The Star's longtime columnist on players who left the UA; the son of a Sun Devil who picked the Wildcats; and why this year's Maui Invitational might be the toughest tournament that Arizona has ever played in.
Softball stars join list of accomplished players to leave UA
It almost seemed cruel last week when UCLA gleefully posted social media images of Arizona All-Pac-12 softball players Sharlize Palacios and Janelle Meoño — the heart and soul of Caitlin Lowe’s UA program — modeling Bruins gear.
Welcoming a trio of Pac-12 stars to the Bruin Bubble! 🙌The Bruins add Sharlize Palacios and Janelle Meoño from Arizona and Rachel Cid from Oregon.📄: https://t.co/DK0UYuKp3q#GoBruins pic.twitter.com/t0UPFGA7i1
— UCLA Softball (@UCLASoftball) August 1, 2022
It’s going to take a bit to get used to the proliferation of transfers in college sports. Anything goes, right?
Palacios, who stacks up to be the No. 1 catcher in college softball in 2023, initially chose Arizona over UCLA. She hit 38 home runs in two UA seasons, but it’s not like Arizona was a family choice. Her older sister, Sashel, was a three-year starter at ASU from 2015-17.
I don’t know if Palacios is the most significant Wildcat athlete to transfer in mid-career, but she’s close to the top. Here’s my list:
• Jason Gore, golf. After winning the Pac-10 championship in 1993 and 1994, Gore transferred to Pepperdine, who he then led to the 1997 NCAA championship. It probably cost Rick LaRose's Wildcats a national championship of its own.
• Dwayne Evans, track and field. From Phoenix South Mountain High School, Evans signed with Arizona coach Willie Williams in the spring of 1976. Evans had set the national high school record at 200 meters, 20.5 seconds, and quickly emerged as a global track figure, winning a bronze medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. After his freshman season at Arizona, Evans transferred to ASU. Big loss.
• Erin Aldrich, volleyball/track and field. After her freshman season at Arizona — she started for the volleyball and track teams — Aldrich transferred to Texas, where she became a four-time NCAA high jump champion, a first-team All-Big 12 volleyball player and a member of the USA 2000 Olympic team.
• Shelby Pendley, softball. Hitting .331 with 19 homers as Arizona’s freshman shortstop in 2012, Pendley then transferred to Oklahoma, where she became a first-team All-American in 2014 and 2015.
• Turner Washington, track and field. The national high school discus champion at Canyon del Oro High School spent two years at Arizona and then transferred to ASU where he won four NCAA championships in the discus and a multiple-times Pac-12 champion.
Loyalty to a school isn’t binding. Once Washington exhausted his eligibility at ASU this spring, his coach, Brian Blutreich, bolted for a perceived better job and joined the new staff at Pac-12 rival Oregon.
Because there is no longer a one-year penalty to bolt to another school, the transfer game has no boundaries. After hitting .352 with 17 homers and 17 RBI as an Arizona freshman in 2021, Jacob Berry bolted for LSU, where he hit .370 with 15 homers this season. It was a good move; Berry was the sixth overall pick in the first round of the MLB draft last month.
Loyalty? Be true to your school? That’s something out of the 1970s. I should know.
I went to college with Louie Giammona, who finished No. 2 in the NCAA in rushing in both 1974 and 1975, gaining 1,534 and 1,454 yards in back-to-back seasons. Giammona became a regular in our weekly poker games and a wonderful golf partner. He once told me that he hoped to transfer from Utah State to play for UCLA.
I was heartbroken. "You’d leave the Aggies?" I protested. He said he was working on it.
But that transfer was scuttled when his uncle, UCLA head coach Dick Vermeil, told him it wasn’t the right thing to do, that he had given his word to the Utah State coaching staff and he should stick with it.
Those days are long gone.
By the way, Giammona ultimately played for Vermeil, who became the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. Together they reached the 1980 Super Bowl.
Rex Haynes
Son of ex-ASU star Haynes joins Wildcats
It’s hard to imagine a stronger representative of ASU football than 1974 and 1975 All-American defensive back Mike Haynes, who was one of the leading players of the Frank Kush years and in ASU history.
Haynes was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1997, and now is a key operative for the NFL Retired Players Association. His name is in the Ring of Honor at Sun Devil Stadium.
So it was somewhat of a surprise last week when his son, Rex Haynes, appeared in jersey No. 27 for Arizona’s first training camp workout on the Dick Tomey Practice Fields. It wasn’t that Rex didn’t have a chance to follow his father to ASU: Sun Devils coach Herm Edwards and former ASU assistant Antonio Pierce offered Rex a scholarship in the summer of 2020.
