operated Starr Pass, and a lot of other stuff. Most impressive, he called Jack by name when he sat down. First class.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
The Tucson Roadrunners will stage their first-ever practice Monday at the Tucson Arena and play an exhibition game Thursday at the San Jose Barracuda. Next Sunday, Oct. 9, the Roadrunners and Arizona Coyotes will play the inaugural Red/White scrimmage at the Tucson Arena at 1 p.m. There is no admission charge. How good is that?
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
The Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl has become more visible and clearly more aggressive in Year 2 as it prepares for kickoff on Dec. 30 at Arizona Stadium.
It sold 20,425 tickets last year; the game’s founder, Tucson attorney Ali Farhang, insists that the Friday afternoon game will sell more than 30,000 this year.
Two positives: The game will kick off at 3 p.m. rather than last year’s 5:30, when it was 44 degrees. It will be played on a Friday, the climax to two days of downtown festivities.
Farhang hired Tucson marketing whiz Mike Feder to be the bowl’s executive director; Feder is a tireless worker and trusted face in the community. A year ago, the Arizona Bowl barely had three months preparation.
New this year: The Arizona Bowl Kickoff Luncheon will be held Oct. 14 at the DoubleTree Hotel at noon. Tucsonan Kerri Strug, darling gold medalist of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, will be honored with the Governor’s Award. The key speaker will be Arizona Hall of Fame linebacker Ricky Hunley.
Strug and Hunley? You can’t beat that twosome. (Tickets for the luncheon are available; phone 520-202-4838 and at novahomeloans.com.
The only mystery, as always, are the chosen teams from the Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences. Those who would likely attract and bring the most fans would be bowl-starved New Mexico State and UNLV, both within driving distance of Tucson.
An Aggies vs. Rebels game would be a grand slam.
I introduced myself to Arizona freshman Lauri Markkanen at last week’s media session, speaking slowly and loudly, naively presuming the 7-footer from Finland might have difficulty with the language.
He gave me a half-smirk. Bring it.
“He gets it, he understands everything,” said redshirt freshman teammate Ray Smith. “I think he speaks four languages fluently.”
Markkanen speaks Finnish, Swedish, German and even Estonian. He is street smart and then some.
Exactly a year ago, Utah coach Larry Krystkowiak arranged for Markkanen to make an official recruiting visit to Salt Lake City on the weekend Markkanen’s Helsinki Academy coach, Hanno Möttölä, was inducted into the Utes’ Hall of Fame. Coach K assigned Utah’s All-America center, Austrian Jakob Poeltl, to be Markkanen’s host for the weekend.
So why didn’t Markkanen succumb to Utah’s offer?
“I didn’t think Jakob would be returning” this season, said Markkanen. “I wanted to go where I would have the best chance of winning.”
Markkanen appreciated the aggressive recruiting of Arizona coach Sean Miller, who visited Helsinki, and the never-give-up attitude of UA assistant coach Joe Pasternack.
Pasternack “was always with me,” he said. “It seemed like I heard from him every day.”
Beyond that, Markkanen entered his international recruiting chase ahead of the game. His father, Pekka Markkanen, started 33 games for Kansas’ 30-5 team of 1989-90. He averaged 7 points and 4 rebounds a game for the Jayhawks and got a full introduction to college basketball in America: He started for a KU team that beat Shaquille O’Neal’s LSU Tigers and rocked Kentucky 150-95.
Recruiting in Finland is no longer a novel idea. Oklahoma last week got a commitment from 6-8 Hannes Polla, about the time Utah Valley reached agreement with 6-7 Joonas Tahvanainen to play for that WAC team. A year ago, the 6-7 Samuli Nieminen signed with midmajor power Stephen F. Austin.
Miller’s media day assessment of Markkanen confirmed what European scouting services have said about Markkanen for two years. He is a rare talent.
“He’s probably the best pick-and-pop player on the team,” said Smith.
Said center Chance Comanche: “He’s a great ballhandler; it’s almost insane for someone his size.”
I asked Markkanen how to properly pronounce his first name.
“Lowry,” he said. “Not Lorrie.”
Tucsonans will be on a first-name basis with Mr. Markkanen soon.
