Hansen's Sunday Notebook: RichRod, Arizona Wildcats paint rosy picture on signing day
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Arizona got pushed around, beat up and had its nose rubbed in the football recruiting dirt the last two months, especially by the Oregon Ducks, who raided Rich Rodriguez’s once-promising Class of 2017 and turned four potential Wildcats into Ducks.
But rather than grumble through his signing day news conference, RichRod engineered one of the best pieces of damage control you’ll ever see.
“We’re not done,” he said. “This is just the start of it.”
And then he read the names of 16 players, including Ironwood Ridge linebacker Ken Samson, Mountain View wide receiver Isaiah Lovett and Tucson High receiver D. J. Hinton, as part of a class he estimated to be 40 to 42 strong.
“There’s more coming,” he said with a smile.
The only problem adding 16 names to Arizona’s Class of 2017 is that almost all of them are walk-ons. Or, in modern terms “preferred walk-ons.”
How far can you get in Pac-12 football with 16 preferred walk-ons? Arizona might be the first to find out.
The difference between the traditional walk-on and today’s PWO is this: You sign a contract to be part of the team, although it doesn’t give you any financial aid and you’re not counted toward the NCAA limit of 85 scholarship players per team.
A preferred walk-on gets access to the team’s Nike gear, is allowed to use strength coaches, personal trainers and academic counselors. You also get to eat with the team without charge.
In three decades, Arizona has produced a dozen or more capable and useful walk-ons, from All-American safety Chuck Cecil and punter Drew Riggleman.
But in Pac-12 football, the reality is that walk-ons are usually just good enough to get you beat. If RichRod can turn this into a positive, if the Wildcats can develop those non-scholarship players and return to contention in the Pac-12 South, he’ll be the coach of the decade.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
The most dominating basketball team in Tucson is 26-1, outscores its opponents by 32 points per game and is coached by A.J. Albritton, the most recent link to Dick McConnell’s esteemed coaching family.
The Gregory School Hawks are led by senior guard Nick Rosquist, who has scored 2,048 points, the fifth highest total in Tucson boys prep history, and by junior Addison Mort, who plays more like a Class 6A player than one from 1A.
“Our plan,” says Albritton, “is to win the state championship.”
The Gregory School (then St. Gregory’s) won state championships in 2008 and 2009 under Paul Baranowski, going 35-1 and 32-3. Now comes Albritton and Rosquist, part of a new way of high school basketball in this state.
Rosquist could’ve played — and been a standout — at any level but chose to attend the academically intense Gregory School, where his teammates rank such schools as Carnegie-Mellon on their must-attend list.
Because high school basketball has become a year-round endeavor now, Rosquist spends half of the year playing on the AAU circuit, for David Thomas’ Arizona Power organization. He also spent time working with Albritton’s travel team, Just Hoops.
“I’ve heard from a lot of schools, from Division I to NAIA,” says Rosquist, whose career high is 49 points. “I’m going to play another season of AAU ball before making a decision.”
In last Tuesday’s 104-51 victory over Academy of Tucson, Rosquist scored 16 points in the game’s first 3:42. It was a blur. It was Steph Curry stuff. He swished two 3-pointers, stole two passes and converted them to layups before the game was two minutes old. Albritton pulled his starters early; Rosquist scored 30 points in just 17 minutes.
Now comes the payoff. The Gregory School will learn the Class 1A state tournament brackets next Monday. Assuming all goes well, they should be 29-1 entering the championship game in Prescott Valley on Feb. 25.
“Our only loss was (Dec. 6) at San Carlos, in overtime, and San Carlos is a bigger school, Class 2A,” said Albritton. “Last year we peaked about a month too early (finishing 25-6). This year we’re working to make our timing better.”
Albritton, who played at Sahuaro High under McConnell, and later at William Penn College in Iowa and then Pima College, is in his first year as head coach at the Gregory School.
