Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Barnes' hire about ability, not alma mater
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
Decision to hire Barnes more about ability than alma mater, Byrne says
Adia Barnes became just the fourth UA graduate to currently coach a Wildcat team when she was hired Monday. Barnes was an assistant for a Washington squad that made the Final Four this year.
Before I could ask the question, Greg Byrne filled in the blanks: “I’m not hiring Adia Barnes because she went to Arizona.”
But you wonder: Would any other Pac-12 school with a women’s basketball coaching vacancy have considered Barnes, a Washington assistant, worthy of a head coaching job?
The other three UA graduates who are Arizona head coaches — swimming’s Rick DeMont, women’s tennis coach Vicky Maes and women’s golf coach Laura Ianello — all were promoted from within the athletic department after head coaches in those sports left in mid-season.
It’s not an excess. When it comes to hiring one of your own, Arizona is nowhere close to the Pac-12 lead in what could be called sports nepotism.
UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, who is an alumnus, has 10 ex-Bruins as head coaches on his staff: women’s golf’s Carrie Forsyth, gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos Field, men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo, softball coach Cyndi Gallagher, women’s tennis coach Stella Sampras Webster, sand volleyball coach Stein Metzger, men’s volleyball’s John Speraw, women’s volleyball coach Mike Sealy, men’s water polo coach Adam Wright and women’s water polo coach Brandon Brooks.
Stanford has six Cardinal grads in head coaching positions, including football’s David Shaw and baseball’s Mark Marquess.
I suspect the most important part of Barnes’ start at UA will be hiring capable assistants, which may include her husband, ex-Montana State and Italian EuroLeague coach Salvo Coppa. Byrne declined to say how much he will pay Barnes, saying it will come from a pool of available money split between her and the assistants she chooses to hire.
Barnes’ predecessor, Niya Butts, who earned $210,000 this season, paid assistants E.C Hill, Sean LeBeauf and Calamity McEntire a total of $305,000. None were shoulder-to-lean-on, experienced coaches, which was probably a mistake. McEntire had basically been an operations staffer at Boise State; LeBeauf had been the head coach at a Texas junior college; Hill had coached at Northern Illinois.
It’s similar to the coaching mistakes Josh Pastner made at Memphis, hiring ex-Arizona Wildcats Luke Walton, Damon Stoudamire and Jack Murphy, none of whom had been full-time college coaches.
The Commercial Appeal in Memphis on Saturday wrote that losing Pastner to Georgia Tech was “a moment of giddy relief.”
For his part, Stoudamire seems to understand you need a veteran coach with whom to collaborate. As the new head coach at Pacific, he is expected to hire 47-year-old Leonard Perry, who has been the head coach at Idaho and an assistant at Iowa State, Colorado State and Southern Miss.
There is no established or preferred template in the makeup of a Pac-12 women’s basketball staff. Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer , USC’s Cynthia Cooper and ASU’s Charli Turner Thorne do not employ a full-time male assistant coach. But Oregon State’s Scott Rueck and WSU’s June Daugherty both have two full-time male assistants; Daugherty’s husband is one of her assistants.
Barnes has never been a head coach. But neither had her boss at Washington, Mike Neighbors, who kicked around in assistant jobs at Arkansas, Colorado, Tulsa and Xavier before taking the Huskies to the Final Four last week.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Scofield hits career goal with Final Four assignment
Retired Tucson postal worker Bob Scofield officiated his first Division I basketball game in November 1995. “It was the Russian national team at NAU,” he remembers. “My first Pac-10 game was in 1999.” Last week, Scofield was one of 10 referees to work the NCAA Women’s Final Four in Indianapolis. “It took me 21 years to get that phone call from the NCAA,” Scofield said. “It was a good day.”
