Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Jim Anderson latest Wildcat to earn Pac-12 Coach of the Year award

The Star columnist puts the importance of Pac-12 Coach of the Year honors into perspective, and explains how Tucson should honor Bob Baffert. Plus, a look at DeWayne Walker's connection to Dick Tomey, Salpointe Catholic's softball juggernaut and Tommy Lloyd's olive branch to Lute Olson's longtime assistant. 

UA men’s golf coach Jim Anderson last week became the school’s 24th coach to be selected Pac-12 Coach of the Year, 1978-2021. Sometime this month, it seems likely that Arizona baseball coach Jay Johnson will become the school’s 25th COY.

That figure is a bit misleading, because Arizona has produced 69 conference coaches of the year. Swimming's Frank Busch was 12 times the league’s COY, softball’s Mike Candrea has been COY 11 times and Lute Olson seven times.

It’s not a perfect system. Sometimes there is an element of skepticism when the Pac-12 selects a coach of the year. I mean, Adia Barnes has yet to be the Pac-12’s women’s basketball coach of the year.

That should be Exhibit A of the degree of difficulty of becoming COY In Bill Walton’s so-called "Conference of Champions."

When someone like Jim Anderson breaks through and becomes a Pac-12 COY, the credit rightfully goes back to Anderson, hired away from the Texas A&M staff. But often the person who “discovers’’ a coach like Anderson — in this case former athletic director Greg Byrne — isn’t appreciated for his/her instincts.

Few, if any, athletic administrators in UA history identified and hired more COY than the late Mary Roby. She was the senior women’s administrator under Cedric Dempsey, who hired, among others, Lute Olson and Dick Tomey. He approved Roby’s nominations of Busch, Candrea and volleyball’s Dave Rubio, a 500-game winner and 2000 COY.

Roby didn’t just roll the dice. She was so good at her job that when UA women’s basketball coach Wendy Larry left to become head coach at then-national power Old Dominion in 1987, Roby targeted young Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer, 31, and offered her the Arizona job. But Vanderveer was paid about $60,000 at Stanford and Arizona only could offer about half that. VanDerveer is now the winningest coach in NCAA women’s basketball history.

While charged with finding a swimming coach in the winter of 1988-89, Roby told me she had “80 to 100 applications’’ on her desk.

Those included one from Cal head coach Nort Thornton, who would go on to be selected into the swimming coaches’ Hall of Fame. It included one from Mike Chasson, a Stanford assistant who would become the head coach at Arizona State. And it included an application from Dennis Pursley, coach of Team USA at the 1980 Olympics, a swimming coaches’ Hall of Fame selection in 2006.

But Roby was intrigued by Busch, a 38-year-old grinder who was the head coach at Cincinnati. She told Dempsey that “my instincts about Frank are very strong. He is the epitome of what a coach should be.’’

Bingo.

As successful as Thornton and Pursley were, Busch took it a step beyond. For the next 22 seasons, he coached Arizona to two NCAA championships and the equivalent of 23 men’s and women’s Final Fours. In 2011 he left the UA to become director of the USA men’s and women’s national swimming teams.

Sometime this week, another of Byrne’s hires, men’s tennis coach Clancy Shields, seems sure to become the Pac-12 Coach of the Year for the second time in three years. That would give Arizona 70 COYs since joining the league. Here’s the decade-by-decade breakdown, which also magnifies how the UA athletic department has dipped the last 10 years:

1980s: 13 COYs, the first being baseball’s Jerry Kindall in 1980.

1990s: 22 COYs, including a record five in 1998: Olson, Candrea, Busch, women’s basketball’s Joan Bonvicini and golf’s Rick LaRose.

2000s: 20 COYs, including a decade record of seven by Busch.

2010s: 13 COYs, two each by cross country’s James Li and women’s golf coach Laura Ianello.

Arizona has produced just two COYs in football — Dick Tomey in 1992 and Rich Rodriguez in 2014 — and only one baseball COY since 1989, Andy Lopez in 2012.

Over that same period, UA gymnastics coach Jim Gault exceeded the total of football/baseball COYs. Gault was the league’s COY in 1989, 1990, 1993 and 1994. He, too, was a Mary Roby recommendation.

Dan Schneider linked to Mays, Aaron, Maris

In 1967, five years after he set Arizona's single-season strikeout record — a total, 186, that still stands — lefty All-American Dan Schneider of Rincon/University High School stood on the pitcher’s mound at Candlestick Park as Willie Mays stepped into the batter’s box.

Mays grounded out to shortstop.

When the legendary Mays turned 90 last week, Schneider didn’t remember the specifics of pitching to Mays, just that "it was a special moment."

"I pitched against Wlllie and Stan Musial and Hank Aaron; every time one of those men stepped to the plate it was a big," said Schneider, a Tucson insurance executive who pitched five MLB seasons, and was Aaron’s teammate with the 1966 Atlanta Braves.

