Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Arizona basketball coach Tommy Lloyd bullish on ASU, but Pac-12's NCAA resume has holes

Tommy Lloyd is a positive thinker and it showed after Arizona eliminated ASU from the Pac-12 Tournament Friday night. Lloyd endorsed the Sun Devils as a team that should be selected to the NCAA Tournament.

“They are definitely a team that could win games in the Tournament,’’ said Lloyd. “I hope they get in. If I had a vote, I’d definitely vote them in.’’

But the reason ASU is again riding the bubble and could perhaps be the last team in — or the first team out — is because the Pac-12’s overall resume is so weak.

Pac-12 teams have gone 94-58 in non-conference games, or 61.8 percent. How good (or bad) is that?

Big 12 teams had a 115-32 non-conference record this year, or 78.2 percent. Big Ten teams went 124-47 in the non-conference, or 72.2 percent.

Another way to put it: when the Pac-12 was the Pac-10 and, thus, played about 30 fewer non-conference games each season, it won 103, 107 and 105 non-conference games in consecutive years, 2007-2009. And now it sits with 94 out-of-league wins. Not good if you’re on the bubble.

It’s no wonder ASU coach Bobby Hurley responded positively Friday when asked about a potential berth in the NIT. “We’re all in,’’ Hurley said.

What makes ASU’s situation as a forever-on-the-bubble franchise newsworthy is that Pac-12 women’s teams almost surely make up the strongest women’s league in the country.

“Our conference is the best hands-down, top to bottom,’’ UA coach Adia Barnes said Wednesday. “It makes some of our (conference) losses not so bad. We’re just beating everybody up.’’

Here’s the telling statistic: Pac-12 women’s teams went 125-20 in non-conference games this season, or 86 percent. The league is so strong that seventh-seeded WSU won the women’s conference tournament despite a 9-9 league record. But the Cougars were 10-1 outside the Pac-12.

Barnes said that competition inside the Pac-12 is so difficult that it’s one reason the women’s teams play just 18 league games; the men play 20.

“We have 18 really hard games,’’ she said.

Why is Pac-12 men’s basketball so different from the league’s powerhouse women’s teams? Perhaps Stanford is the best example.

Cardinal athletic director Bernard Muir last week said he does not plan to fire men’s coach Jerrod Haase, whose team went 14-19 and is 59-72 in Pac-12 games across his seven seasons. There is no juice to Haase’s program. Stanford’s attendance this season was 3,518 at 7,500-seat Maples Pavilion.

By comparison, Georgia Tech fired coach Josh Pastner, a UA alumnus, on Friday. Pastner and Haase were hired weeks apart in the spring of 2016.

Pastner has gone 109-113 overall compared to Haase’s 112-109. Playing in a much more difficult ACC, Pastner’s Yellow Jackets played in one NCAA Tournament. Stanford? None.

Yet Georgia Tech was willing to pay Pastner $5.2 million to go away. Stanford is bringing Haase back. Such is Pac-12 basketball.

La Paloma to be 10th course used in Tucson pro golf history

In its 78 years (1945-2023) as part of men’s and women’s pro golf tours, Tucson has never fully planted roots.

When the Conquistadors last week announced La Paloma Country Club as the 2024 site for the Southern Arizona's PGA Tour Champions event, it ended four different stays at Tucson National (1965-78, 1980, 1991-2006 and 2015-23).

The PGA Tour and LPGA Tours have also played at El Rio (1945-62), Forty-Niner Country Club (1963-64), Randolph North (1979, 1981-2002), Starr Pass (1987-92), Dell Urich (2003-04), the Gallery North (2001), the Gallery South (2007-08) and Dove Mountain Golf Club (2009-14).

Why the move from Tucson National to La Paloma? Follow the money.

Increased expenses at Tucson National had become a sticking point between the Conquistadors and the Omni hotel chain for the last few years. It thus became a strained relationship. The contract expired last week.

The PGA Tour and Conquistadors examined the possibility of moving to Oro Valley Country Club in 2024, but among other things, the OVCC practice facility and driving range is too small. Access in and out of the crowded residential area at OVCC is less than optimal.

Moving to La Paloma won’t be an easy conversion. The Jack Nicklaus-designed course, built in 1985, has little parking space. The Conquistadors will attempt to rent parking space at Catalina Foothills High School, nearby business parks and the La Encantada shopping center, among other spots. There’s probably not a golf course on the PGA Tour that doesn’t have parking issues.

Tucson golf spectators will be challenged by walking the hilly La Paloma course, which also has some unusually long walks between holes. Over the next few months, the Conquistadors will work with La Paloma officials to create a more fan-friendly 18-hole layout by creating an 18-hole tournament course from La Paloma’s 27 holes.

The Conquistadors initially hoped that a renovation at Randolph North — a could-have-been partnership with the Arizona athletic department and the City of Tucson — would create a perfect site for a Champions Tour event. But when the UA chose to build its $14 million golf compound at Tucson Country Club, the Randolph idea went poof.

UCLA’s Jaquez has Tucson roots

Imagine how powerful Arizona’s basketball program could’ve been this year had UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez Jr., the Pac-12 player of the year, spent his college days at Arizona. A national championship wouldn’t have been out of the question.

But Arizona did not recruit Jaquez, Class of 2018, when he was at Camarillo High School, located in a Los Angeles suburb. Tucson has rarely had a connection to an elite basketball recruit the way it did to Jaquez.

