Hansen's Sunday Notebook: 8 reasons why Sean Miller wouldn't go to Ohio State — or anywhere else
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
At the height of Dick Tomey’s coaching career in the mid-1990s, Oklahoma asked if he was interested in being the Sooners’ head coach. Tomey suggested the Sooners take a good look at UA defensive coordinator Larry Mac Duff.
Kentucky twice tried to get Lute Olson to run UK’s basketball operation at Rupp Arena. Arizona State, of course, tried to persuade alumnus Mike Candrea to return “home” to coach the Sun Devils.
And swimming coach Frank Busch always seemed to be the first choice when vacancies popped up at USC and Florida, among others.
So it’s nothing new when Sean Miller’s name gets tossed around for get-back-close-to-home schools like Maryland, Pitt and Ohio State.
I would keep eight things in mind before spending a sleepless night worrying that Miller will abandon Arizona just at it seems capable of ending a 17-year drought at the Final Four:
1. Coaching against Archie. If a new job involves close-contact competition and recruiting against your brother, the new coach at Indiana, it is undesirable.
2. Money. Arizona pays at the highest scale of college basketball. It ain’t about the money after you’ve banked more than $20 million in Tucson.
3. There are no recruiting limitations at Arizona. Your recruiting turf is the world.
4. Family. Miller’s two oldest sons are on the staff at Arizona. His youngest son is a point guard at Salpointe Catholic. He has a nice summer home in the White Mountains.
5. The road no longer eats up too much time. Arizona provides charter flight service to and from every game, every year. It is the sweetest traveling arrangement in the Pac-12 and West of Kansas.
6. Lorenzo Romar is just settling in. You can make a case that Miller has the best coaching staff in college hoops.
7. Privacy. Miller is an unusually private man, one who doesn’t seem willing to walk into a fishbowl-type job in a basketball-centric city in the ACC. Tucson gives him his space.
8. Unfinished business. Who walks away from a Final Four-ready product when you’re 48, in the prime of your career, one clutch bucket from basketball’s Promised Land?
And how about the climate? Why live where you must be armed with mittens and worry about your de-icer fluid?
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
At the Rich Rodriguez 7-on-7 passing league championships last weekend at Arizona Stadium, Marana High School knocked off big-school power Chandler High School 38-20 to win the title. It’s a reflection on the turn-around coach Andy Litten has directed in Marana, which went 9-3 a year ago, and an indication of more to come. Junior-to-be quarterback Trenton Bourguet threw 44 touchdown passes and only had two interceptions during the two-day tournament; one national recruiting service named him the top 7-on-7 quarterback in the country. Marana receivers Jesus Valenzuela, Diego Miranda and Tariq Jordan were Bourguet’s key receivers in a 38-0 victory over rival Mountain View in the semifinals.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
One of the most significant moves of the high school basketball off-season is the move of Mountain View sophomore-to-be guard Evan Nelson to Salpointe Catholic. Nelson projects as a Division I prospect in the Class of 2020, perhaps already the top player in Tucson with the exception of Salpointe junior-to-be Majok Deng, who has been offered a scholarships by Arizona, Stanford, Arizona State and Cal, among others. Nelson will join new Salpointe coach Jim Reynolds, who coached for 38 years in Ohio before moving to Tucson and replacing Brian Holstrom, who coached the Lancers to the state championship game a year ago.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Sybil Dosty, the top girls basketball player in Salpointe Catholic history, has joined the coaching staff of the Nevada Wolf Pack for 2017-18. Dosty, who played at Tennessee and ASU, was hired by Hawaii last summer but chose to leave the Rainbows, help Pima College’s basketball program and delay her return to Division I coaching.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Tucson-based Collegiate Baseball magazine, which has for more than 50 years been a heavyweight in coverage of all things college baseball, last week named UA freshman third baseman Nick Quintana to its Freshman All-American team. It’s a much-deserved honor for Quintana, who hit .293 with 38 RBI. The magazine, however, named 14 third basemen as “freshman All-Americans.” I suspect after a summer playing for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox in the Cape Cod League, Quintana will play to a higher level in 2018.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
UA freshman high-jumper Justice Summerset of Mountain View High School might be The One to finally win an NCAA high jump championship at Arizona. His third-place finish Friday in Oregon, at 7 feet 1¾ inches, was the eighth time an Arizona high jumper has finished in the top three in the NCAA outdoors. But no one has been able to kick down the door and win it all starting in 1967 when Olympian Ed Caruthers was second at 7-2 ¼. Since then, Lorenzo Allen (1971); Robert Joseph (1973); James Frazier, (1979 and 1980); and school record-holder Nick Ross (2011 and 2014) were either second or third. If Summerset can break Ross’ incredible record of 7-7 set in 2014, he could finally be the one to win it all.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
