Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Before Ray Smith, Wildcats had share of program-changing injuries
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
How do you put Ray Smith’s third knee injury and subsequent departure from the UA basketball program in context?
The five most devastating health issues in UA sports history:
1. Button Salmon’s death in 1926. The UA’s starting quarterback, baseball catcher and student-body president triggered the “Bear Down” legend, but at the time it spawned overwhelming grief in Tucson.
2. Shawntinice Polk’s death in 2005. The most dominating women’s basketball player in school history died two months before her senior season. The women’s basketball program has not yet recovered, going 131-220 since, with one winning season in 11 years.
3. Art Luppino’s crippling knee injury, 1956. The two-time NCAA rushing champion ripped up his knee in training camp, ruining a potential NFL career and sending Arizona on a downward spiral in which it went 12-27-1 over four seasons, firing two head coaches, as ASU’s Frank Kush began a 20-year reign over the Wildcats.
4. Kevin Long’s ankle injury at the 1989 NCAA baseball regionals. Long, a second-team All-America center fielder, hit third in a lineup that went 23-7 in the Pac-10, the school’s best-ever conference record. After his ankle injury, the No. 1 Wildcats lost two games to Long Beach State despite having a dominating team that included future major-leaguers Trevor Hoffman, J.T. Snow, Alan Zinter and Scott Erickson, possibly the most talented team in school history.
5. Kenzie Fowler’s back and shoulder injuries ended her UA softball pitching career prematurely, in 2014, after she had pitched Arizona to the 2010 College World Series championship game as a freshman. (She was even sidelined after being hit in the face by a line drive in the UA dugout.) The UA hasn’t returned to the World Series since Fowler’s freshman season.
Arizona, as with most college athletic departments, has a long history of knee injuries to top athletes. Many return to play; UA receiver Richard Dice played with a torn ACL in a compelling 1995 comeback victory at Arizona State; Arizona center Kevin Flanagan overcame ACL surgery to help the Wildcats to the 1994 Final Four; linebacker Jake Fischer, out with an ACL tear in 2011, returned a year later to make 119 tackles.
One of the few elite Tucson athletes to have as much misfortune as Ray Smith was Flowing Wells High School and Pima College basketball player Abyee Maracigan.
She tore her right ACL twice and required five total knee surgeries, including one on her left knee. She went on to play two seasons at Idaho State, led Flowing Wells to the 2008 state championship, and was PCC’s star point guard when the Aztecs finished fifth and seventh in the nation in 2009 and 2010. (She also broke her wrist.)
Maracigan’s story has a happy ending. She is a math teacher in the Amphitheater School District and a part-time youth league coach. Let’s hope Ray Smith similarly gets through this difficult period.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Anthony Rizzo’s sixth major-league season had the ultimate storybook conclusion: the Cubs’ star first baseman batted .360 in the World Series after a regular season in which he hit 32 home runs and had 109 RBIs.
In retrospect, Rizzo might’ve produced the No. 1 regular season in the history of Tucson minor-league baseball, 1969-2013, during the Toros/Sidewinders/Padres Triple-A years.
In 2011, Rizzo hit .331 for the Tucson Padres, smashing 26 homers and driving in 101 runs. Here’s why it stands alone: Rizzo played in just 93 games that season. The Padres summoned him to San Diego in August and he did not return to Tucson.
Rizzo became just the sixth Tucson Triple-A player ever to drive in 100 or more runs. The difference is that Rizzo had more than 100 fewer at-bats than the others, which is astonishing.
