Hansen's Sunday Notebook: UA president posted a win for Wildcats via D.C. summit

The Star's longtime columnist on Robert C. Robbins' bold initiative ... Jordan Geist and Turner Washington's grand finales ... Mason White doing Tucson proud ... Aaron Gordon's breakout ... Dave Lawn's legacy ... and more.

Panel positions Robbins as college sports leader, innovator 

Three years ago, Arizona president Robert C. Robbins quietly opened the UA’s Center for Outreach and Collaboration, a 14,000-square-foot compound on Pennsylvania Avenue in the heart of Washington, D.C.

It was to be the school’s all-purpose eastern headquarters, a gathering place for research, innovation, civil discourse and other matters of importance. It would be a meeting place for East Coast alumni. Not much was said about sports.

But Robbins last week staged one of the most impressive public forums on college athletics, here or anywhere, over the last 25 years. He called it “The Future of College Athletics Summit" and proudly announced that the UA “is playing a leadership role to help address critical issues to help shape our future."

I can imagine that once ASU president Michael Crow, who enjoys being referred to as Mr. Innovation, saw what Robbins and the UA successfully executed a few blocks from the nation’s capital that he and every Pac-12 president were envious.

Robbins waited until there was a lull in the UA’s academic summer calendar and correctly realized that few congressmen, senators and big-name leaders of NCAA sports would be interested in traveling to Tucson in June. So he wisely staged the summit in D.C. It was a home run.

NCAA executive director Charlie Baker was there. So was SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips, Knight Commission CEO Amy Privette Perko, Clemson athletic director Graham Neff and Kansas president Douglas Girod, among many other high-profile politicians and people involved in college athletics, such as Oliver Luck.

Baker was frank. "It’s hard to find anybody who thinks the current system is working," he said. Robbins was a step ahead of the new NCAA czar.

To establish the aura of a big-time event, Robbins made sure five of the biggest names in college sports media — ESPN’s Paul Finebaum, Heather Dinich and Pete Thamel, the Athletic’s Max Olsen and SI.now’s Ross Dellenger — were moderators of the various panel discussions.

Robbins based the day-long summit on college sports’ three most compelling issues: conference realignment, NIL finances and the transfer portal.

Maybe we should've seen this coming. In matters of athletics, Robbins has easily become the most visible Pac-12 president/chancellor since UCLA’s Charles Young of the 1970 and 1980s. It makes you wonder why another school president — or someone at the NCAA — didn’t think of this first.

Robbins wasn’t shy about delivering his opinions on critical issues, especially federal legislation to control the NIL and pay-for-play issues. The former Stanford heart surgeon said college athletics are in “intensive care."

Asked about the possibility of SEC commissioner Sankey getting lawmakers and college officials to agree on a set of NIL rules, Robbins said: “I like the idea. If anybody can do it, he probably can do it. It’s like running a 4.3 (40-yard-dash) in water. It’s going to be a big lift.”

He also discussed the possibility of Arizona and ASU going their separate ways.

“We don’t have to do the same thing. But President Crow and I are very, very tight. I think it'd be unlikely that we'd be split up," Robbins said. ““My prediction is that we’re all going to stay together as a Pac-12. There’s 10 of us right now. I’m hopeful that the media-rights TV deal is going to be good enough to keep us together. I think that’s the best thing for our students and alumni. That’s what we’re hoping for."

Arizona isn’t considered one of the 25 or 30 leading athletic schools in the NCAA. It is likely to finish close to No. 50 in the year-long Learfield Directors' Cup standings that will be made final after the ongoing NCAA baseball and track championships.

But Robbins put Arizona athletics on the map last week in Washington in a way a football victory over USC or an appearance in the College World Series can’t.

Old roomies enjoy a memorable exit

In August 2017, elite track recruits Jordan Geist and Turner Washington arrived on the Arizona campus not just as teammates but roommates. Many in the track community predicted that the two UA freshmen were the equivalent of, say, a football recruiting class that included a Tedy Bruschi and a Rob Gronkowski.

And so it was.

In a 24-hour period last week at the NCAA track and field championships in Texas, Geist and Washington — sixth-year seniors — won national championships on the last throw of their college careers. Talk about drama.

On Wednesday, Geist won the shot put championship on his final throw, beating, of all people, Washington, by about two-thirds of an inch.

On Friday, Washington won the discus championship on his final throw, capping a newsworthy career in which the Canyon del Oro High School grad transferred to rival ASU and thrived the way Geist thrived in Tucson. Here’s the rundown:

• Geist won six Pac-12 championships. Only one man — Arizona distance runner Robert Cheseret — ever won more (eight). Washington won two Pac-12 titles and also won three NCAA outdoor championships.

• Both set multiple school records that are unlikely to be broken for years or decades. Both were nine-time All-Americans.

• Washington graduated from Arizona State with a degree in biological sciences and is now pursuing graduate studies in ASU’s Sports, Law and Business program. Geist graduated from Arizona’s Eller College of Management with a master's degree in finance and marketing.