My ongoing summer series “The Top 10 of everything in Tucson sports” has kicked me in the pants so far. It is so difficult to squeeze deserving people into those rankings. The “Top 10 Voices of Tucson sports” was painful. I did not include ex-Toros and Sidewinders play-by-play men Mario Impemba, Matt Vasgersian or Vince Contronio, all of whom left Tucson to become MLB broadcasters. It was also painful not to include former Channel 13 sport anchors Steve Quis and Kevin McCabe. Both were outstanding in their Tucson years.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Another omission from the Top 10 picks of Tucson’s top referees and officials is Rich Hall, who has worked three NFL conference championship games in recent years, and Cleo Robinson, for years one of the leading officials in Pac-12 football. Let me hear about it if I leave someone off a future Top 10 list you feel is deserving.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Typical of Pac-12’s high-roller approach to sports under commissioner Larry Scott, the league offers a “media rate” of $289 (plus taxes) per night for the Pac-12 football media days July 26-27 at the Loews Hollywood Hotel. The days of “cost containment” are long gone. I had to laugh when remembering the old Pac-10 basketball media days at a Los Angeles airport hotel when former Oregon basketball coach Don Monson, stripped down to his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, walked into a media lounge and asked if there was any free beer. Don Monson doesn’t work here anymore.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
I don’t think many in the UA athletic administration were saddened last week when former Boise State defensive lineman Dereck Boles flipped his commitment to play at Arizona and said he will instead play at South Florida. Boles bit the ear off a Boise State teammate 16 months ago, and although cleared by the Idaho legal system, it reflected poorly on Arizona’s approach to football recruiting.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
ESPN projects former Catalina Foothills High School outfielder Luis Gonzalez as the No. 27 overall choice in this week’s MLB draft. Gonzalez, who worked out for the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers last week, had a career batting average of .353 at New Mexico, racking up 213 hits and also making 22 starts as a pitcher. Gonzalez is a plus-speed runner, bats left, and has good strike zone judgment; he walked 124 times and only struck out 71 times as a Lobo. Even if he’s not a first-round pick, he seems positioned to be a top-100 pick with a bonus well into six figures.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Mike Candrea’s next top pitching prospect at Arizona is Marissa Schuld, who was The Arizona Republic’s state player of the year as a junior at Phoenix Pinnacle High School. She won’t be available to Arizona until the 2019 season, even though she committed to Candrea three years ago. Schuld was 22-1 with an 0.80 ERA this year and also hit .505 with 15 home runs. Power pitching? She struck out 284 in 131 innings.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
UA women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes hit it big last week when Texas forward Cate Reese, the No. 12 overall prospect in ESPN’s Class of 2018, committed to play for the Wildcats. The 6-foot-2-inch Reese had offers from powerhouse Washington as well as Baylor, TCU, Oklahoma State and national champion South Carolina. Some say Reese is the top prospect ever to commit to Arizona, but it’s difficult to think she was more highly rated than the late Shawntinice Polk, a dominating 6-4 center from the Fresno area who committed in 2001. Polk was a first-team Parade All-American and one of 20 players invited to the Women’s Basketball Coaching Association All-Star Game in Hartford, Connecticut, that year.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Val Bichekas was the equivalent of a four-star football prospect when he visited Arizona for the 1982 Territorial Cup game.
His coach at Gilbert High School was an ASU alumnus who hoped to steer Bichekas to the Sun Devils. But the 280-pound guard visited Tucson anyway, and on that night, the Wildcats stunned the No. 4 Sun Devils 28-18, knocking them from the Rose Bowl for the first of “The Streak” — an 8-0-1 run against ASU from 1982-90.
Some maintain it was the most significant Territorial Cup victory in UA history. It impressed Bichekas, who decided that weekend to attend Arizona and in 1985 and 1986 was a starting guard on UA teams that went 8-3-1 and 9-3.
If you ever find a more loyal Wildcat than Bichekas, you’ve got a scoop. Every time I saw him over the years, he would add “I never lost to ASU.”
Sadly, Bichekas died last week at 52 after a brief illness. One thing is certain: He didn’t get cheated.
He made his career as a security official for VIPs, touring the world with such musical groups as Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne and spending about 25 years working for security firms contracted for game days at Arizona Stadium and at other sports events such as the Super Bowl and even Arizona’s 1994 Fiesta Bowl victory over Miami.
On the night Arizona parted ways with Dick Tomey in November 2000, Bichekas was his escort to and from the field at Arizona Stadium. Although the school didn’t announce Tomey would be asked to resign after the Territorial Cup game, Bichekas knew.
When Tomey was safely back in the UA locker room, Bichekas walked alone back to the field. He stopped at the entry to the dressing room, pounded his fist on the door and let his unhappiness be known.