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Ex-Cat Johnson benched following slump
Stanley Johnson did not play in two Detroit Pistons games last week, the first time the ex-Arizona forward was benched in his rookie season. He had slumped notably — shooting 2 for 18 in his previous three games — and averaging 4.6 points in Detroit’s last 14 games. “I played three bad games and the guy (coach Stan Van Gundy) DNPs me,” Johnson told Detroit reporters. “Am I going to kill myself over it? No.” Johnson’s spot in the Pistons rotation went to Reggie Bullock, who most recently played for Grand Rapids and Bakersfield in the NBA D-League.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Santa Rita grad Shumpert posts game of career
Santa Rita High grad D.J. Shumpert, who spent 1½ seasons as a walk-on forward at Arizona, had the game of his professional life last week. Shumpert, who plays for the Los Angeles D-Fenders, scored 10 points and had 17 rebounds in a D-League regular-season finale against Rio Grande Valley. He averaged 15 minutes per game this season, averaging 2.8 points. Russ Pennell, the former UA interim head coach who gave Shumpert a spot on the Arizona roster, completed his second season at Central Arkansas with a 7-21 record. He is 9-48 overall.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Miller not a fan of grad transfer rules
Sean Miller last week said he does not like the current graduate-transfer policy in college basketball. He has taken advantage of the rules as much or more than anyone, adding Mark Lyons and Mark Tollefsen, but said he hopes rules are changed to force a grad transfer to sit out an extra year. “It’s a major problem, and you could see it coming like a freight train,” he said. “Losing players is not healthy for anyone. We need to slow it down.”
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Arizona Bowl will pay it forward to Tucson charity Tuesday
Ali Farhang, Jon Volpe and Alan Young, the driving forces behind last year’s inaugural Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl, made good on their promise to turn a profit in their first season. They are to present a $75,000 check to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Tucson on Tuesday afternoon. The Colorado State-Nevada game did so well that the game’s founders will also donate to 20 other Southern Arizona charities.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Sahuaro grad Verdugo, ex-Cat Calhoun assigned to Double-A
The Los Angeles Dodgers assigned Sahuaro High grad Alex Verdugo to the Double-A Tulsa Drillers last week. The lefty opened the year batting third and playing center field at Tulsa. His teammate is former UA infielder Willie Calhoun, who bats fifth and plays second base. Both played in Single-A a year ago.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Arizona CWS champ Mejias-Brean inching closer to bigs
Cienega High grad Seth Mejias-Brean opened the year in Triple-A for the first time, playing third base for the Louisville Bats. If he can produce at Louisville, Mejias-Brean, the starting third baseman on Arizona’s 2012 College World Series champs, projects as the Cincinnati Reds’ third baseman of the future.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
LPGA champion, Tucsonan Rarick coming home for charity tourney
Five-time LPGA champion Cindy Rarick, a 1978 Sahuaro High grad, is to return to Tucson next weekend as honorary chairman of the Sahuaro Foundation Charity Golf Tournament at Forty Niner Country Club. Entry information for the 7:30 a.m., shotgun start: (520) 465-7749. Rarick is now director of Silvara Vineyards in the Cascade Mountains near Seattle.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Larry Smith Coaching Academy Clinic coming soon
Corby Smith, son of former UA and USC football coach Larry Smith, continues to honor his father’s career by holding the Larry Smith Coaching Academy Clinic in Tucson. This year’s clinic, staged mostly for youth coaches, will be April 30 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at Tucson High School. One of Smith’s top UA players, Jay Dobyns, will be the keynote speaker. Others who will offer instruction that day include Sabino coach Jay Campos, Tucson High coach Justin Argraves, Mountain View coach Bam McRae and CDO coach Dusty Peace. Larrysmithcoachingacademy.com is the registration site. One of Peace’s top returning players, offensive lineman Jonas Leader, was offered a full scholarship by NAU last week after participating in a skills camp in Flagstaff. Leader is 6 feet 5 inches, 260 pounds.
Fowler, Dorados continue to stomp competition
Since returning as CDO’s softball coach last year, 2005 and 2011 state championship coach Kelly Fowler has gone 53-8-1. The Dorados went undefeated (3-0) in the rain-shortened Michelle Carew Invitational last week in Orange County, Calif., against some of the nation’s top teams and are 21-1-1 entering a Tuesday showdown against state title-seeking Salpointe Catholic. What is amazing about Fowler’s team is that 16 players have already committed to college scholarships. The breakdown: seven to Division I teams, three to Division II and Division III teams, three to junior colleges and three to academic scholarships. CDO’s young players have been outstanding: Freshman pitcher Halle Morris and sophomore Ellessa Bonstrom have already committed to Utah; sophomores Anya Gonzalez and AJ Kaiser have committed to Syracuse; junior Wendy Castro accepted a Wisconsin scholarship.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
CDO grad Bonstrom heads to West Point for good reason
CDO grad Kayla Bonstrom, a first-team All-Pac-12 softball player at Stanford in 2013 and 2015, took a .315 batting average into this weekend’s series against UCLA. She missed a rare game last week, against Pacific, but for a remarkable reason. She flew to West Point to present her senior thesis on counterterrorism to cadets at Army. Bonstrom will play her final collegiate series against Arizona next weekend at Stanford.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Breinig to be honored with leadership award
The Southern Arizona Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame made a terrific selection for its 2017 Joe Kearney Leadership Award. Howard Breinig, who began his days in Tucson as an undersized guard and captain on the Arizona football teams of the early 1960s, is to be honored next Sunday night at the DoubleTree Hotel in the 19th annual Scholar-Athletic banquet. Breinig began his coaching career at Sunnyside High School in 1963 and worked through 2007 as an assistant at Sabino. He led Sahuaro to the 1994 state co-championship. Tickets for the banquet, which includes keynote speaker Chuck Cecil, can be obtained by emailing rick72@aol.com
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
My two cents: Pac-12 bowing to television, though revenues fall short of expectations
It’s with ironic timing that Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott will attend Tuesday’s UA-ASU baseball game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
Scott will be in Tempe as part of a 12-campus listening tour with Pac-12 students on the topic of time demands and possible NCAA proposals about student-athlete welfare.