Here’s the breakdown:
1977: Pat Putnam, 130 RBIs in 550 at-bats
1980: Alan Knicely, 105 RBIs in 539 at-bats
1982: Jim Tracy, 100 RBIs in 567 at-bats
2002: Lyle Overbay, 134 RBIs in 579 at-bats
2008: Josh Whitesell, 127 RBIs in 570 at-bats
2011: Rizzo, 101 RBIs in 419 at-bats. Rizzo also hit 26 homers, more than any of the other 100-RBI Tucsonans.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Eleventh-ranked Yavapai College replaced disqualified Pima College in the NJCAA men’s West District soccer playoffs Friday. The Roughriders were eliminated 3-1 by No. 16 Trinidad State College. As the game was being played, Pima athletic director Edgar Soto was notified that the NJCAA had agreed to listen to the Aztecs’ appeal. What an after-the-fact joke. It cost PCC $250 just to file the appeal even though Phoenix College officials admitted it was responsible for all punches thrown after the Oct. 29 region championship game. The NJCAA told Pima that it could take up to 10 days to review the appeal. The only tangible effect of a positive appeal is that 15 returning PCC players wouldn’t be suspended for the first two games of the 2017 season.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Good news for Bill Walton fans — or is it bad news for those who don’t enjoy Walton’s college basketball analyst role? ESPN will again use Walton for its Pac-12 telecasts on Thursdays and Saturdays this season.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
The NBA’s new statistical analytics numbers include a “Hustle Index,” in which it keeps game-to-game statistics on deflections, recoveries, screens that lead to made baskets, loose balls forced and shots that a statistician deems to be closely contested. After two weeks, ex-Wildcat Rondae Hollis-Jefferson of the Brooklyn Nets ranks No. 3 in the NBA in the hustle categories. No surprise there. Hollis-Jefferson’s former teammate, Stanley Johnson, isn’t off to such a good start in his second season with the Detroit Pistons. Johnson missed 14 of his first 16 shots and has been pushed deep on Detroit’s bench, averaging just 17 minutes per game. Another ex-Wildcat, Nick Johnson is scheduled to make his EuroLeague debut this weekend with Bayern Munich of the German pro league. He will vie for playing time with former Oregon Ducks shooting guard Bryce Taylor, who helped the Ducks to a Pac-10 tournament championship in 2007.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Southern Arizona’s leading prep recruit of 2016-17, Rio Rico cross country runner Allie Schadler, won her fourth state championship on Saturday. She will sign with Washington this week. Schadler did not strongly consider running for Arizona, instead narrowing her choices to Stanford and the Huskies. In Seattle, Schadler will join one of the NCAA’s premier distance running programs; the UW women finished second a week ago in the Pac-12 championship (in Tucson) and are ranked No. 4 nationally.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Former CDO pitcher Jason Stanford, who pitched three seasons for the Cleveland Indians after a strong college career at UNC-Charlotte, is the new head coach at Eastern Gateway College in Youngstown, Ohio. He earlier was an assistant coach at Youngstown State, All-World Cup pitcher in 2001 and a pitching coach for USA Baseball’s 17U national team. While in Ohio, the ex-Dorado lefty also was a baseball analyst on local radio stations. He is 39.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Somewhere in football heaven, former Arizona head coach Larry Smith looked on with a grandpa’s pride Friday night as Preston Smith helped Gilbert Mesquite beat Marana Mountain View in the first round of the state playoffs. Smith’s grandson, a safety who has scholarship offers from Weber State and Indiana State, is also Mesquite’s backup QB and a running back who has gained 565 yards in addition to making 62 tackles. Smith and his teammates will be back in Tucson on Friday to play 11-0 Cienega.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Different priorities: Arizona baseball coach Jay Johnson, who had access to tickets for the World Series at Wrigley Field through his former University of San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant, declined to leave Tucson during the Wildcats’ on-going fall practice sessions. Arizona State coach Tracy Smith, who coached Cubs slugger Kyle Schwarber at Indiana, left the Sun Devils’ fall practice to be at both Wrigley Field and Cleveland’s Progressive Field.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Catalina Foothills senior golfer Gavin Cohen won the 2016 Division II state championship last week at the Randolph Golf Complex. He shot 71-71, earning the title by two strokes, leading the Falcons to the team championship, by one stroke. Cohen, who accepted a golf scholarship from Arizona coach Jim Anderson more than a year ago, becomes part of one of Tucson’s top sports legacies. He is the 30th Tucsonan to win a state golf title, an impressive list that includes Tucson High’s Bob Gaona in 1958 and other such notable golfers as Palo Verde’s Ben Kern, 2001; CDO’s Mark Udall, 1968; Sabino’s Willie Wood, 1978-79; and Brian Kontak, 1989; and current college golfers Gentry Hicks of CDO (now at Utah); Chris Meyers of CDO (now at Stanford); Billy Comeaux of Sabino (now at Grand Canyon); and Jaime Waltmire of CDO (now at Western New Mexico). Winning a state golf championship has not been a clear route to the PGA Tour. The only Arizona state champions in history who became PGA Tour regulars were Phoenix Camelback’s Billy Mayfair, Phoenix Brophy Prep’s Ted Purdy and current Tour regular Charlie Beljan of Mesa Red Mountain. Cohen started playing at 9, stopped playing baseball at 12 to concentrate on golf, and has worked on his game at his home course, Ventana Canyon. Of the Tucson champs who stayed with the game, Gaona and Wood became Champions Tour regulars, Kern is a club pro in Texas. Others, such as Sabino’s Chase Hite, played golf for the Utah Utes and is now convention sales manager for the Venetian and Palazzo resorts in Las Vegas. John Buttery of CDO, who played golf for the UA, is now COO for Lithium ion Battery/InduraPower after earning an MBA from the UA’s Eller Business College.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Arizona beat NAU 77-13 last year, gaining a school-record 792 yards, and the Wildcats piled it on, scoring three late touchdowns.