The UA lost a great Wildcat that night. And last week another.
At the height of Dick Tomey’s coaching career in the mid-1990s, Oklahoma asked if he was interested in being the Sooners’ head coach. Tomey suggested the Sooners take a good look at UA defensive coordinator Larry Mac Duff.
Kentucky twice tried to get Lute Olson to run UK’s basketball operation at Rupp Arena. Arizona State, of course, tried to persuade alumnus Mike Candrea to return “home” to coach the Sun Devils.
And swimming coach Frank Busch always seemed to be the first choice when vacancies popped up at USC and Florida, among others.
So it’s nothing new when Sean Miller’s name gets tossed around for get-back-close-to-home schools like Maryland, Pitt and Ohio State.
I would keep eight things in mind before spending a sleepless night worrying that Miller will abandon Arizona just at it seems capable of ending a 17-year drought at the Final Four:
1. Coaching against Archie. If a new job involves close-contact competition and recruiting against your brother, the new coach at Indiana, it is undesirable.
2. Money. Arizona pays at the highest scale of college basketball. It ain’t about the money after you’ve banked more than $20 million in Tucson.
3. There are no recruiting limitations at Arizona. Your recruiting turf is the world.
4. Family. Miller’s two oldest sons are on the staff at Arizona. His youngest son is a point guard at Salpointe Catholic. He has a nice summer home in the White Mountains.
5. The road no longer eats up too much time. Arizona provides charter flight service to and from every game, every year. It is the sweetest traveling arrangement in the Pac-12 and West of Kansas.
6. Lorenzo Romar is just settling in. You can make a case that Miller has the best coaching staff in college hoops.
7. Privacy. Miller is an unusually private man, one who doesn’t seem willing to walk into a fishbowl-type job in a basketball-centric city in the ACC. Tucson gives him his space.
8. Unfinished business. Who walks away from a Final Four-ready product when you’re 48, in the prime of your career, one clutch bucket from basketball’s Promised Land?
And how about the climate? Why live where you must be armed with mittens and worry about your de-icer fluid?
At the Rich Rodriguez 7-on-7 passing league championships last weekend at Arizona Stadium, Marana High School knocked off big-school power Chandler High School 38-20 to win the title. It’s a reflection on the turn-around coach Andy Litten has directed in Marana, which went 9-3 a year ago, and an indication of more to come. Junior-to-be quarterback Trenton Bourguet threw 44 touchdown passes and only had two interceptions during the two-day tournament; one national recruiting service named him the top 7-on-7 quarterback in the country. Marana receivers Jesus Valenzuela, Diego Miranda and Tariq Jordan were Bourguet’s key receivers in a 38-0 victory over rival Mountain View in the semifinals.
One of the most significant moves of the high school basketball off-season is the move of Mountain View sophomore-to-be guard Evan Nelson to Salpointe Catholic. Nelson projects as a Division I prospect in the Class of 2020, perhaps already the top player in Tucson with the exception of Salpointe junior-to-be Majok Deng, who has been offered a scholarships by Arizona, Stanford, Arizona State and Cal, among others. Nelson will join new Salpointe coach Jim Reynolds, who coached for 38 years in Ohio before moving to Tucson and replacing Brian Holstrom, who coached the Lancers to the state championship game a year ago.
Sybil Dosty, the top girls basketball player in Salpointe Catholic history, has joined the coaching staff of the Nevada Wolf Pack for 2017-18. Dosty, who played at Tennessee and ASU, was hired by Hawaii last summer but chose to leave the Rainbows, help Pima College’s basketball program and delay her return to Division I coaching.
Tucson-based Collegiate Baseball magazine, which has for more than 50 years been a heavyweight in coverage of all things college baseball, last week named UA freshman third baseman Nick Quintana to its Freshman All-American team. It’s a much-deserved honor for Quintana, who hit .293 with 38 RBI. The magazine, however, named 14 third basemen as “freshman All-Americans.” I suspect after a summer playing for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox in the Cape Cod League, Quintana will play to a higher level in 2018.
UA freshman high-jumper Justice Summerset of Mountain View High School might be The One to finally win an NCAA high jump championship at Arizona. His third-place finish Friday in Oregon, at 7 feet 1¾ inches, was the eighth time an Arizona high jumper has finished in the top three in the NCAA outdoors. But no one has been able to kick down the door and win it all starting in 1967 when Olympian Ed Caruthers was second at 7-2 ¼. Since then, Lorenzo Allen (1971); Robert Joseph (1973); James Frazier, (1979 and 1980); and school record-holder Nick Ross (2011 and 2014) were either second or third. If Summerset can break Ross’ incredible record of 7-7 set in 2014, he could finally be the one to win it all.