Twenty years ago, 1996, Arizona softball coach Mike Candrea’s NCAA championship team played 27 doubleheaders.
That was routine until the league expanded to 12 teams and the Pac-12 Networks was created. Now teams don’t play conference doubleheaders, which minimized missed class time.
Instead, a typical weekend of Pac-12 softball is the one Arizona endured last week in Seattle. It played at Washington on Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights. It left Tucson on Friday and returned on Tuesday. Missed class time and travel expenses increased notably.
Former Oregon State athletic director Bob De Carolis told Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano the league was willing to take on the schedule in exchange for a stockpile of Pac-12 Networks money.
“The ADs and the coaches all wanted more exposure for all the Olympic sports,” De Carolis said last week. “So that’s why you’re playing games at all hours of the day, but that’s also why there was an opportunity, hopefully, to get revenue to go against that. That just hasn’t happened. I think that’s the frustration.
“It would be one thing about student-athlete welfare, playing different times of the day, traveling. But you’re doing all that but you’re not realizing the revenues.”
Most league members expected about $5 million each from annual Pac-12 Networks revenue. Last year it was $1.1 million.
The players and coaches pick up the rest of the tab.
Decision to hire Barnes more about ability than alma mater, Byrne says
Adia Barnes became just the fourth UA graduate to currently coach a Wildcat team when she was hired Monday. Barnes was an assistant for a Washington squad that made the Final Four this year.
Before I could ask the question, Greg Byrne filled in the blanks: “I’m not hiring Adia Barnes because she went to Arizona.”
But you wonder: Would any other Pac-12 school with a women’s basketball coaching vacancy have considered Barnes, a Washington assistant, worthy of a head coaching job?
The other three UA graduates who are Arizona head coaches — swimming’s Rick DeMont, women’s tennis coach Vicky Maes and women’s golf coach Laura Ianello — all were promoted from within the athletic department after head coaches in those sports left in mid-season.
It’s not an excess. When it comes to hiring one of your own, Arizona is nowhere close to the Pac-12 lead in what could be called sports nepotism.
UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero, who is an alumnus, has 10 ex-Bruins as head coaches on his staff: women’s golf’s Carrie Forsyth, gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos Field, men’s soccer coach Jorge Salcedo, softball coach Cyndi Gallagher, women’s tennis coach Stella Sampras Webster, sand volleyball coach Stein Metzger, men’s volleyball’s John Speraw, women’s volleyball coach Mike Sealy, men’s water polo coach Adam Wright and women’s water polo coach Brandon Brooks.
Stanford has six Cardinal grads in head coaching positions, including football’s David Shaw and baseball’s Mark Marquess.
I suspect the most important part of Barnes’ start at UA will be hiring capable assistants, which may include her husband, ex-Montana State and Italian EuroLeague coach Salvo Coppa. Byrne declined to say how much he will pay Barnes, saying it will come from a pool of available money split between her and the assistants she chooses to hire.
Barnes’ predecessor, Niya Butts, who earned $210,000 this season, paid assistants E.C Hill, Sean LeBeauf and Calamity McEntire a total of $305,000. None were shoulder-to-lean-on, experienced coaches, which was probably a mistake. McEntire had basically been an operations staffer at Boise State; LeBeauf had been the head coach at a Texas junior college; Hill had coached at Northern Illinois.
