Hansen's Sunday Notebook: When it comes to UA revivals, Adia Barnes and Lute Olson in same class

Star columnist Greg Hansen checks in with the latest in Southern Arizona sports, from UA basketball, to prep sports news, to a 43-year old Wildcat making the U.S. Olympic team. 

Sometime this week at the Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament in Las Vegas, Arizona coach Adia Barnes will learn she has been selected the league’s coach of the year.

It’s not that there isn’t a deserving contender; Oregon’s Kelly Graves has a crazy-talented team that could win the national championship. But, c’mon, what Barnes has done at Arizona this season is once-in-a-life worthy.

Two years ago, Arizona finished 6-24. Now the Wildcats are 23-5. They have beaten three top 10 teams in the last four weeks. They are averaging 6,014 fans at McKale Center, unthinkable on this date last year.

Here’s a comparison that should clinch it: The single greatest turnaround in Pac-10/12 history — men’s and women’s basketball — was Lute Olson taking a 4-24 Arizona team in 1983-84 and producing a Pac-10 championship in Year 3.

Now Lute has company in the turnaround business.

When Barnes becomes the league’s coach of the year, it will be historic. She will become the first in league basketball history, men’s or women’s, to become the Pac-12’s Freshman of the Year (1994), Player of the Year (1998) and Coach of the Year (2020).

Talk about a Triple Crown.

What is so irresistible about Barnes is that her I’m-having-fun personality is genuine. Yes, she knows when to get tough and make X’s and O’s a priority, but in an era increasingly taken over by irritable and unapproachable mega-millionaire coaches, Barnes hasn’t lost touch with the purity of the game.

After chopping down No. 4 Stanford on Friday, Barnes’ coach from San Diego’s Mission Bay High School, Larry Irmer, and his wife, Chris, stood at the back of the media room and beamed. They all embraced, tears fell. Irmer and his wife even traveled to Seattle this year to watch the Wildcats beat Washington. Talk about a bond that has lasted the test of time.

But what has stayed with me most about Barnes’ remarkable reclamation project at McKale Center is that her stepfather, Bruce McRae, often steps quietly into the back of the media room at McKale to watch Adia politely and informatively answer every question, top to bottom.

McRae married Barnes’ mother, Patricia, when Adia was 3. She knows him as dad. He has stuck with her every step of the way.

When Barnes played for coach Irmer at Mission Bay, she struggled the first two years, sometimes hanging with the wrong crowd, sometimes failing to make academics a priority. Irmer and McRae persisted, helping the young Adia Barnes get her priorities in order.

As a senior, Barnes had a 3.6 GPA. When she arrived at Arizona in the fall of 1994, she was cleared for takeoff.

Now she and her basketball program are in orbit.

Expect to pay more to see UA in NCAAs

Arizona seems like a sure-thing to play host to the first and second rounds of the women’s NCAA Tournament, held between March 20-23. One thing to remember: The NCAA establishes ticket prices and they will not be as consumer friendly as Arizona’s regular-season tickets. When Oregon State played host to the NCAA Tournament last year in Corvallis, an all-session pass for both days was $32 for adults and $24 for seniors. Single-game tickets were $24 for adults and $16 for seniors. At Friday night’s regular-season game against Stanford, tickets were $5 for seniors and $8 for adults.

Jason Harris remains locked in with Colorado coaching staff

Any chance that four-star outside linebacker Jason Harris would opt out of his letter-of-intent to play football at Colorado ended last week when new CU coach Karl Dorrell retained Brian Michalowski, the linebackers coach from Mel Tucker’s staff who successfully recruited Harris. The son of former Desert Swarm linebacker Sean Harris, a Tucson High grad, and the brother of UA junior linebacker Jalen Harris, Jason would’ve probably been viewed as the top recruit in Arizona’s Class of 2020.

Kevin Sumlin lacks connection with Tucson community

Arizona opens spring football drills this week and it’s almost like an underground operation, given the lack of local interest and connection from coach Kevin Sumlin and his staff. By comparison, ASU coach Herm Edwards had a high-profile visit in spring training last week, speaking to the San Francisco Giants at their Phoenix-area facility and spending time in the Arizona Diamondbacks clubhouse. Arizona had a chance to help Sumlin’s profile the last two months. Why not send him to a “Love of Reading” class at a Tucson elementary school? That would’ve been on all the local newscasts. It would’ve resonated.

Randolph’s revamp, UA’s move to golf course seem to be gaining steam 

A possible move toward establishing the Randolph Golf Complex as the home of Arizona’s men’s and women’s golf programs appears to be gaining traction. UA president Bobby Robbins, athletic director Dave Heeke, golf course architect Ken Kavanaugh and representatives of Tucson City golf examined the property nine days ago, going over architectural plans on site, and discussing what could lead to not only one of the top golf facilities in the NCAA but perhaps the future home of the Cologuard Classic. As always, a financing plan — costing perhaps as much as $12 million — would be the last item to fall into place, not to mention political input. 

