Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Pima's winning soccer program has international flair

At precisely the moment Pima College scored to take a 5-0 lead over Glendale Community College on Saturday morning, there were 83 people in the grandstands at the Kino North auxiliary soccer facility.

At $5 per head, that’s not going to pay a lot of bills, but money has nothing to do with the Aztecs’ continued excellence in men’s soccer.

Coach Dave Cosgrove’s team won the outright ACCAC championship two nights earlier, stunning league giant Yavapai College 3-2 in overtime. The NJCAA soccer community has noticed.

Pima is ranked No. 2 in the United Soccer Coaches poll and No. 3 in the NJCAA men’s soccer coaches association rankings. Over the last five seasons, the Aztecs are 97-19-7, and, for my money, the leading sports program in Tucson over that period.

“I can’t say I saw this coming,” said Cosgrove, whose team won 5-0 Saturday to finish a school-record best 18-2 in the ACCAC, which is looked upon as the nation’s top JC soccer conference. “We lost all but about four guys from last year’s (19-5-3) team and as you know, this conference is as good as it gets.”

Indeed, in the two soccer polls, Phoenix College entered the week No. 8, Yavapai No. 9 and Arizona Western No. 15. But PCC swept Phoenix College and Yavapai in the space of three days.

“Our best record in the league had been 16-2-2, but this year we won 18 of our last 19,” said Cosgrove. “It has humbled me. I have learned that it’s not always talent — and we have talented kids — but also that character is a big part of it. This team has the talent and character.”

To combat Yavapai’s decades-long success, Cosgrove has wisely gone outside Southern Arizona to fill a few roster spaces. This year the Aztecs’ leading scorer is sophomore Hugo Kametani, who scored 21 goals, No. 2 in the league. He is from Japan. He wound up at PCC almost by a fluke; Kametani initially enrolled at a JC in Kansas in attempt to take courses for English as a second language. But he discovered Pima offered a better ESL program and moved to Tucson.

“We asked if he could work out with us and we saw how talented he is,” said Cosgrove. “He just fell into our lap; sometimes you get lucky.”

Pima has three Japanese players; goaltender Nils Roth, who leads the ACCAC in goals-against average at 0.5 per game, is from Switzerland.

The annual end-of-season tango with Yavapai College will renew itself this week. In the Region playoffs, hosted by Pima, the likely championship game will be Pima-Yavapai. Both are expected to advance to the district playoffs a week later, also in Tucson.

“We set all sorts of team records and had a lot of firsts this year,” said Cosgrove, whose team was 10-0 at home for the first time. “But now we start over again.”

At college basketball’s ongoing corruption trial, it appeared that $100,000 was a typical going rate for those alleged to have been offered money by the game’s elite schools.

Now the NBA’s G League will offer “select contracts” worth $125,000 to top high school prospects. It sounds like a win-win for those who don’t wish to first take part in the educational experience of college basketball. It may seriously cut back cheating by coaches.

The G League option includes being part of the NBA infrastructure, based on accelerating a prospect’s development on and off the court. Parents of those 18-year-olds can hire agents, profit from marketing deals and, well, not worry about the NCAA’s rules and just play basketball.

Just like in real life.

The unknown: How many high school seniors will take the $125,000 and skip college?

Baseball has forever allowed high school seniors to skip college and sign immediately. One potential gauge of how the early-signings will go can be seen in Tucson’s prep-to-pros baseball prospects: 46 Tucson high school athletes have played in the major-leagues.

Of those 46 MLB players, 12 signed directly out of Tucson high schools. That’s about 25 percent.

Those who signed out of high school were Salpointe’s Mark Carreon; Sabino’s J.J. Hardy; CDO’s Chris Duncan; Santa Rita’s Anthony Sanders; Amphi’s Alex Kellner; Tucson High’s Tom Wilhelmsen and Tavo Alvarez; Palo Verde’s Andy Hassler; Sahuaro’s Alex Verdugo, Tom Wiedenbauer, Jim Olander and Sam Khalifa.

Finances have changed the last 25 years. Those like Verdugo and Hardy got bonuses in excess of $500,000 to sign. Twenty-five years ago, Sanders got an estimated $125,000 to forego a UA football career and sign with the Blue Jays. Now, most early-signees get a clause that includes money for a full college education.

My guess is that if the G League’s $125,000 offer had existed the last 10 years, former Arizona players Stanley Johnson, Aaron Gordon, Kobi Simmons, Rawle Alkins and Allonzo Trier would’ve taken the G League route.

The future of college basketball recruiting will soon change significantly. But it should be a trickle-down effect, meaning a school like Arizona will still get the top available prospects. Fewer elite players will opt for college, but it might also lead to more programs like Arizona retaining players for three and four years.

If so, that’s a good tradeoff.

After 11 years as Pima College’s athletic director, Edgar Soto will leave to become vice president of PCC’s Desert Vista campus. He will also remain as dean of the school’s fitness and wellness programs.

Soto has always been a baseball guy: He played on Tucson High championship teams and was a standout at New Mexico who became PCC’s head baseball coach.

His tenure as AD at Pima brought back the consistency and success experienced for 35 years under PCC’s first-ever AD, Larry Toledo. Soto has helped to restore the Aztecs among the top athletics programs in the NJCAA.