His mother, Angela Sather, grew up in Tucson and was a 1993 All-City basketball player at Sabino High School, averaging 17.4 points and 9.2 rebounds per game. She then attended Pima College before transferring to Concordia University in Irvine, California, where she met her husband, and Jaime was born.

Angela Sather Jaquez became a middle school teacher after her college days and is also the mother of UCLA freshman women’s basketball standout Gabriela Jaquez, a 2022 McDonald’s All-American.

Short stuff

• Pima College women’s basketball assistant coach Jim Rosborough was selected to the College Basketball Assistant Coaches Hall of Fame last week and will be inducted with the Class of 2023 in a May ceremony in Atlanta, part of the third class of assistant coaches so honored.

Rosborough, who was Lute Olson’s lead assistant at Arizona from 1989-2006, will join Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd — who served as a Gonzaga assistant for 21 years — and UA assistant coach Steve Robinson, who was an assistant coach at Kansas and North Carolina for a combined 29 seasons, as members of the Hall of Fame. Lloyd and Robinson were selected in 2021.

Lloyd and Robinson strongly advocated for Rosborough, who becomes the second assistant coach in Pac-12 history so honored; Donny Daniels, who was an assistant coach at UCLA, Gonzaga and Utah for 28 years was part of the Class of 2020. …

• Arizona men’s golf coach Jim Anderson, the 2020 Pac-12 champion, is staging what could be the most challenging home golf tournament in the last 15 or 20 years in Tucson. When the 17th-ranked Wildcats tee it up Friday and Saturday at the NIT Invitational at Tucson National, the field will include No. 3 ASU, No. 4 Illinois, No. 9 Pepperdine, No. 12 Florida, No. 13 Oklahoma and No. 19 Oklahoma State.

Ordinarily, playing a two-day golf event on the first weekend of March Madness might not attract a large crowd, but Anderson has arranged to have a large tent near the 18th hole with TV screens linked to NCAA Tournament games. If you are interested in being a volunteer, register at tinyurl.com/3yc3kdam. Volunteers will receive a UA golf shirt and golf hat, and free lunch. …

• Liam Lloyd, son of Tommy Lloyd, helped NAU to its riveting run to the Big Sky Conference championship game last week. No surprise there.

While playing at powerhouse Gonzaga Prep, Liam scored a school-record 46 points in a game and led his club two back-to-back state championships. At 6-feet 6-inches, Lloyd is a feared 3-point shooter. He started 26 games at NAU this season, his sophomore year, and scored 19 points (including three 3-pointers) in the Big Sky tournament.

Liam is one of a few sons of UA head coaches/athletic directors to play Division I sports. The best? Fred W. Enke, son of Arizona basketball coach Fred A. Enke. In 1948, the young Enke led the NCAA in total offense as Arizona’s starting quarterback. He went on to play in the NFL for seven years.

And then there is Monte Clausen, son of Arizona athletic director Dick Clausen (1959-72), who was a starter on Arizona’s basketball teams of 1961-63, scoring 424 points.

Baseball coach Andy Lopez’s son, Michael, was captain of Arizona’s 2012 NCAA championship team. Michael Lopez was not a starter, however. Today he is the pitching coach for the New Mexico Lobos. …

Acuna not just a softball standout

A year ago, ASU outfielder Yanni Acuna hit .430 with 14 home runs and was selected to the All-Pac-12 team. It capped her climb from Salpointe Catholic’s 2018 state championship team to being one of the top players in college softball.

It was similar to the climb made 20 years ago by Catalina Foothills High school outfielder Jackie Vasquez, one of Tucson’s top prep softball players of the early 2000s. Vasquez played at Kansas for two years before transferring to ASU and leading the Sun Devils to the 2008 NCAA championship as she hit .413 for the 66-5 Sun Devils. Vasquez was also an All-Pac-12 outfielder who was selected to the Women’s College World Series all-tournament team.

Now Acuna and Vasquez are working together to help their hometown of Tucson.

Jackie Vazquez-Lapan is the CEO of the Lapan Sunshine Foundation, which provides after- school programs and educational opportunities for school kids who might not otherwise have them. Acuna soon became friends with Jackie. They joined forces.

Acuna has been able to get her Sun Devil teammates to join her in Tucson to help move some of Jackie’s Sunshine Foundation students into low-income college housing. They both have worked together in food drives in South Tucson.

“I’ve learned so much from Jackie,’’ Acuna told the ASU sports information department. “She does so good for the community and just seeing what she does inspires me to give back. When I go home to Tucson those are my people. I grew up with those kids and I understand how their life is and I'm able to listen and tell them it’s going to get better.”

Acuna, a centerfielder, was hitting .468 after Friday’s game against Arizona. She is bidding to become the Pac-12 player of the year.

My two cents: Pac-12 voters don't always get it right

Azuolas Tubelis was not chosen the Pac-12 player of the year despite leading the league in scoring and rebounding, one of just seven players in league history to do so. That dates to Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tubelis is not the first with impressive numbers not to be player of the year.

WSU’s future NBA star Klay Thompson led the league in scoring in 2011 but the POY was Arizona’s Derrick Williams. Arizona’s Gilbert Arenas did not win the award in 2001, losing it to Cal’s somewhat under-the-radar Sean Lampley.

Nor did an Arizona player win the POY award during its 34-4 2015 Elite Eight season, when, in retrospect, Arizona point guard T.J. McConnell, who averaged 10.3 points and led the league in steals, assists and leadership, should’ve been player of the year.

Instead, Oregon shooting guard Joseph Young, a volume shooter from a 26-10 team, was voted POY.

Sometimes the voters, the coaches, just get it wrong.