This may not be the end of the Geist-Washington show. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if they become teammates on the 2024 USA Olympic team.

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White joins elite baseball company

Starting and producing as a freshman on Arizona’s baseball team has a deep legacy for Tucson ballplayers.

CDO’s Shelley Duncan was a Freshman All-American in 1999, followed by CDO’s Brian Anderson in 2001. Over the last 35 years, Tucsonans who became first-year starters for the Wildcats also included standouts such as Flowing Wells’ Robbie Moen, Sunnyside’s Diego Rico, Tucson’s Willie Morales, CDO’s C.J. Zigler and Colin Porter, Cienega’s Seth Mejias-Brean and Sahuaro’s Cesar Salazar.

Last week, UA second baseman Mason White of Salpointe Catholic was named a first-team Freshman All-American, a deserving honor after he hit .313 with 10 home runs and 38 RBIs. White projects to become a franchise-type player before his Arizona career is over.

It was the second straight year that Salpointe produced a first-team Freshman All-American. A year ago, Cade McGee, a third baseman at Gonzaga and a former teammate of White's, hit .298 with 10 homers for the Zags.

This year, McGee broke his right hand after 20 games and missed the rest of the season at a time when he was hitting .293 with six homers. McGee last week announced he has entered the transfer portal. Might he return home and rejoin White as an Arizona Wildcat? Who knows? UA third baseman Tony Bullard, who hit 12 home runs this season, has exhausted his eligibility.

Short stuff: Gordon's leap, Lloyd's boldness, Oklahoma softball's ascent

Aaron Gordon averaged 12.4 points and never scored more than 23 points in a game while at Arizona, struggling with shooting percentages (42% from the foul line) in 2013-14. He became the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year based on defense and rebounding. But Friday night in the NBA Finals, Gordon scored a team-high 27 in Denver’s victory over Miami. It tied Jason Terry for the most points scored in an NBA Finals game by an Arizona alumnus. The leaders:

• 27, Terry, 2011 vs. Miami
• 25, Andre Iguodala, 2016 vs. Cleveland
• 22, Deandre Ayton, 2021 vs. Milwaukee
• 16, Bison Dele, 1997 vs. Utah
• 14, Sean Elliott, 1999 vs. New York

• Tommy Lloyd has been proactive and willing in becoming responsible for the basketball platform he inherited at Arizona. That much was cemented last week when Arizona added a December game against Purdue (in Indianapolis) against 7-foot-4 Zach Edey and a likely top-10 Boilermakers club. That gives Arizona potential Top 25 non-conference games against Duke, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Alabama and Purdue.

Lute Olson’s boldest nonconference schedule, 2001-02, included six elite opponents: No. 2 Maryland, No. 6 Florida, No. 8 Kansas, No. 23 Michigan State, No. 23 Texas and No. 25 UConn. His Final Four team of 1988 also took on all-comers, playing No. 3 Syracuse, No. 3 Iowa, No. 9 Duke, No. 9 Michigan, No. 13 Illinois and Michigan State.

Lloyd is taking UA fans back to the good old days.

• ESPN announcers rightfully extolled the climb of Oklahoma as the nation’s No. 1 softball program last week. Several times I heard them say the Sooners were the first team in college softball history to score 500 runs in a season. That didn’t sound right.

So I looked it up. In 1995, Mike Candrea’s Arizona team set a still-standing NCAA record of 629 runs while hitting .383. That also surpassed OU’s .363 this season.

What is so imposing about the Sooners is that coach Patty Gasso’s club deployed just one full-time starter from the state of Oklahoma this season, left fielder Rylie Boone. OU started three players from the Phoenix area — shortstop Grace Lyons and outfielders Jocelyn Erickson and Alynah Torres. Moreover, five OU starters are from California, which once used to be a territory that Arizona and UCLA ruled.

My two cents: Lawn's intangibles will be hard to replace

Dave Lawn has been a Pac-12 assistant coach for 24 years, at Cal, USC and at Arizona since 2016.

He was released from that position last week after UA pitchers put a dreadful season into the books: a 5.97 ERA, tied with ASU for ninth in the Pac-12. Few coaches survive that type of collapse, but I thought Lawn might be one who did.

His daughter, Mackenzie, reacted to her father’s departure from Arizona with this tweet:

“Name a better, more dedicated, classier, harder working, knowledgeable, caring human who always takes the high road."

Amen.

It reminded me of the day in 2006 when Lute Olson announced he had dismissed longtime assistant Jim Rosborough from his coaching staff. You could use the same adjectives for Rosborough: dedicated, classy, hard worker, knowledgeable.

Arizona struggled without Rosborough’s personality and connection to the Wildcat players. Maybe Chip Hale will find a pitching coach more capable at analytics and a more energetic recruiter. (D1Baseball.com reported that it's Boston's College's Kevin Vance, 32.)

But Lawn has the intangibles, connectivity, personality and baseball acumen that any program should hope to have.