As Cienega High School routed Salpointe Catholic 51-14 Friday night, I got my first extended look at Cienega junior quarterback Jamarye Joiner, who has committed to play at Arizona beginning in 2018.
Three words: Oh. My. Goodness.
Joiner isn’t a top-level passer yet — he is 31 for 61 for 695 yards in Cienega’s 6-0 start — but he is everything else. You can picture him as a shutdown cornerback, or an option QB. He is about 6 feet 2 inches and closer to 200 pounds than 180. He is a game-changer, averaging 9 yards per carry.
By my count, since World War II, only seven scholarship quarterbacks from Tucson schools have become starters at FBS colleges: Tucson’s Fred W. Enke at Arizona; Tucson’s Pat Flood at Navy; Amphi’s Jim Krohn at Arizona; Mountain View’s James MacPherson at Wake Forest; Sahuaro’s Reggie Robertson at Cal; Salpointe’s Tyler Graunke at Hawaii and Sahuaro’s Rodney Peete at USC.
Cienega coach Pat Nugent couldn’t have timed it better, going from his post as Pima College’s head coach to Cienega. How many times, especially in Tucson, do you inherit a QB like Joiner?
But it’s not like Nugent isn’t due; he left the head coaching job at CDO just as Ka’Deem Carey and that group led the 14-0 Dorados to the 2009 state championship. Cienega still has one major test — Oct. 21 against 5-1 Ironwood Ridge — before it can start thinking about the state playoffs.
But if Joiner is your QB, you’ve got a chance against anybody.
Collegiate Baseball magazine ranks Jay Johnson’s first full Arizona recruiting class No. 4 nationally. It lists ASU No. 1. The intrigue is that the Sun Devils’ class includes former UA infielder Jackson Willeford, who played under Andy Lopez in 2013 but only started six games before injuring his elbow and transferring to Cypress College in Southern California. Willeford, a fifth-year senior, has one year of eligibility remaining and indicated he would like to return to Tucson. But Johnson chose to give a more substantial scholarship package to Las Vegas infielder Nick Quintana, who is ranked as the nation’s No. 6 overall recruit in the Class of 2016 by Perfect Game Baseball, and No. 2 overall in the Pac-12.
Wolfgang Weber, who has coached Salpointe Catholic’s boys soccer teams to six state championships, is recovering from triple bypass heart surgery at Banner Health UMC. At 69, Weber, the Father of Tucson Soccer, remains active with Tucson Soccer Academy, as a board member and coach, and it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if he returns to coach the Lancers when they open the season just after Thanksgiving. We wish him the best.
Pam Reed, director of December’s Tucson Marathon, had a remarkable month of competition in September. She was the eighth overall American woman to finish the Ultra Trail du Mont-Blanc near Chamonix, France — a 100-mile run that reached into Italy and Switzerland — requiring 38 hours and 40 minutes. She also ran the 100-mile Wasatch Front race, third of all women in 31 hours and 38 minutes. Next week Reed, 55, will compete in the Ironman World Championships in Hawaii. Amazing.
Salpointe grad Donny Sands is at the New York Yankees fall instructional league camp this week, working with, among others, Alex Rodriguez. The Yankees are making Sands a catcher; he was mostly a shortstop/pitcher at Salpointe in 2015 before the Yankees made him an eighth-round draft pick. Sands finished the season with a batting average of exactly .300, catching for Pulaski of the rookie Appalachian League.
Pima College men’s basketball coach Brian Peabody began the season Saturday, believe it or not. The Aztecs played in the ACCAC Jamboree in Phoenix. Before the regular season begins next month, Peabody’s Aztecs will play a scrimmage against Hillcrest Prep Academy of Phoenix on Oct. 22 at 4 p.m., in the PCC gymnasium. Hillcrest’s top player, of course, is 7-foot Arizona commit DeAndre Ayton. Peabody’s top player this season is likely to be Empire High School grad Deion James, a 6-7 wing player who has received interest from recruiters at UTEP, Washington State, Grand Canyon, USF and New Mexico State, among others.