It meant Rich Rodriguez had won 14 of his last 18 games and that the season’s next game, against UCLA, would be a sellout, 56,004 fans, at Arizona Stadium.
The Wildcats climbed to No. 16 in the AP poll. Big time.
And then everything changed. UCLA won 56-30, and a week later the Wildcats lost 55-17 at Stanford.
Since that show-no-mercy blowout over the Lumberjacks, the Wildcats have become NAU, a punching bag to Pac-12 opponents, going 3-12 in the conference, allowing an average of 47 points in those games.
But few were prepared for the scope of Saturday’s 69-7 loss at Washington State, a defeat so humbling that it had statisticians wondering when an Arizona football team had ever been so broken.
You could start with a 78-7 loss to USC in 1928, the year before Arizona Stadium opened. On Saturday, had the Cougars kept starting QB Luke Falk on the field for the final 16 minutes, Wazzu might’ve challenged that 1928 football liquidation.
After Saturday’s game at WSU, Cougars coach Mike Leach told reporters “I’ve been on both sides of these.”
And, indeed, Leach’s 2000 Texas Tech team was clobbered 56-3 by Nebraska.
Given time, Leach fought back. In ’04, Texas Tech got full payback, whipping the Cornhuskers 70-10. What goes around comes around, even in college football.
Now it’s Arizona’s turn to fight back, because if this isn’t the bottom, what is?
How do you put Ray Smith’s third knee injury and subsequent departure from the UA basketball program in context?
The five most devastating health issues in UA sports history:
1. Button Salmon’s death in 1926. The UA’s starting quarterback, baseball catcher and student-body president triggered the “Bear Down” legend, but at the time it spawned overwhelming grief in Tucson.
2. Shawntinice Polk’s death in 2005. The most dominating women’s basketball player in school history died two months before her senior season. The women’s basketball program has not yet recovered, going 131-220 since, with one winning season in 11 years.
3. Art Luppino’s crippling knee injury, 1956. The two-time NCAA rushing champion ripped up his knee in training camp, ruining a potential NFL career and sending Arizona on a downward spiral in which it went 12-27-1 over four seasons, firing two head coaches, as ASU’s Frank Kush began a 20-year reign over the Wildcats.
4. Kevin Long’s ankle injury at the 1989 NCAA baseball regionals. Long, a second-team All-America center fielder, hit third in a lineup that went 23-7 in the Pac-10, the school’s best-ever conference record. After his ankle injury, the No. 1 Wildcats lost two games to Long Beach State despite having a dominating team that included future major-leaguers Trevor Hoffman, J.T. Snow, Alan Zinter and Scott Erickson, possibly the most talented team in school history.
5. Kenzie Fowler’s back and shoulder injuries ended her UA softball pitching career prematurely, in 2014, after she had pitched Arizona to the 2010 College World Series championship game as a freshman. (She was even sidelined after being hit in the face by a line drive in the UA dugout.) The UA hasn’t returned to the World Series since Fowler’s freshman season.
Arizona, as with most college athletic departments, has a long history of knee injuries to top athletes. Many return to play; UA receiver Richard Dice played with a torn ACL in a compelling 1995 comeback victory at Arizona State; Arizona center Kevin Flanagan overcame ACL surgery to help the Wildcats to the 1994 Final Four; linebacker Jake Fischer, out with an ACL tear in 2011, returned a year later to make 119 tackles.
One of the few elite Tucson athletes to have as much misfortune as Ray Smith was Flowing Wells High School and Pima College basketball player Abyee Maracigan.