Hiring a capable replacement will be a tricky assignment for Pima; among those to be interviewed this week are women’s basketball coach Todd Holthaus, who has been far more than just a top-10 coach.

He has also been charged with maintaining PCC’s compliance and eligibility efforts, which is typical of the multi-tasking of a junior-college athletic program.

Catalina Foothills junior golfer Maya Benita won a national long-drive championship earlier this year and emerged as a top college prospect. She has a chance to win her first state championship in the Division II finals Monday and Tuesday at Tucson National. Benita is ranked No. 5 overall, about ¾ of a shot behind No. 1 Madeleine Lux of Phoenix Millennium, and a shade behind No. 4 Alexandra Quihuis of Salpointe Catholic, younger sister of two-time state champion Krystal Quihuis, who played on the LGPA Symetra Tour this year. “Maya averaged about 4-under par on the Sonoran Course at Tucson National this year,” said Foothills coach Ryan Dunn. “If she can shoot around par on Monday on the Catalina Course, she’ll be tough to beat on Tuesday.”

UA softball coach Mike Candrea capped his 2018 recruiting class with All-SEC second-team transfer, first baseman Rylee Pierce of Missouri. She batted cleanup and started at first when the Wildcats began a six-game fall exhibition schedule Friday at Lincoln Park, which is being used as Hillenbrand Stadium undergoes an $8 million makeover. Pierce went 3-for-4 with three RBI in a double-header. The UA plays Pima College on Sunday afternoon at 4, part of the debut of first-year PCC coach and one of Candrea’s former UA players, Bekah Quiroz.

Two days after Richard Jefferson announced retirement from the NBA, he was in Bristol, Connecticut, working the ESPN morning talk shows as an NBA analyst. Jefferson is very good. If he chooses to pursue broadcasting, he’ll likely become one of the major voices/faces of NBA basketball for the next decade or so. That’s not much of a surprise. On the UA’s 2001 Final Four team, Jefferson was a go-to interview guy, ranking with Steve Kerr, Jason Terry, Solomon Hill and Tom Tolbert as the most insightful and accommodating interview subjects in school history.

College basketball’s most notable analyst/metrics guy, Ken Pomeroy, released his preseason rankings Saturday and it’s not good for Arizona or the Pac-12. Here’s the Pac-12 rankings: 27, Oregon; 46, Washington; 47, UCLA; 53, ASU; 61, USC; 73, Utah; 76, Arizona. Pomeroy further ranked last year’s Arizona-slayer, the Buffalo Bulls, ahead of the Wildcats at No. 71. KenPom’s numbers don’t reflect well on Arizona’s home non-conference schedule. The highest-ranked is No. 40 Baylor, which then dips to No. 75 Montana, No. 150 Georgia Southern, and all the way to No. 284 Houston-Baptist and No. 313 Cal Poly. 

After the Sabino Springs Homeowners Association completed a deal with a Canadian financial firm to keep Arizona National Golf Course open late last spring, the course held a “grand re-opening” after annual overseeding last week. The course is now operated on a daily basis by the Billy Casper Golf group. Donn Hess, who has been the distinguished head pro at the Quarry Pines Golf Club in Marana, is now the interim general manager at Arizona National. Capital projects at Arizona National include cart path upgrades, re-carpeting and painting the clubhouse, among other items. Very promising development; the course is open to public play.

Sunday is the 50th anniversary of the day UA high-jumper Ed Caruthers won a silver medal at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Caruthers also played on Arizona’s 1967 football team. Caruthers told me he would’ve stayed in the high jump until the 1972 Munich Olympics — he would’ve been 30 — but amateur rules of the day scuttled his plan to do so. “I signed with the Detroit Lions and was paid an $8,000 signing bonus and earned about $16,000 total until I was injured and left football,” he said. “But the AAU told me I would have to pay all of that money back if I wanted to regain my amateur status for 1972. Well, I was married, we bought a house and had two kids, so I couldn’t do it. There just wasn’t enough money in track and field in those days. Now, you’d be a millionaire and it wouldn’t matter.”

Green Valley’s Marvol Barnard, golf instructor at the Haven Golf Club, last week was elected president of the LPGA Teaching and Club Pros association. It almost seemed to come naturally; in the last five years, Barnard has been named the LPGA 2016 Teaching Pro of the year, and winner of the 2013 Nancy Lopez Award, for her leadership and service to golf. Well deserved.

If the Tucson City Council chooses to eliminate one of the five municipal golf courses — and Fred Enke Golf Course is the most likely to succumb — it would mean its load of about 30,000 rounds of golf a year would shift to other courses, most to the Randolph Golf Complex’s 36-hole facility.

I got a glimpse Friday afternoon of what it might look like. Randolph North is closed for overseeding this week and it has gummed up the works. About 2 p.m., I thought I could walk-on for nine quick holes by myself.

Instead, four groups were waiting for the No. 1 tee, and there was no space for practice time on the overburdened driving range. That’s what golf in Tucson could look like from October to April if Fred Enke closes.

There are grand hopes, shared by the city, the Tucson Conquistadores and the UA, to spend millions of dollars to remake Randolph as the home of both the UA men’s and women’s golf teams and the PGA Tour’s Champions Tour event.

Where that money — perhaps in excess of $10 million — will come from is unclear. Perhaps, in part, from former UA golf stars Jim Furyk, Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa. But I think it will happen sooner rather than later.