“You don’t often get players like Addison Mort and Nick Rosquist at this level,” he said. “When you do, you need to make the best of it.”
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Getting a spot on ongoing Waste Management Phoenix Open was brutally difficult. There were three spots available to all comers and it was as if “all comers” truly meant “all.” In a pre-qualifying tournament last week, 240 total players, including Tucson’s Jonathan Khan, Preston Otte, Jacob Rogers and Nogales’ Alberto Sanchez qualified to be part of a 124-man Monday qualifying field. Only three would get berths in the Phoenix Open. That field of 124 included U.S. Open champ Lee Janzen, Masters champ Mike Weir, UA All-Americans Jason Gore and Ted Purdy and Phoenix golf legend Billy Mayfair. Khan, a former Salpointe Catholic and UA golfer, was superb, sixth overall with a 67, but he missed being part of the $6.7 million tournament by two strokes. Tough business.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
June’s U.S. Open will be played at a new course, Erin Hills, which is northwest of Milwaukee. Of all the prominent names to play in the Arizona golf program the last 50 years, the latest to surface nationally is Dana Fry, the course architect of Erin Hills. Fry was a walk-on at Arizona in 1980, getting a spot on Rick LaRose’s team, in part, by shooting a 64 at Randolph North one day. Fry’s big break came when the Ventana Canyon Golf Course was under construction in 1983. He volunteered to help course designer Tom Fazio and was first assigned to flag saguaro cacti designated for transplanting. After that, Fry began “shaping” the course, driving a bulldozer. He quit competitive golf to work for Fazio, and now he is a U.S. Open designer himself.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
When the Cal Golden Bears play at McKale Center Saturday night, it would be a good occasion for Arizona to have a moment to honor Sean Rooks, father of Cal center Kameron Rooks. Sean Rooks died last summer, at 46, of heart disease. While at Arizona from 1987-92, Rooks was an All-Pac-10 center, perhaps the best low-block scorer in school history. He was a happy personality, a good man.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
The excesses of college sports: I stayed at the same Eugene, Oregon, hotel as the Michigan women’s lacrosse team last week. The Wolverines flew all the way to Eugene for a single game, Saturday afternoon, a traveling party of about 40. They practiced Friday in a two-hour downpour on a day it was about 35 degrees. But when the Big Ten’s media rights package pays each school about $38 million per year, about $13 million more than each Pac-12 school gets from its media contracts, expenses don’t seem to matter much.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
After driving in a state-record 91 runs during Canyon del Oro’s 2011 state championship softball season, Mattie Fowler went on to a productive career at Nebraska. She made the best of her years as a Cornhusker; last week, the school announced that she has been hired as athletics development operations director. She will work in the fund-raising office and manage day to day development office operations. Fowler earned her undergraduate degree in finance. She is in the process of finishing an MBA. Well done.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Former Pueblo High School all-state guard Michael Perez is back in pro basketball. He signed with Mexico’s Fuerza Regia last month, the top level of pro basketball in Mexico. His team was 29-1 when he was added to the roster. Perez started at both UTEP and Nevada as a collegian.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Terrell Stoglin, who led Santa Rita to the 2010 state basketball championship, leads the Lebanese EuroLeague with a 34.4 scoring average. The point guard scored 50 points for Sagesse two weeks ago and plays in the same league with former Arizona signee Ndudi Ebi. Stoglin has scored nine points per game more than any other player in the Lebanese league.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
While doing some research on the 1967 Bear Down Gym basketball game that featured No. 2 Houston and All-American Elvin Hayes, I noticed that Tucson High football coach Ollie Mayfield was one of the two referees who worked the game. Now the Pac-12 forbids Tucsonan Chris Rastatter from working Arizona games, even though the Rincon High School grad is among the top officials in college basketball. He worked last years Pac-12 championship game and advanced through the NCAA Tournament to the Elite Eight.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
One of the best weekends of the year in Tucson sports is the opening of the quarterhorse racing season at Rillito Park. The first of five weekend race cards begins at 1 p.m., next Saturday and Sunday. The season ends March 10. Bob Baffert won’t be there, but a lot of people in cowboy hats will be. Can’t beat it.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Last week I erred and didn’t include Rincon/University High boys soccer coach Roxanne Taylor among those coaches who have won more than 400 career games in Arizona. Taylor, a new member of the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame, now has 421 victories.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
When Arizona hires a new athletic director, it might be wise to insert a contract buyout for the first time in school history. Greg Byrne didn’t have a buyout, although Alabama would not have blinked to pay whatever it took to get Byrne to Tuscaloosa.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Since leaving Arizona as the 1980 college baseball player of the year, a national championship outfielder, Terry Francona has seen it all.