She tore her right ACL twice and required five total knee surgeries, including one on her left knee. She went on to play two seasons at Idaho State, led Flowing Wells to the 2008 state championship, and was PCC’s star point guard when the Aztecs finished fifth and seventh in the nation in 2009 and 2010. (She also broke her wrist.)
Maracigan’s story has a happy ending. She is a math teacher in the Amphitheater School District and a part-time youth league coach. Let’s hope Ray Smith similarly gets through this difficult period.
Anthony Rizzo’s sixth major-league season had the ultimate storybook conclusion: the Cubs’ star first baseman batted .360 in the World Series after a regular season in which he hit 32 home runs and had 109 RBIs.
In retrospect, Rizzo might’ve produced the No. 1 regular season in the history of Tucson minor-league baseball, 1969-2013, during the Toros/Sidewinders/Padres Triple-A years.
In 2011, Rizzo hit .331 for the Tucson Padres, smashing 26 homers and driving in 101 runs. Here’s why it stands alone: Rizzo played in just 93 games that season. The Padres summoned him to San Diego in August and he did not return to Tucson.
Rizzo became just the sixth Tucson Triple-A player ever to drive in 100 or more runs. The difference is that Rizzo had more than 100 fewer at-bats than the others, which is astonishing.
Here’s the breakdown:
1977: Pat Putnam, 130 RBIs in 550 at-bats
1980: Alan Knicely, 105 RBIs in 539 at-bats
1982: Jim Tracy, 100 RBIs in 567 at-bats
2002: Lyle Overbay, 134 RBIs in 579 at-bats
2008: Josh Whitesell, 127 RBIs in 570 at-bats
2011: Rizzo, 101 RBIs in 419 at-bats. Rizzo also hit 26 homers, more than any of the other 100-RBI Tucsonans.
Eleventh-ranked Yavapai College replaced disqualified Pima College in the NJCAA men’s West District soccer playoffs Friday. The Roughriders were eliminated 3-1 by No. 16 Trinidad State College. As the game was being played, Pima athletic director Edgar Soto was notified that the NJCAA had agreed to listen to the Aztecs’ appeal. What an after-the-fact joke. It cost PCC $250 just to file the appeal even though Phoenix College officials admitted it was responsible for all punches thrown after the Oct. 29 region championship game. The NJCAA told Pima that it could take up to 10 days to review the appeal. The only tangible effect of a positive appeal is that 15 returning PCC players wouldn’t be suspended for the first two games of the 2017 season.
Good news for Bill Walton fans — or is it bad news for those who don’t enjoy Walton’s college basketball analyst role? ESPN will again use Walton for its Pac-12 telecasts on Thursdays and Saturdays this season.
The NBA’s new statistical analytics numbers include a “Hustle Index,” in which it keeps game-to-game statistics on deflections, recoveries, screens that lead to made baskets, loose balls forced and shots that a statistician deems to be closely contested. After two weeks, ex-Wildcat Rondae Hollis-Jefferson of the Brooklyn Nets ranks No. 3 in the NBA in the hustle categories. No surprise there. Hollis-Jefferson’s former teammate, Stanley Johnson, isn’t off to such a good start in his second season with the Detroit Pistons. Johnson missed 14 of his first 16 shots and has been pushed deep on Detroit’s bench, averaging just 17 minutes per game. Another ex-Wildcat, Nick Johnson is scheduled to make his EuroLeague debut this weekend with Bayern Munich of the German pro league. He will vie for playing time with former Oregon Ducks shooting guard Bryce Taylor, who helped the Ducks to a Pac-10 tournament championship in 2007.
Southern Arizona’s leading prep recruit of 2016-17, Rio Rico cross country runner Allie Schadler, won her fourth state championship on Saturday. She will sign with Washington this week. Schadler did not strongly consider running for Arizona, instead narrowing her choices to Stanford and the Huskies. In Seattle, Schadler will join one of the NCAA’s premier distance running programs; the UW women finished second a week ago in the Pac-12 championship (in Tucson) and are ranked No. 4 nationally.
Former CDO pitcher Jason Stanford, who pitched three seasons for the Cleveland Indians after a strong college career at UNC-Charlotte, is the new head coach at Eastern Gateway College in Youngstown, Ohio. He earlier was an assistant coach at Youngstown State, All-World Cup pitcher in 2001 and a pitching coach for USA Baseball’s 17U national team. While in Ohio, the ex-Dorado lefty also was a baseball analyst on local radio stations. He is 39.