UA women's golf team faces tough challenge in Florida

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Coach Laura Ianello’s UA women’s team plays in the Miami Invitational in Florida this week with the new No. 1-ranked golfer in the NCAA: freshman Vivian Hou. Impressively, her sister, Arizona junior Yu-Sang Hou, has moved to No. 6 in the college rankings.

UA sophomore Ya Chun Chang is No. 18 overall. Records of the rankings of previous UA golfers are incomplete, but it’s unlikely even in the Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa years that Arizona had three golfers ranked in the top 20 at a given time. The UA plays host to its lone home meet of the year at the Arizona Wildcat Invitational next week.

Local high school golfer swings with the pros 

Catalina Foothills High School state champion golfer Maya Benita, who has signed to play at Arizona, played in the pro-am of the ongoing Cologuard Classic with 1993 Tucson Open champion Larry Mize on Wednesday. Benita was in the zone; she had six birdies. Similarly, Salpointe Catholic High School junior Max Krueger was on the pro-am team with Ernie Els. Talk about valuable experiences. It’s intriguing to see who plays in pro-ams in pro golf. Last week in Tucson, former Chicago Cubs pitcher Lance Dickson, an Arizona grad, and former Sahuaro High School and ASU and NFL receiver John Mistler played, as did Jerry Myerscough — Ianello’s father.

Tucsonan leads Cochise College basketball to ACCAC title 

Tucson native Jerry Carrillo, a Salpointe Catholic High School and UA grad, coached Cochise College’s men’s basketball team to the ACCAC championship for the ninth time last week. Given Cochise’s remote location near the Mexican border, placed against Phoenix schools every year, that goes beyond impressive. The Apaches went 17-5 in ACCAC, and are 37-7 the last two seasons. Carrillo lost all five starters last season, which makes winning title No. 9 even more impressive.

Sunnyside soccer coach goes down in history books

Sunnyside High School boys soccer coach Casey O’Brien, whose team finished second in the state finals last week, has gone 48-2-2 the last two seasons, winning the 2019 state championship. How good is that? The most prolific two-year boys prep soccer record in Tucson history is Salpointe Catholic coach Wolfgang Weber’s 51-4-1 combo in 2012-13, with one state title and one runner-up finish. Weber also coached Salpointe to 34-1 record in 1986-87 with two state championships.

Joan Bonvicini buries emotions during Arizona broadcasts 

Former UA women’s basketball coach Joan Bonvicini was the analyst for the Pac-12 Network on Friday when Arizona stunned No. 4 Stanford. Bonvicini doesn’t see a conflict in calling games for her old school. “Being an analyst is my basketball fix,” she said. “People ask all the time if I have a problem being neutral when calling Arizona games and, honestly, not at all. I just call what I see. I don’t feel emotional when calling a game.” Bonvicini won’t be calling Pac-12 Tournament games, but instead will be in Las Vegas in her role as a New York Life agent, sponsoring a women-in-sports seminar, and also giving a clinic to Las Vegas-area Boys and Girls clubs at the Mandalay Events Center.

Abdi Abdirahman makes fifth Olympic team

At the induction ceremony for the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame last fall, Abdi Abdirahman told me he planned to make the USA’s 2020 Olympic team in the marathon.

I asked him if he was serious. He is 43 years old.

“Trust me,” he said.

Saturday in Atlanta, the UA and Pima College grad had the performance of a runner’s lifetime, finishing third with a lifetime-best 2 hours 10 minutes 3 seconds. It will be his fifth consecutive berth on the USA Olympic team. He previously ran the 10,000 meters in the Olympics.

Tucsonan Bernard Lagat finished 18th overall, in 2:14.23. He was attempting to make his fifth Olympic team, too. Nico Montanez, a St. Augustine High School grad and an All-American at BYU, finished 20th, which was outstanding. Montanez, 26, had only run two previous marathons. He told me he plans to run for the Olympic teams in 2024 and 2028.

My two cents: Girls state basketball needs Open Division

One thing that can’t happen soon enough for girls high school basketball in Arizona is an Open Division, similar to that established in football last year, a haven for superpowers during the open enrollment era.

That was never more apparent than in Saturday’s Class 4A state championship game, when Seton Catholic’s girls team overpowered perhaps the top girls team in Sahuaro’s 50-year history, 70-40.

Put it this way: Sahuaro coach Steve Botkin went 218-67 the last decade and 28-2 this season. But Karen Self’s Seton Catholic team went 288-44 and won seven state championships in the last decade.

This was Botkin’s first game in the state finals, even though he has been Tucson’s leading girls prep basketball coach for almost 20 years. Seton Catholic played in 10 of the last 11 state title games.

Sahuaro and Seton Catholic are playing with fully different resources yet are in the same division. It just doesn’t seem to be the right thing to do.