Given the online access to every conceivable statistic in baseball history, Schneider was able to determine that he pitched against Mays again in 1968. Mays went 0 for 3 against Schneider, who laughed and said “0 for 3, I like it.’’

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Schneider wasn’t so fortunate against Aaron, who hit 755 home runs, including No. 462 against Schneider.

"I still remember Aaron’s home run," said Schneider. "He hit it so hard it ricocheted off a structure in left field and whistled back onto the field."

Those experiences against Mays and Aaron aren’t Schneider’s only connections to baseball home run legends. When Schneider led Arizona to the school’s first-ever No. 1 ranking, any sport, in 1962, his catcher was Charles "Bud" Schoenberg, who still holds the UA record for putouts in a season.

Schoenberg married Karen Maris, the cousin of Roger Maris, who famously broke Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in 1961. Schoenberg, who died in February, became a pilot for American Airlines after his UA career.

UA assistant has shot at US Open bid

Arizona assistant men’s golf coach Chris Nallen shot a 63 to win the U.S. Open local qualifying tournament at Sewailo Golf Course last week.

“He’s amazing; he’s still got it,’’ said UA head coach Jim Anderson.

Nallen was a four-time All-American at Arizona from 2001-04 and has the lowest stroke average in school history, but after winning his debut event on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour in 2005, his once-promising career was derailed by a serious back injury. If Nallen, now 38, gets through the U.S. Open Sectional qualifying on June 7, he would be in the U.S. Open for the third time. Nallen first made the field of the 2005 U,S. Open at Pinehurst Country Club and made the cut in a field that included five other ex-Wildcats: Jim Furyk, Ted Purdy, Jason Gore, Rory Sabbatini and Robert Gamez.

AD of the Year candidates hold UA ties

Five Power 5 conference athletic directors have been named finalists for the 2021 AD of the Year, an annual award presented by Sports Business Journal. Two of the finalists might ring a bell: Alabama’s Greg Byrne and Baylor’s Mack Rhoades, who is a UA and Rincon/University High School grad.

Rhoades was aggressive in attempting to hire Arizona’s Adia Barnes as Baylor’s new women's basketball coach, going as far as to arrange a private jet to fly to Tucson, pick up Barnes on April 30 and return to Texas to introduce her as Baylor’s new coach on May 1. But Arizona AD Dave Heeke acted with purpose to rewrite Barnes’ contract before it was too late. For producing about $2 million more for Barnes on deadline, maybe Heeke should be on the AD of the year list as well.

Arizona CBs coach connected to Dick Tomey

UA secondary coach DeWayne Walker last week said he applied to be part of Dick Tomey’s coaching staff in 1994, when he was a 33-year-old assistant coach under Hall of Famer LaVell Edwards at BYU. The timing wasn’t right: Tomey was in the process of elevating former Arizona All-Pac-10 safety Jeff Hammerschmidt to a full-time coaching position on a loaded staff that included defensive coordinator Larry Mac Duff and assistant head coach Rich Ellerson.

Walker said that he and Tomey became friends and that Tomey supported his career, which soon took off — Walker coached 14 seasons in the NFL, was the head coach at New Mexico State and a key assistant at USC, UCLA, Cal and Oklahoma State. Now Walker is in Act IV of his career on Jedd Fisch’s staff.

Salpointe chasing perfection

Salponte Catholic High School's softball team, 20-0 after opening the Class 4A state playoffs with an 11-0 victory over Apache Junction Saturday, is in position to do something none of the 51 state softball champs from the greater Tucson area have ever done: go undefeated. The Lancers are so good they’ve won their last seven games by a combined score of 78-1.

Senior pitcher Alyssa Aguilar, who pitched Salpointe to the 2018 and 2019 state titles, is 14-0 with a 1.08 ERA. Freshman Anyssa Wild is hitting .619. If the Lancers win two more games, they’ll be in the 4A state championship game May 17 at 2 p.m. at Hillenbrand Stadium. If Salpointe remains perfect, it’ll move past Kelly Fowler’s 35-1 Canyon del Oro state champs of 2011, Galen Paton’s 33-1 Sabino state champs of 2005 and Billy Lopez’s 25-1 Sahuaro state champs of 1988 with the best record in Tucson history.

Tommy Lloyd welcomes Lute Olson's longtime assistant

UA basketball coach Tommy Lloyd seems to “get it.’’ One of the first things he did while holding workouts with his team was to invite 17-year Arizona assistant coach Jim Rosborough to campus. Rosborough has coached in four Finals Fours and been a Division I head coach.

Lloyd said he wants to get as much "wisdom" as he can from Rosborough, who coached at Arizona from 1990-2006. Lloyd told me he wants Rosborough at McKale Center as often as possible, although Rosborough is committed first to being Todd Holthaus’ assistant for the Pima College women's basketball team. During the Sean Miller years, Rosborough was considered an outsider and rarely allowed into practice.

My two cents: Honoring Bob Baffert should be a no-brainer