The Star's longtime sports columnist explains why Aari McDonald should stay another season Arizona instead of opting to play in the WNBA. Plus, the latest updates in Southern Arizona sports.
The WNBA last week reiterated its plan to hold its draft on April 17, which means Arizona junior point guard Aari McDonald has 10 days to make a declaration before the April 7 deadline to opt in/out of the 2020 draft.
The WNBA insists it will open training camps April 26 — editorial comment: no chance — and begin the season May 15. Editorial comment: no chance times two.
McDonald won’t be able to attend a workout camp or a combine in attempt to get a true gauge of her draft stock, or for teams to get a better read on her skills. There are 12 WNBA teams. The highest draft projection I’ve seen for McDonald is No. 18 overall.
Last year’s No. 18 selection was 5-foot 8-inch Marqette point guard Natisha Hiedeman, the 2019 Big East Conference Player of the Year. You don’t get rich in the WNBA; Hiedeman was paid the WNBA rookie minimum of $57,000. She averaged 10 minutes and 3.7 points a game for the Connecticut Sun.
There was better financial news for WNBA players two months ago; the league announced a new labor/compensation deal in which average player salaries will be $130,000, with the rookie minimum rising to about $65,000.
Arizona lists McDonald at 5-6. That won’t help her in the draft. It’s the equivalent of a 5-10 or 5-11 male player in the NBA. The most prominent “under-sized” point guard in women’s college basketball the last five years was probably Mississippi State’s 5-5 Morgan William, who swished the epic, buzzer-beating jumper in the 2017 Final Four to end UConn’s 111-game winning streak.
William was never drafted. She has not played in the WNBA.
McDonald is a gamer. Her height? I say forget it the way the NBA forgot that 5-3 Muggsy Bogues was not supposed to be able to play effectively in a game often dictated by size. Bogues played 14 NBA seasons and scored 6,858 points.
I think McDonald would strongly benefit from a senior season at Arizona for two reasons.
First, she shot just 27.8% from 3-point range this season. That was below her first UA season, in which she shot 28.1%. It is the lowest 3-point percentage in Pac-12 women’s basketball of those who averaged at least two 3-pointers per game.
Second, she committed a league-high 110 turnovers (against 105 assists). A year earlier, she committed 140 turnovers, also a league-high.
McDonald pushes the action, takes risks, and for every turnover she commits seems to make two positive plays that help Arizona win.
But she clearly needs to improve her distance shooting and decision-making to move up the WNBA draft board.
And those aren’t the only reasons McDonald would benefit by returning to Arizona. She could become the Pac-12 Player of the Year, a consensus All-American and lead the Wildcats to the Final Four. None of those are out of her or the UA’s reach.
Tucson’s top football prospect transfers to Sahuaro
Lineman Jonah Miller during Salpointe Catholic High School's football practice on Aug. 1, 2018, in Tucson.
Tucson’s Jonah Miller is a 6-foot-8-inch, 280-pound offensive tackle who recently attended “Junior Day” at Oregon and has been offered scholarships by, among others, the Ducks, USC, Texas, Florida, ASU, Washington, UCLA and Arizona.
Miller appeared on the radar of the nation’s top college powers while becoming a game-changing lineman at Salpointe Catholic last season.
He appears to belong to a list of the most elite Tucson offensive line recruits of the last 60 years, a list that includes Tucson High’s Bill Dawson, Sahuaro’s Mike Ciasca, Sabino’s Mike Saffer and Salpointe’s Kris O’Dowd.
One thing has changed: Miller, Tucson’s top college football prospect, quietly transferred from Salpointe to Sahuaro recently.
“Jonah loved Salpointe and he did not leave because (coach) Dennis Bene retired and there was a coaching change,” said Matt Miller, Jonah’s father, a 1988 All-Metro lineman at Sahuaro. “TUSD has certain academic resources that work better for Jonah and that’s why the change.”
The Miller family has known Sahuaro coach Scott McKee for years. Jonah’s older brother, Jacob, played for McKee before moving on to Mesa Community College.
Much like Miller’s fellow elite-level prospects at Salpointe — running back Bijan Robinson signed with Texas; defensive back Lathan Ransom with Ohio State; lineman Bruno Fina with UCLA — it appears Miller will not play college football in Tucson.
He has already been on the campuses of Texas, Oregon, Washington and USC.
He would like to visit Penn State, but that is uncertain because the football recruiting class of 2021 is facing a different recruiting world given the coronavirus pandemic.