My ongoing summer series “The Top 10 of everything in Tucson sports” has kicked me in the pants so far. It is so difficult to squeeze deserving people into those rankings. The “Top 10 Voices of Tucson sports” was painful. I did not include ex-Toros and Sidewinders play-by-play men Mario Impemba, Matt Vasgersian or Vince Contronio, all of whom left Tucson to become MLB broadcasters. It was also painful not to include former Channel 13 sport anchors Steve Quis and Kevin McCabe. Both were outstanding in their Tucson years.
Another omission from the Top 10 picks of Tucson’s top referees and officials is Rich Hall, who has worked three NFL conference championship games in recent years, and Cleo Robinson, for years one of the leading officials in Pac-12 football. Let me hear about it if I leave someone off a future Top 10 list you feel is deserving.
Typical of Pac-12’s high-roller approach to sports under commissioner Larry Scott, the league offers a “media rate” of $289 (plus taxes) per night for the Pac-12 football media days July 26-27 at the Loews Hollywood Hotel. The days of “cost containment” are long gone. I had to laugh when remembering the old Pac-10 basketball media days at a Los Angeles airport hotel when former Oregon basketball coach Don Monson, stripped down to his boxer shorts and a T-shirt, walked into a media lounge and asked if there was any free beer. Don Monson doesn’t work here anymore.
I don’t think many in the UA athletic administration were saddened last week when former Boise State defensive lineman Dereck Boles flipped his commitment to play at Arizona and said he will instead play at South Florida. Boles bit the ear off a Boise State teammate 16 months ago, and although cleared by the Idaho legal system, it reflected poorly on Arizona’s approach to football recruiting.
ESPN projects former Catalina Foothills High School outfielder Luis Gonzalez as the No. 27 overall choice in this week’s MLB draft. Gonzalez, who worked out for the Kansas City Royals and Texas Rangers last week, had a career batting average of .353 at New Mexico, racking up 213 hits and also making 22 starts as a pitcher. Gonzalez is a plus-speed runner, bats left, and has good strike zone judgment; he walked 124 times and only struck out 71 times as a Lobo. Even if he’s not a first-round pick, he seems positioned to be a top-100 pick with a bonus well into six figures.
Mike Candrea’s next top pitching prospect at Arizona is Marissa Schuld, who was The Arizona Republic’s state player of the year as a junior at Phoenix Pinnacle High School. She won’t be available to Arizona until the 2019 season, even though she committed to Candrea three years ago. Schuld was 22-1 with an 0.80 ERA this year and also hit .505 with 15 home runs. Power pitching? She struck out 284 in 131 innings.
UA women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes hit it big last week when Texas forward Cate Reese, the No. 12 overall prospect in ESPN’s Class of 2018, committed to play for the Wildcats. The 6-foot-2-inch Reese had offers from powerhouse Washington as well as Baylor, TCU, Oklahoma State and national champion South Carolina. Some say Reese is the top prospect ever to commit to Arizona, but it’s difficult to think she was more highly rated than the late Shawntinice Polk, a dominating 6-4 center from the Fresno area who committed in 2001. Polk was a first-team Parade All-American and one of 20 players invited to the Women’s Basketball Coaching Association All-Star Game in Hartford, Connecticut, that year.
Val Bichekas was the equivalent of a four-star football prospect when he visited Arizona for the 1982 Territorial Cup game.
His coach at Gilbert High School was an ASU alumnus who hoped to steer Bichekas to the Sun Devils. But the 280-pound guard visited Tucson anyway, and on that night, the Wildcats stunned the No. 4 Sun Devils 28-18, knocking them from the Rose Bowl for the first of “The Streak” — an 8-0-1 run against ASU from 1982-90.
Some maintain it was the most significant Territorial Cup victory in UA history. It impressed Bichekas, who decided that weekend to attend Arizona and in 1985 and 1986 was a starting guard on UA teams that went 8-3-1 and 9-3.
If you ever find a more loyal Wildcat than Bichekas, you’ve got a scoop. Every time I saw him over the years, he would add “I never lost to ASU.”
Sadly, Bichekas died last week at 52 after a brief illness. One thing is certain: He didn’t get cheated.
He made his career as a security official for VIPs, touring the world with such musical groups as Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne and spending about 25 years working for security firms contracted for game days at Arizona Stadium and at other sports events such as the Super Bowl and even Arizona’s 1994 Fiesta Bowl victory over Miami.
On the night Arizona parted ways with Dick Tomey in November 2000, Bichekas was his escort to and from the field at Arizona Stadium. Although the school didn’t announce Tomey would be asked to resign after the Territorial Cup game, Bichekas knew.
When Tomey was safely back in the UA locker room, Bichekas walked alone back to the field. He stopped at the entry to the dressing room, pounded his fist on the door and let his unhappiness be known.
The UA lost a great Wildcat that night. And last week another.
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