He played in 365 minor-league games, 708 big- league games, he managed Michael Jordan in Double-A, and has now managed the Phillies, Red Sox and Indians for 16 years. World Series titles? Two. Money earned: About $34 million. Hall of Fame projection: Five years after he retires.
What’s most impressive about Francona, however, is his personality, character and the way he relates to people. When he was at Hi Corbett Field on Tuesday, donating $1 million for improvements to his alma mater’s baseball facility, it was never about him.
He turned down an $18,000 bonus out of a Pennsylvania high school to play at Arizona and he insists it was the best choice of his life.
“My mom and dad thought the college experience would be really beneficial for an 18-year-old that probably needed to learn to make better decisions at times,” he said. “When you come to college and make a mistake, you have a chance to atone for it.
“At Arizona, I learned how to act and behave, not just in the game, but outside the game. I needed to mature. It was the best experience I could ever imagine, and that’s important when you’re 18 years old and 3,000 miles from home.”
Francona was greeted during Tuesday’s ceremony by some of the big names in school baseball history: Jerry Kindall, Chip Hale, Jerry Stitt, Steve Strong and Jeff Morris.
It is a legacy that means far more than $1 million.
Arizona got pushed around, beat up and had its nose rubbed in the football recruiting dirt the last two months, especially by the Oregon Ducks, who raided Rich Rodriguez’s once-promising Class of 2017 and turned four potential Wildcats into Ducks.
But rather than grumble through his signing day news conference, RichRod engineered one of the best pieces of damage control you’ll ever see.
“We’re not done,” he said. “This is just the start of it.”
And then he read the names of 16 players, including Ironwood Ridge linebacker Ken Samson, Mountain View wide receiver Isaiah Lovett and Tucson High receiver D. J. Hinton, as part of a class he estimated to be 40 to 42 strong.
“There’s more coming,” he said with a smile.
The only problem adding 16 names to Arizona’s Class of 2017 is that almost all of them are walk-ons. Or, in modern terms “preferred walk-ons.”
How far can you get in Pac-12 football with 16 preferred walk-ons? Arizona might be the first to find out.
The difference between the traditional walk-on and today’s PWO is this: You sign a contract to be part of the team, although it doesn’t give you any financial aid and you’re not counted toward the NCAA limit of 85 scholarship players per team.
A preferred walk-on gets access to the team’s Nike gear, is allowed to use strength coaches, personal trainers and academic counselors. You also get to eat with the team without charge.
In three decades, Arizona has produced a dozen or more capable and useful walk-ons, from All-American safety Chuck Cecil and punter Drew Riggleman.
But in Pac-12 football, the reality is that walk-ons are usually just good enough to get you beat. If RichRod can turn this into a positive, if the Wildcats can develop those non-scholarship players and return to contention in the Pac-12 South, he’ll be the coach of the decade.
The most dominating basketball team in Tucson is 26-1, outscores its opponents by 32 points per game and is coached by A.J. Albritton, the most recent link to Dick McConnell’s esteemed coaching family.
