SIDELINES
Having ushered the Wildcats into McKale Center and later the Pac-10 with a successful, fast-paced style of basketball that galvanized fan support, former UA coach Fred Snowden will be named to the Pac-12 Hall of Honor this season.
Snowden won 60.7 percent of his games over 10 years at UA, taking two teams to the NCAA tournament. His best season came in 1975-76, when the Wildcats won the Western Athletic Conference, went to the NCAA Elite Eight and were 24-9 overall.
Snowden was also the first African-American hired by a major Division I program, another reason why former UA star Bob Elliott has pushed for him to be named to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, too.
“Some (African-American) coaches said when Fred passed away that if he didn’t do what he did and how he did it, they wouldn’t have,” Elliott said last summer. “He took a program that had nobody following it, in a (tiny) gym to going across the street to McKale Center and going to the NCAA tournament.”