It’s similar to the coaching mistakes Josh Pastner made at Memphis, hiring ex-Arizona Wildcats Luke Walton, Damon Stoudamire and Jack Murphy, none of whom had been full-time college coaches.
The Commercial Appeal in Memphis on Saturday wrote that losing Pastner to Georgia Tech was “a moment of giddy relief.”
For his part, Stoudamire seems to understand you need a veteran coach with whom to collaborate. As the new head coach at Pacific, he is expected to hire 47-year-old Leonard Perry, who has been the head coach at Idaho and an assistant at Iowa State, Colorado State and Southern Miss.
There is no established or preferred template in the makeup of a Pac-12 women’s basketball staff. Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer , USC’s Cynthia Cooper and ASU’s Charli Turner Thorne do not employ a full-time male assistant coach. But Oregon State’s Scott Rueck and WSU’s June Daugherty both have two full-time male assistants; Daugherty’s husband is one of her assistants.
Barnes has never been a head coach. But neither had her boss at Washington, Mike Neighbors, who kicked around in assistant jobs at Arkansas, Colorado, Tulsa and Xavier before taking the Huskies to the Final Four last week.
Scofield hits career goal with Final Four assignment
Retired Tucson postal worker Bob Scofield officiated his first Division I basketball game in November 1995. “It was the Russian national team at NAU,” he remembers. “My first Pac-10 game was in 1999.” Last week, Scofield was one of 10 referees to work the NCAA Women’s Final Four in Indianapolis. “It took me 21 years to get that phone call from the NCAA,” Scofield said. “It was a good day.”
Ex-Cat Johnson benched following slump
Stanley Johnson did not play in two Detroit Pistons games last week, the first time the ex-Arizona forward was benched in his rookie season. He had slumped notably — shooting 2 for 18 in his previous three games — and averaging 4.6 points in Detroit’s last 14 games. “I played three bad games and the guy (coach Stan Van Gundy) DNPs me,” Johnson told Detroit reporters. “Am I going to kill myself over it? No.” Johnson’s spot in the Pistons rotation went to Reggie Bullock, who most recently played for Grand Rapids and Bakersfield in the NBA D-League.
Santa Rita grad Shumpert posts game of career
Santa Rita High grad D.J. Shumpert, who spent 1½ seasons as a walk-on forward at Arizona, had the game of his professional life last week. Shumpert, who plays for the Los Angeles D-Fenders, scored 10 points and had 17 rebounds in a D-League regular-season finale against Rio Grande Valley. He averaged 15 minutes per game this season, averaging 2.8 points. Russ Pennell, the former UA interim head coach who gave Shumpert a spot on the Arizona roster, completed his second season at Central Arkansas with a 7-21 record. He is 9-48 overall.
Miller not a fan of grad transfer rules
Sean Miller last week said he does not like the current graduate-transfer policy in college basketball. He has taken advantage of the rules as much or more than anyone, adding Mark Lyons and Mark Tollefsen, but said he hopes rules are changed to force a grad transfer to sit out an extra year. “It’s a major problem, and you could see it coming like a freight train,” he said. “Losing players is not healthy for anyone. We need to slow it down.”
Arizona Bowl will pay it forward to Tucson charity Tuesday
Ali Farhang, Jon Volpe and Alan Young, the driving forces behind last year’s inaugural Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl, made good on their promise to turn a profit in their first season. They are to present a $75,000 check to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Tucson on Tuesday afternoon. The Colorado State-Nevada game did so well that the game’s founders will also donate to 20 other Southern Arizona charities.
Sahuaro grad Verdugo, ex-Cat Calhoun assigned to Double-A
The Los Angeles Dodgers assigned Sahuaro High grad Alex Verdugo to the Double-A Tulsa Drillers last week. The lefty opened the year batting third and playing center field at Tulsa. His teammate is former UA infielder Willie Calhoun, who bats fifth and plays second base. Both played in Single-A a year ago.
Arizona CWS champ Mejias-Brean inching closer to bigs
Cienega High grad Seth Mejias-Brean opened the year in Triple-A for the first time, playing third base for the Louisville Bats. If he can produce at Louisville, Mejias-Brean, the starting third baseman on Arizona’s 2012 College World Series champs, projects as the Cincinnati Reds’ third baseman of the future.
LPGA champion, Tucsonan Rarick coming home for charity tourney
Five-time LPGA champion Cindy Rarick, a 1978 Sahuaro High grad, is to return to Tucson next weekend as honorary chairman of the Sahuaro Foundation Charity Golf Tournament at Forty Niner Country Club. Entry information for the 7:30 a.m., shotgun start: (520) 465-7749. Rarick is now director of Silvara Vineyards in the Cascade Mountains near Seattle.