The Gregory School Hawks are led by senior guard Nick Rosquist, who has scored 2,048 points, the fifth highest total in Tucson boys prep history, and by junior Addison Mort, who plays more like a Class 6A player than one from 1A.
“Our plan,” says Albritton, “is to win the state championship.”
The Gregory School (then St. Gregory’s) won state championships in 2008 and 2009 under Paul Baranowski, going 35-1 and 32-3. Now comes Albritton and Rosquist, part of a new way of high school basketball in this state.
Rosquist could’ve played — and been a standout — at any level but chose to attend the academically intense Gregory School, where his teammates rank such schools as Carnegie-Mellon on their must-attend list.
Because high school basketball has become a year-round endeavor now, Rosquist spends half of the year playing on the AAU circuit, for David Thomas’ Arizona Power organization. He also spent time working with Albritton’s travel team, Just Hoops.
“I’ve heard from a lot of schools, from Division I to NAIA,” says Rosquist, whose career high is 49 points. “I’m going to play another season of AAU ball before making a decision.”
In last Tuesday’s 104-51 victory over Academy of Tucson, Rosquist scored 16 points in the game’s first 3:42. It was a blur. It was Steph Curry stuff. He swished two 3-pointers, stole two passes and converted them to layups before the game was two minutes old. Albritton pulled his starters early; Rosquist scored 30 points in just 17 minutes.
Now comes the payoff. The Gregory School will learn the Class 1A state tournament brackets next Monday. Assuming all goes well, they should be 29-1 entering the championship game in Prescott Valley on Feb. 25.
“Our only loss was (Dec. 6) at San Carlos, in overtime, and San Carlos is a bigger school, Class 2A,” said Albritton. “Last year we peaked about a month too early (finishing 25-6). This year we’re working to make our timing better.”
Albritton, who played at Sahuaro High under McConnell, and later at William Penn College in Iowa and then Pima College, is in his first year as head coach at the Gregory School.
“You don’t often get players like Addison Mort and Nick Rosquist at this level,” he said. “When you do, you need to make the best of it.”
Getting a spot on ongoing Waste Management Phoenix Open was brutally difficult. There were three spots available to all comers and it was as if “all comers” truly meant “all.” In a pre-qualifying tournament last week, 240 total players, including Tucson’s Jonathan Khan, Preston Otte, Jacob Rogers and Nogales’ Alberto Sanchez qualified to be part of a 124-man Monday qualifying field. Only three would get berths in the Phoenix Open. That field of 124 included U.S. Open champ Lee Janzen, Masters champ Mike Weir, UA All-Americans Jason Gore and Ted Purdy and Phoenix golf legend Billy Mayfair. Khan, a former Salpointe Catholic and UA golfer, was superb, sixth overall with a 67, but he missed being part of the $6.7 million tournament by two strokes. Tough business.
June’s U.S. Open will be played at a new course, Erin Hills, which is northwest of Milwaukee. Of all the prominent names to play in the Arizona golf program the last 50 years, the latest to surface nationally is Dana Fry, the course architect of Erin Hills. Fry was a walk-on at Arizona in 1980, getting a spot on Rick LaRose’s team, in part, by shooting a 64 at Randolph North one day. Fry’s big break came when the Ventana Canyon Golf Course was under construction in 1983. He volunteered to help course designer Tom Fazio and was first assigned to flag saguaro cacti designated for transplanting. After that, Fry began “shaping” the course, driving a bulldozer. He quit competitive golf to work for Fazio, and now he is a U.S. Open designer himself.
When the Cal Golden Bears play at McKale Center Saturday night, it would be a good occasion for Arizona to have a moment to honor Sean Rooks, father of Cal center Kameron Rooks. Sean Rooks died last summer, at 46, of heart disease. While at Arizona from 1987-92, Rooks was an All-Pac-10 center, perhaps the best low-block scorer in school history. He was a happy personality, a good man.