Somewhere in football heaven, former Arizona head coach Larry Smith looked on with a grandpa’s pride Friday night as Preston Smith helped Gilbert Mesquite beat Marana Mountain View in the first round of the state playoffs. Smith’s grandson, a safety who has scholarship offers from Weber State and Indiana State, is also Mesquite’s backup QB and a running back who has gained 565 yards in addition to making 62 tackles. Smith and his teammates will be back in Tucson on Friday to play 11-0 Cienega.
Different priorities: Arizona baseball coach Jay Johnson, who had access to tickets for the World Series at Wrigley Field through his former University of San Diego third baseman Kris Bryant, declined to leave Tucson during the Wildcats’ on-going fall practice sessions. Arizona State coach Tracy Smith, who coached Cubs slugger Kyle Schwarber at Indiana, left the Sun Devils’ fall practice to be at both Wrigley Field and Cleveland’s Progressive Field.
Catalina Foothills senior golfer Gavin Cohen won the 2016 Division II state championship last week at the Randolph Golf Complex. He shot 71-71, earning the title by two strokes, leading the Falcons to the team championship, by one stroke. Cohen, who accepted a golf scholarship from Arizona coach Jim Anderson more than a year ago, becomes part of one of Tucson’s top sports legacies. He is the 30th Tucsonan to win a state golf title, an impressive list that includes Tucson High’s Bob Gaona in 1958 and other such notable golfers as Palo Verde’s Ben Kern, 2001; CDO’s Mark Udall, 1968; Sabino’s Willie Wood, 1978-79; and Brian Kontak, 1989; and current college golfers Gentry Hicks of CDO (now at Utah); Chris Meyers of CDO (now at Stanford); Billy Comeaux of Sabino (now at Grand Canyon); and Jaime Waltmire of CDO (now at Western New Mexico). Winning a state golf championship has not been a clear route to the PGA Tour. The only Arizona state champions in history who became PGA Tour regulars were Phoenix Camelback’s Billy Mayfair, Phoenix Brophy Prep’s Ted Purdy and current Tour regular Charlie Beljan of Mesa Red Mountain. Cohen started playing at 9, stopped playing baseball at 12 to concentrate on golf, and has worked on his game at his home course, Ventana Canyon. Of the Tucson champs who stayed with the game, Gaona and Wood became Champions Tour regulars, Kern is a club pro in Texas. Others, such as Sabino’s Chase Hite, played golf for the Utah Utes and is now convention sales manager for the Venetian and Palazzo resorts in Las Vegas. John Buttery of CDO, who played golf for the UA, is now COO for Lithium ion Battery/InduraPower after earning an MBA from the UA’s Eller Business College.
Arizona beat NAU 77-13 last year, gaining a school-record 792 yards, and the Wildcats piled it on, scoring three late touchdowns.
It meant Rich Rodriguez had won 14 of his last 18 games and that the season’s next game, against UCLA, would be a sellout, 56,004 fans, at Arizona Stadium.
The Wildcats climbed to No. 16 in the AP poll. Big time.
And then everything changed. UCLA won 56-30, and a week later the Wildcats lost 55-17 at Stanford.
Since that show-no-mercy blowout over the Lumberjacks, the Wildcats have become NAU, a punching bag to Pac-12 opponents, going 3-12 in the conference, allowing an average of 47 points in those games.
But few were prepared for the scope of Saturday’s 69-7 loss at Washington State, a defeat so humbling that it had statisticians wondering when an Arizona football team had ever been so broken.
You could start with a 78-7 loss to USC in 1928, the year before Arizona Stadium opened. On Saturday, had the Cougars kept starting QB Luke Falk on the field for the final 16 minutes, Wazzu might’ve challenged that 1928 football liquidation.
After Saturday’s game at WSU, Cougars coach Mike Leach told reporters “I’ve been on both sides of these.”
And, indeed, Leach’s 2000 Texas Tech team was clobbered 56-3 by Nebraska.
Given time, Leach fought back. In ’04, Texas Tech got full payback, whipping the Cornhuskers 70-10. What goes around comes around, even in college football.
Now it’s Arizona’s turn to fight back, because if this isn’t the bottom, what is?
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