“Salpointe has been incredibly gracious during this process, and Jonah loved his time there,” Matt Miller said. “Going to Sahuaro brings back a lot of memories for me because I played at Sahuaro when they had all those Hall of Fame coaches like Howard Breinig, Hal Eustice, Bob Vielledent and Lance Prickett. Jonah will make the best of this situation at Sahuaro the way I was able to in the 1980s.”
Ex-Cat Damon Stoudamire in exclusive company as Ben Jobe Award Winner
Pacific coach Damon Stoudamire directs his team during the first half of the team's NCAA college basketball game against Gonzaga on Saturday, Dec. 31, 2016, in Stockton, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
When Arizona’s 1994 Final Four point guard Damon Stoudamire was selected as the 2020 winner of the Ben Jobe Coach of the Year Award last week — the Jobe award is presented to the top minority coach in college basketball — it put the 1995 consensus All-American in strong company. The other finalists included Harvard’s Tommy Amaker, Dayton’s Anthony Grant, Florida State’s Leonard Hamilton, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson and Butler’s LaVall Jordan.
Those five coaches combined for a 115-32 record and were mostly shoe-in selections for the NCAA Tournament. Stoudamire’s Pacific team won 23 games, which turned heads in the coaching industry inasmuch as Pacific averaged 11.8 wins the previous five seasons.
Said Stoudamire: “I like my situation. I can coach a little bit under the radar and learn from my mistakes. I’m figuring things out on the run.” Stoudamire is rare in that he is the only Pac-10/12 Player of the Year ever to become a head college basketball coach. Cal’s Jason Kidd, the 1994 player of the year, has been an NBA head coach.
'Best thing I saw last week'
Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo looks on during a timeout in the first quarter of an NCAA college football game against Air Force, Saturday, Oct 1, 2011, in Annapolis, Md. Air Force won 35-34 in overtime. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
Borrowing a line from ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt, the “best thing I saw last week” was Showtime’s 2011 “A Game of Honor,” which was a start-to-finish insider’s look at the 2011 Army-Navy football game and the six months preceding it. The coaches were Tucson’s Rich Ellerson of Army and Navy’s Ken Niumatalolo, who played for Dick Tomey and Ellerson at Hawaii. Said Ellerson: “There’s not a better man in the business than Ken Niumatalolo.” Indeed, as I watched the Showtime special, it left me shaking my head that Arizona had a chance to hire Niumatalolo two years ago and it did not work out.
No, he would not have operated the triple-option offense at Arizona as he does at Navy. And, no, he hasn’t recruited mainstream, Power-5 prospects in his years at Navy. More important, he treated his players and staff with love and respect — no profanity — and was always the first one in the building each morning, becoming a team-builder of the first rank. Navy went 11-2 last year and finished 20th in the AP poll. It made me feel good all over to watch how Niumatalolo ran a college football team.
Ex-Wildcat leads NCAA in 3-point percentage
Former Arizona shooting guard Alex Barcello led the NCAA in 3-point shooting percentage this season for all players attempting at least 100 threes. Barcello made 48.6% of his shots. How do you figure that? While at Arizona, Barcello made 28.7% of his 3-pointers. A lot of it was that Barcello was given the freedom in BYU’s offense to establish his shot and build confidence, which didn’t happen in his two Arizona seasons.
Talk about a trade that didn’t work: to replace Barcello, Arizona acquired UC Irvine grad transfer Max Hazzard, who shot 34 of 89 from 3-point distance, or 38.2%. That was 19 fewer threes than Barcello made at BYU. Hazzard had been a 3-point machine at Irvine, making 93 a year earlier, getting the green light to shoot himself into a groove. That didn’t happen in his uneven season at Arizona.
Former UA assistant Ron Marciniak dies at 87
Statement from GM Eric DeCosta: pic.twitter.com/sr5DiDZ9va
— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) March 23, 2020
If a UA football historian were to make a list of the five or six leading assistant coaches in school history, Ron Marciniak would comfortably make the list. Marciniak, who died last week in Plano, Texas, at 87, was Jim LaRue’s lead assistant coach from 1959-66, including the historic 8-1-1 club of 1961. Marciniak had played linebacker for long-time UA defensive coordinator Sharkey Price at Kansas State.
