Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Sean Miller operating with full staff after addition of Justin Gainey

Statistic of the week: Arizona will enter the 2018-19 basketball season without a returning starter for the first time since 1970-71.

How’d that work out? The ’71 Wildcats went 6-20 and coach Bruce Larson was fired the year before McKale Center opened.

But at least Sean Miller now has a full coaching staff, if not a full roster. For the first time since Book Richardson left the staff in September, Arizona has the NCAA-maximum three full-time assistant coaches.

It’ll be a learn-as-we-go process. Miller’s two new coaches, Danny Peters and Justin Gainey, have only had full-time, on-court coaching experience at Ball State, Appalachian State and Santa Clara.

Four thoughts on the UA coaching situation:

1. Since Richardson left Arizona’s staff, the Wildcats didn’t have a connector or communicator. That, not recruiting, was Richardson’s strength. Miller didn’t need an Xs-and-Os guy; he does all of that stuff. He needs someone like Gainey to be a shoulder for the players to lean on.

2. It was predictable Miller would hire from his comfort zone and fill his staff with someone from mentor Herb Sendek’s coaching family. Reports this week said Arizona had hired Gainey, who played for Sendek at North Carolina State in the late-1990s, when Miller coached there and his brother, Archie, played there. Miller gets a lot of flak for his devotion to Sendek’s deliberate style, and it’s unlikely he’ll change now. He had up-tempo Lorenzo Romar on his staff last year and little changed. Miller passed on a chance to hire UCLA’s top recruiter, David Grace, to hire Gainey, who has only recruited for Santa Clara and Appalachian State.

3. Hiring from within isn’t just a Miller paranoia; it happens everywhere in college hoops. Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski’s three assistants are all from Duke. Oregon coach Dana Altman’s trusted confidante, Kevin McKenna, was with him for nine years at Creighton before moving to the Pac-12. ASU’s Bobby Hurley’s top assistant, Rashon Burno, played for Hurley’s father at St. Antony’s High School. Michigan State’s Tom Izzo hired MSU alumnus Dwayne Stephens and Izzo’s college teammate, Mike Garland.

4. Lute Olson arrived at Arizona with three of his assistants from Iowa, and later added to that pipeline by hiring ex-Iowa coaches Jim Rosborough and Tony McAndrews, and by hiring ex-Wildcat players Reggie Geary, Miles Simon and Josh Pastner. It usually all connects at some point. For better or worse, Miller’s connection is to Sendek.

At most Tucson schools, freshmen weren’t eligible to play high school sports until the 1990s, if then. It was unusual for a sophomore to break into a starting lineup of any varsity team.

But that has changed with the proliferation of year-round, one-sport specialization in high school sports.

Last week, for the first time in Tucson history, Salpointe Catholic freshman pitcher Alyssa Aguilar completed a remarkable 5-0 streak in the state playoffs, helping the Lancers to the Class 4A state title by pitching 6º shutout innings against Glendale Cactus. Aguilar allowed just four runs in 30 innings.

• It was the first time in Southern Arizona history that freshmen pitchers won back-to-back state championship games. A year ago, Cienega’s Mariah Lopez, a freshman, pitched the Bobcats to the 5A state championship. To prove it wasn’t a fluke, Lopez did it again this year, pitching Eric Tatham’s team to another state title.

Before Aguilar and Lopez went back-to-back, only three Southern Arizona freshmen pitchers had won state championship games:

• In 1998, Desert Christian’s Tiffany Dawson led her team to the 1A state title, going 25-2 overall.
• In 1999, Flowing Wells’ Ashley Monceaux went 17-4 and pitched Armando Quiroz’s Caballeros to the state championship, going 4-0 in the playoffs.
• In 2013, San Manuel’s Lyana Waddell, 21-6, pitched the Miners to the state title, beating Phoenix Northwest Christian.

Predicting the future for the state championship freshmen isn’t clear. Monceaux went on to lead Pima College to the NJCAA national championship and become an All-Big 12 first baseman at Baylor. Waddell is 4-23 with an 8.28 ERA this season at Western New Mexico.

What Aguilar and Lopez would like to do is equal the Southern Arizona record of pitching three state championship victories. It’s an exclusive class that includes just one person: CDO’s Kenzie Fowler, 2007-09.

Arizona track coach Fred Harvey has a franchise athlete like few others in school track and field history. Freshman Jordan Geist swept Pac-12 titles in the shot put and discus — unprecedented at Arizona. Geist has a reasonable chance to match or exceed two-time Olympic medalist John Godina, who swept Pac-10 titles in the shot and discus in 1993, 1994 and 1995. Geist’s top shot put distance this year, 70-feet 4½ inches, is already No. 5 in Pac-12 history, trailing Godina’s top of 72-2¼. Only two former Arizona athletes hold career Pac-12 bests: Lawi Lalang ran the 1,500 meters in 3:00.95 in 2013 and Brigetta Barrett high jumped 6-7 in 2012.

The top female distance runner in Southern Arizona history, Rio Rico’s Allie Schadler, finished 10th in the 1,500 Pac-12 championships last week, qualifying for this week’s NCAA Regionals. A freshman, Schadler will now begin running for a new coach; Washington fired head coach Greg Metcalf last week after the Huskies finished ninth in the women’s meet and eighth in men’s standings.

Pima College’s football team continues to draw recruiting interest from Power 5 conference schools. Nebraska coach Scott Frost last week offered a scholarship to PCC lineman Tony Fair, who earlier this spring was offered a scholarship by Indiana. Oklahoma linebackers coach Tim Kish and Utah running backs coach Kiel McDonald were on the PCC campus to meet with Aztecs coach Jim Monaco last week.