Larry Smith Coaching Academy Clinic coming soon
Corby Smith, son of former UA and USC football coach Larry Smith, continues to honor his father’s career by holding the Larry Smith Coaching Academy Clinic in Tucson. This year’s clinic, staged mostly for youth coaches, will be April 30 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., at Tucson High School. One of Smith’s top UA players, Jay Dobyns, will be the keynote speaker. Others who will offer instruction that day include Sabino coach Jay Campos, Tucson High coach Justin Argraves, Mountain View coach Bam McRae and CDO coach Dusty Peace. Larrysmithcoachingacademy.com is the registration site. One of Peace’s top returning players, offensive lineman Jonas Leader, was offered a full scholarship by NAU last week after participating in a skills camp in Flagstaff. Leader is 6 feet 5 inches, 260 pounds.
Fowler, Dorados continue to stomp competition
Since returning as CDO’s softball coach last year, 2005 and 2011 state championship coach Kelly Fowler has gone 53-8-1. The Dorados went undefeated (3-0) in the rain-shortened Michelle Carew Invitational last week in Orange County, Calif., against some of the nation’s top teams and are 21-1-1 entering a Tuesday showdown against state title-seeking Salpointe Catholic. What is amazing about Fowler’s team is that 16 players have already committed to college scholarships. The breakdown: seven to Division I teams, three to Division II and Division III teams, three to junior colleges and three to academic scholarships. CDO’s young players have been outstanding: Freshman pitcher Halle Morris and sophomore Ellessa Bonstrom have already committed to Utah; sophomores Anya Gonzalez and AJ Kaiser have committed to Syracuse; junior Wendy Castro accepted a Wisconsin scholarship.
CDO grad Bonstrom heads to West Point for good reason
CDO grad Kayla Bonstrom, a first-team All-Pac-12 softball player at Stanford in 2013 and 2015, took a .315 batting average into this weekend’s series against UCLA. She missed a rare game last week, against Pacific, but for a remarkable reason. She flew to West Point to present her senior thesis on counterterrorism to cadets at Army. Bonstrom will play her final collegiate series against Arizona next weekend at Stanford.
Breinig to be honored with leadership award
The Southern Arizona Chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame made a terrific selection for its 2017 Joe Kearney Leadership Award. Howard Breinig, who began his days in Tucson as an undersized guard and captain on the Arizona football teams of the early 1960s, is to be honored next Sunday night at the DoubleTree Hotel in the 19th annual Scholar-Athletic banquet. Breinig began his coaching career at Sunnyside High School in 1963 and worked through 2007 as an assistant at Sabino. He led Sahuaro to the 1994 state co-championship. Tickets for the banquet, which includes keynote speaker Chuck Cecil, can be obtained by emailing rick72@aol.com
My two cents: Pac-12 bowing to television, though revenues fall short of expectations
It’s with ironic timing that Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott will attend Tuesday’s UA-ASU baseball game at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
Scott will be in Tempe as part of a 12-campus listening tour with Pac-12 students on the topic of time demands and possible NCAA proposals about student-athlete welfare.
Twenty years ago, 1996, Arizona softball coach Mike Candrea’s NCAA championship team played 27 doubleheaders.
That was routine until the league expanded to 12 teams and the Pac-12 Networks was created. Now teams don’t play conference doubleheaders, which minimized missed class time.
Instead, a typical weekend of Pac-12 softball is the one Arizona endured last week in Seattle. It played at Washington on Saturday, Sunday and Monday nights. It left Tucson on Friday and returned on Tuesday. Missed class time and travel expenses increased notably.
Former Oregon State athletic director Bob De Carolis told Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano the league was willing to take on the schedule in exchange for a stockpile of Pac-12 Networks money.
“The ADs and the coaches all wanted more exposure for all the Olympic sports,” De Carolis said last week. “So that’s why you’re playing games at all hours of the day, but that’s also why there was an opportunity, hopefully, to get revenue to go against that. That just hasn’t happened. I think that’s the frustration.
“It would be one thing about student-athlete welfare, playing different times of the day, traveling. But you’re doing all that but you’re not realizing the revenues.”
Most league members expected about $5 million each from annual Pac-12 Networks revenue. Last year it was $1.1 million.
The players and coaches pick up the rest of the tab.
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