Sean Miller agreed to be part of the Final Four’s “Read To the Final Four” program, joining the Phoenix-based committee’s schedule on Tuesday. He will read to third-graders at Roskruge Bilingual K-8 School near the UA campus.
Former Sabino High all-state tight end Matt Bushman was back at his alma mater last week, helping coach Jay Campos’ bid for a state title by mentoring the Sabercats. Bushman returned from a LDS mission to Spain last month and plans to enroll at BYU and play football for the Cougars in 2017.
Pima College’s women’s basketball team, which finished No. 3 in the nation under coach Todd Holthaus last season, began official workouts Saturday morning. The Aztecs are loaded. Sophomore point guard Sydni Stallworth of Palo Verde High was recently offered a full scholarship by Alaska-Anchorage coach Ryan McCarthy, whose team finished 38-3 last year and reached the NCAA Division II Final Four. I think McCarthy finished No. 2 to Adia Barnes in Greg Byrne’s search for a women’s basketball coach at Arizona.
Late Friday afternoon, in the heat of the day, I was in a line at the Randolph Golf Course driving range with 20 or 30 other golf wannabes. The only golfer who seemed out of place was UA junior Krystal Quihuis. She hit range balls for about an hour and then went to work on her short game. Friday should’ve been a day off for Quihuis, a two-time state champion from Salpointe Catholic, and the Pac-12’s 2015 Freshman of the Year. She had returned from the Annika Intercollegiate near Orlando, Florida, a day earlier, and is preparing for the Windy City Collegiate Classic near Chicago that begins Monday. Except for sophomore standout Haley Moore, a potential first-team All-American, the Wildcats didn’t play well under ex-Wildcat Annika Sorenstam’s gaze last week. To her credit, Quihuis got right back to work in an attempt to help her team back into the top 10 polls.
When Arnold Palmer was 76, he worked with Tucson’s First Tee program while in Tucson to christen the nine holes he designed at Starr Pass Golf Club. The Conquistadores presented Arnie with a gold-plated Conquistadores helmet that day in 2005, emblematic of his victory at the 1967 Tucson Open. In his fabulous career, Palmer played in the Tucson Open seven times, beginning in 1955 at El Rio Golf Course. (He didn’t win a penny that year.) My favorite Tucson-related Arnie story is that after playing his new layout at Starr Pass, he sat with noted Tucson golf writer Jack Rickard and spoke about golf, his management firm that operated Starr Pass, and a lot of other stuff. Most impressive, he called Jack by name when he sat down. First class.
The Tucson Roadrunners will stage their first-ever practice Monday at the Tucson Arena and play an exhibition game Thursday at the San Jose Barracuda. Next Sunday, Oct. 9, the Roadrunners and Arizona Coyotes will play the inaugural Red/White scrimmage at the Tucson Arena at 1 p.m. There is no admission charge. How good is that?
The Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl has become more visible and clearly more aggressive in Year 2 as it prepares for kickoff on Dec. 30 at Arizona Stadium.
It sold 20,425 tickets last year; the game’s founder, Tucson attorney Ali Farhang, insists that the Friday afternoon game will sell more than 30,000 this year.
Two positives: The game will kick off at 3 p.m. rather than last year’s 5:30, when it was 44 degrees. It will be played on a Friday, the climax to two days of downtown festivities.
Farhang hired Tucson marketing whiz Mike Feder to be the bowl’s executive director; Feder is a tireless worker and trusted face in the community. A year ago, the Arizona Bowl barely had three months preparation.
New this year: The Arizona Bowl Kickoff Luncheon will be held Oct. 14 at the DoubleTree Hotel at noon. Tucsonan Kerri Strug, darling gold medalist of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, will be honored with the Governor’s Award. The key speaker will be Arizona Hall of Fame linebacker Ricky Hunley.
Strug and Hunley? You can’t beat that twosome. (Tickets for the luncheon are available; phone 520-202-4838 and at novahomeloans.com.
The only mystery, as always, are the chosen teams from the Mountain West and Sun Belt conferences. Those who would likely attract and bring the most fans would be bowl-starved New Mexico State and UNLV, both within driving distance of Tucson.
An Aggies vs. Rebels game would be a grand slam.
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