When UA president Richard Harvill fired LaRue and his staff the day after Thanksgiving, 1966, Marciniak was just getting started in a robust football career. He became an assistant at Northwestern, the head coach at Dayton and spent the last 22 years of his career as a scout for the Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns and Dallas Cowboys. He often returned to Tucson to scout Wildcat football players.
Zeke Nnaji qualifies for McKale Center Ring of Honor
Arizona forward Zeke Nnaji (22) backs his way into the paint against Washington State in the first half of their Pac12 game at McKale Center, March 5, 2020, Tucson, Ariz.
Zeke Nnaji finished his Arizona freshman season with 515 points, which is 51st in school history for single-season scorers. It ties him with Joe Nehls in 1979 and Hassan Adams in 2004. Yet because Nnaji was voted Pac-12 Freshman of the Year, he qualifies for his name to be placed for posterity in the Ring of Honor at McKale Center. Does that seem right? One year? Tied for 51st in single-season scoring? The school might do well to modify its Ring of Honor process and add a clause that a player must spend multiple years in an Arizona uniform to qualify. Both Nehls and Adams were first-team all-conference players who had far superior UA basketball careers to Nnaji, yet neither is honored in the Ring of Honor.
Coronavirus concern cancels marquee Southern Arizona football event
One of the unfortunate victims of the coronavirus pandemic is that the annual Southern Arizona Chapter of the College Football Hall of Fame was forced to cancel its late-April banquet at the DoubleTree Hotel. The 11 high school scholar-athletes of 2020 to be honored included Salpointe Catholic High School’s Bruno Fina, son of ex-Arizona standout and Super Bowl starter John Fina; Catalina Foothills High School’s Will Parker, son of ex-Arizona all-conference lineman and Super Bowl starter Glenn Parker; and Trent Strong of Salpointe Catholic High School, son of ex-Arizona all-conference catcher and 1986 College World Series starter Steve Strong.
Tucson’s chapter, established in 1997, has presented more than 300 Southern Arizona football players with $1,000 scholarships. This year’s guest speaker was to be Brooks Reed, a nine-year NFL veteran from Sabino High School and a 2010 All-Pac-10 defensive lineman.
My two cents: History suggests Wildcats won't make coaching change this late in the game
Arizona head coach Sean Miller makes his point to the Wildcat offense against UCLA in the second half of their Pac-12 game at McKale Center, February 8, 2020 Tucson, Ariz.
Since Sean Miller was hired by Arizona in the spring of 2009, 12 basketball coaches at Pac-12 schools have been fired. The common thread is that 11 of those 12 changes occurred in March or earlier.
It is increasing, although circumstantial, evidence that UA president Robert C. Robbins doesn’t plan to part ways with Miller. If you’re going to make a change, it’s best to do so as soon as possible in attempt to salvage roster management, hire a new staff and get to work on the next recruiting class.
Here’s how quickly Pac-12 presidents acted while firing basketball coaches since the spring of 2009:
2009-10 season: Oregon fired Ernie Kent on March 16.
2010-11 season: Utah fired Jim Boylen on March 12.
2011-12 season: No firings.
2012-13 season: USC fired Kevin O’Neill on Jan. 14. UCLA fired Ben Howland on March 25.
2013-14 season: WSU fired Ken Bone on March 18, Oregon State fired Craig Robinson on May 5.
2014-15 season: ASU fired Herb Sendek on March 24.
2015-16 season: Stanford fired Johnny Dawkins on March 14.
2016-17 season: Washington fired Lorenzo Romar on March 15.
2017-18 season: No firings.
2018-2019 season: UCLA fired Steve Alford on Dec. 31. WSU fired Ernie Kent on March 14. Cal fired Wyking Jones on March 24.
The one coach to last beyond March — Robinson — had been given a vote of confidence on March 28, 2014, by OSU athletic director Bob De Carolis. But five weeks later De Carolis fired Robinson and said “The more I thought about it, I realized I had made a mistake.”
So far this year, no Power 5 conference school has fired a basketball coach. That’s rare. That probably hasn’t happened at the game’s highest level for 30 or 40 years, maybe longer. Last year, eight Power 5 schools changed basketball coaches.
Part of it might be that the coronavirus pandemic has made the process of searching for a new coach — traveling around the country to interview candidates — the last thing an athletic director would want to do. And it might also be that no coach was painfully bounced out of the NCAA Tournament too early or shut out of the tournament altogether.
Given greater problems in America, the perspective of losing a few too many basketball games doesn’t seem to matter as much as it used to.