The excesses of college sports: I stayed at the same Eugene, Oregon, hotel as the Michigan women’s lacrosse team last week. The Wolverines flew all the way to Eugene for a single game, Saturday afternoon, a traveling party of about 40. They practiced Friday in a two-hour downpour on a day it was about 35 degrees. But when the Big Ten’s media rights package pays each school about $38 million per year, about $13 million more than each Pac-12 school gets from its media contracts, expenses don’t seem to matter much.
After driving in a state-record 91 runs during Canyon del Oro’s 2011 state championship softball season, Mattie Fowler went on to a productive career at Nebraska. She made the best of her years as a Cornhusker; last week, the school announced that she has been hired as athletics development operations director. She will work in the fund-raising office and manage day to day development office operations. Fowler earned her undergraduate degree in finance. She is in the process of finishing an MBA. Well done.
Former Pueblo High School all-state guard Michael Perez is back in pro basketball. He signed with Mexico’s Fuerza Regia last month, the top level of pro basketball in Mexico. His team was 29-1 when he was added to the roster. Perez started at both UTEP and Nevada as a collegian.
Terrell Stoglin, who led Santa Rita to the 2010 state basketball championship, leads the Lebanese EuroLeague with a 34.4 scoring average. The point guard scored 50 points for Sagesse two weeks ago and plays in the same league with former Arizona signee Ndudi Ebi. Stoglin has scored nine points per game more than any other player in the Lebanese league.
While doing some research on the 1967 Bear Down Gym basketball game that featured No. 2 Houston and All-American Elvin Hayes, I noticed that Tucson High football coach Ollie Mayfield was one of the two referees who worked the game. Now the Pac-12 forbids Tucsonan Chris Rastatter from working Arizona games, even though the Rincon High School grad is among the top officials in college basketball. He worked last years Pac-12 championship game and advanced through the NCAA Tournament to the Elite Eight.
One of the best weekends of the year in Tucson sports is the opening of the quarterhorse racing season at Rillito Park. The first of five weekend race cards begins at 1 p.m., next Saturday and Sunday. The season ends March 10. Bob Baffert won’t be there, but a lot of people in cowboy hats will be. Can’t beat it.
Last week I erred and didn’t include Rincon/University High boys soccer coach Roxanne Taylor among those coaches who have won more than 400 career games in Arizona. Taylor, a new member of the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame, now has 421 victories.
When Arizona hires a new athletic director, it might be wise to insert a contract buyout for the first time in school history. Greg Byrne didn’t have a buyout, although Alabama would not have blinked to pay whatever it took to get Byrne to Tuscaloosa.
Since leaving Arizona as the 1980 college baseball player of the year, a national championship outfielder, Terry Francona has seen it all.
He played in 365 minor-league games, 708 big- league games, he managed Michael Jordan in Double-A, and has now managed the Phillies, Red Sox and Indians for 16 years. World Series titles? Two. Money earned: About $34 million. Hall of Fame projection: Five years after he retires.
What’s most impressive about Francona, however, is his personality, character and the way he relates to people. When he was at Hi Corbett Field on Tuesday, donating $1 million for improvements to his alma mater’s baseball facility, it was never about him.
He turned down an $18,000 bonus out of a Pennsylvania high school to play at Arizona and he insists it was the best choice of his life.
“My mom and dad thought the college experience would be really beneficial for an 18-year-old that probably needed to learn to make better decisions at times,” he said. “When you come to college and make a mistake, you have a chance to atone for it.
“At Arizona, I learned how to act and behave, not just in the game, but outside the game. I needed to mature. It was the best experience I could ever imagine, and that’s important when you’re 18 years old and 3,000 miles from home.”
Francona was greeted during Tuesday’s ceremony by some of the big names in school baseball history: Jerry Kindall, Chip Hale, Jerry Stitt, Steve Strong and Jeff Morris.
It is a legacy that means far more than $1 million.
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