Men’s golf coach Jim Anderson delivered his best season yet at the UA, with the Wildcats finishing two strokes shy of reaching the NCAA finals for the first time in six years. It’s like getting to the NCAA basketball Sweet 16, or close. Anderson’s senior all-conference player, George Cunningham, shot 9-under in the NCAA Regionals and will play next weekend at the NCAA finals as an individual. Cunningham’s UA career was, to put it mildly, an adventure. He became a father during his freshman season and shared custody of his 3-year-old daughter, Charlotte, during his college career. He also had a tailbone injury and underwent a cardiac ablation procedure to treat abnormal heart rhythm. Cunningham persevered, qualified for the PGA Tour’s Canadian Tour (beginning next month), earned his degree in four years and to top it off, last week was engaged to be married. Golfweek magazine published an uplifting story of Cunningham’s role as a college golfer-father last week.

The biological father of UA women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes died in Tucson two weeks ago. Pete Barnes, 72, had been living in Tucson for about six months; although Adia was raised by her stepfather, Bruce McRae, she arranged to have Barnes move to Tucson last fall. He suffered from Alzheimer’s and health issues related to CTE from his 11-year NFL career. Barnes was a linebacker for the Chargers, Oilers, Patriots and Cardinals. Adia donated her father’s brain to Boston University to help with the study of CTE. “It was really sad,” Adia said. “He was in decline, but we took him to our home games and did the best we could.”

During her recent two-week run on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars,” former Arizona All-American pitcher Jennie Finch had significant moral support at the Los Angeles studio where the show was staged. Ex-Wildcats Leah O’Brien Amico, Amy Chellevold Hillenbrand, Leneah Manuma and MacKenzie Vandergeest, among others, attended the competition. It seems impossible, but Finch is now 37 and has children aged 12, 7 and 4. She left Arizona in 2001 with a remarkable 119-16 pitching record.

When Arizona National Golf Course (originally Raven at Sabino Springs) was designed by Robert Trent Jones in 1996, it was a head-turning creation to match that of Tucson National 35 years earlier. Tiger Woods played there. The UA made it the school’s home course. But now, like many Southern Arizona golf facilities, it struggles to fill a tee sheet in the summer months. It went into foreclosure four years ago and was purchased by a Canadian mortgage firm, Romspen, which hired OB Sports to operate the course. Now Romspen is asking hundreds of residents in the HOA to vote on whether to pay a monthly fee to keep Arizona National open in the summer. The vote is ongoing. Could that be the future of Tucson’s financially-challenged golf industry? Close the courses in June, July and August? Stay tuned.

One of the good things Greg Byrne did in his six years as Arizona’s athletic director was to move UA baseball to Hi Corbett Field and, later, sign a 25-year agreement to take over day-to-day management of the baseball facility. Now that the UA’s maintenance crew is responsible for upkeep, it is a gem. They don’t paint some of the grass green in May any more because it stays green all season. Byrne eliminated the yearly lease of almost $300,000 and now the school pays the city $10 per year in rent. The city gets 2 percent of food, beverage and merchandise sales, which sounds minimal. But for the UA-ASU series, which drew in excess of 14,000, the beer and concession lines hummed.

One of most intriguing recruiting battles in Arizona involves 6-foot 7-inch, 225-pound football/basketball combo prospect Jason Harris of Gilbert Higley High School. He is a pass-rusher of note and such a good basketball player that he averaged 18.9 at Higley this season as a sophomore. He has been offered football scholarships by Arizona, ASU, Alabama, USC, UCLA, Oregon, you name it. The UA has a lot of connections: Harris is now working with Zeph Lee, a strength and conditioning coach and the father of UA basketball player Ira Lee. Jason’s brother, Jalen Harris, is a redshirt freshman outside linebacker on Arizona’s football team, which is the position their father, Sean Harris of Tucson High, played when he was a third-team AP All-American for Arizona’s Desert Swarm defense in 1994. Jason’s mom, Cha-Ron, played basketball at Arizona in the mid 1990s. The last time a Pac-12 area football/basketball player of such promise was in high school was Tony Gonzalez of Los Angeles. He chose Cal over Arizona in 1992 and went on to start for the Bears’ basketball team and become a 14-time NFL Pro Bowl tight end.

Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, an easy target, was again criticized for his uneven financial performance last week. CBSsports.com writer Dennis Dodd suggested “… if this was a country club, the Pac-12 would be in danger of losing its membership.”

Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson became the latest to go public with his feelings on the league’s finances. “The gap between us and the other (leagues) continues to grow,” he told Dodd. “We’ll be competitively disadvantaged even more. No one is satisfied with the revenue production of the Pac-12 Network.”

Sooner or later, the Pac-12 presidents and chancellors will have to act. They hired Scott, they continue to raise his compensation (to $4.8 million a year) and sanction his financial model.

Since Scott was hired, the league has nine new ADs and eight new presidents. The all-for-one, one-for-all harmony ended long ago.

This spring, the league has taken subtle moves to save money by, among other things, reducing travel of softball and baseball analysts and play-by-play announcers, keeping them as close to home as possible.

I’ll leave the money issues to the presidents. My complaint is elementary. When dozens of Arizona and ASU baseball and softball games are televised on “Pac-12A,” they aren’t available to DISH Network subscribers in Tucson.

C’mon, man. Wasn’t the Pac-12 Network created so that fans would have better access to their local teams?