But Rex, who caught 26 passes for 564 yards at San Diego’s Cathedral Catholic High School last season, never did accept the ASU offer. He ultimately committed to attend Colorado State last spring but switched course and has become a Wildcats walk-on.
At 6 feet 4 inches and 200 pounds, the former high school sprinter appears to have the measurables to someday climb the depth chart and get on the field for Arizona.
This isn’t the first time the son of an ASU/UA football great has gone to his father’s rival school. Bobby "The General" Thompson, a key element to Arizona’s 8-1-1 team of 1961, watched his son, Bobby Thompson Jr., enroll at Arizona in 1983, where he set a school record for career assists, 424.
Thompson didn’t play for Arizona for the simplest reason: then-UA coach Ben Lindsey did not offer him a scholarship.
Roric Fink back with Wildcats
When Arizona rose to prominence in NCAA swimming, from 1992-2012, winning two NCAA championships and finishing in the equivalent of the 27 Final Fours in men’s and women’s swimming, a lot of it was because head coach Frank Busch surrounded himself with some of the sport’s leading coaching staffs. Rick DeMont, Greg Rhodenbaugh, Roric Fink, Michele Mitchell, among others. Now, head coach Augie Busch, Frank’s son, has tapped into that coaching pool. Fink, who was a top assistant of the Texas Longhorns from 2012-20, is returning to Tucson to coach the Wildcats. He previously was on the Arizona staff from 2003-11, and before that was head coach of the then-nationally prominent Ford Aquatics program. Busch last year added another strong piece to his coaching staff, hiring nine-time Arizona NCAA champion Lara Jackson to the program. Fink will replace Pete Richardson, who returned to his home turf last month to join the USC swimming staff.
Jaide Stepter Baynes, of the United States, wins a heat during the women's 4x400-meter relay at the World Athletics Championships on Saturday, July 23, 2022, in Eugene, Ore.
CDO grad shines at Worlds
At the recently completed World Track and Field Championships in Oregon, Canyon del Oro High School grad Jaide Stepter Baynes was part of the USA’s gold-medal winning 4x400 relay team. Baynes was a multiple state champ at CDO in 2015 and 2016 before accepting a scholarship to USC. She became a nine-time All-American for the Trojans and team captain. Since graduating from USC, Baynes has been part of the Long Beach State coaching staff, where her mother, ex-Tucsonan LaTanya Sheffield, a former Olympian, is the head coach. Sheffield recently hired uber successful Arizona high jump coach Sheldon Blockburger to be part of the LBSU staff.
Former Sahuaro assistant will be missed
It is sad to learn that Donald Day, the top assistant coach for Jim Scott's 30-1 Sahuaro High School girls state championship basketball team of 1998, died recently. He was 73. Day also coached the girls basketball team at Amphitheater High School and was a UA sports fan to the core. I looked forward to our exchange of emails about his alma mater’s football and basketball teams. He always had an upbeat attitude that made me smile. He is missed.
Match Play money explodes
When Tiger Woods won the 2008 WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship at Dove Mountain, HE was paid $1.35 million from a total purse of $8 million. How times have changed. When the Dell Technologies Match Play Championships are played next spring in Austin, Texas, the purse will be $20 million, and the winner will be paid $3 million. It’s a direct answer to the LIV Tour’s ridiculous prize purses. Woods has won $121 million in official prize money in his PGA Tour career. If his career was beginning now, and he had the same success, that total would be the equivalent of something close to $400 million.
Boston's Bobby Dalbec runs on his solo home run during the second inning of a baseball game against the Toronto Blue Jays, Saturday, July 23, 2022.
Red Sox trade will push former Wildcats star
It didn’t take long to watch Bobby Dalbec lead Arizona to the championship game of the 2016 College World Series to see that he was a special talent. He was a first-team All-Pac-12 third baseman in 2015, hitting 15 home runs, and then became a first-team All-Pac-12 relief pitcher in 2016. I thought it was an absolute that he would play in the big leagues. But what you don’t know is how long can you stay in the big leagues. Drafted in the fourth round by Boston in 2016, Dalbec appeared to have made it. A year ago, he hit 25 homers with 78 RBI, taking over the starting first base job. The Red Sox signed him to a $714,000 contract for this season and he seemed to be in position to get a contract worth many millions of dollars after the ongoing season. But Dalbec has slumped, hitting just .205. The Red Sox last week traded for San Diego’s Eric Hosmer and made him their starting first baseman. Now what? Dalbec will surely get another shot at playing time at some point, with or without the Red Sox. But he’s probably down to his last strike.
Cats' Maui event among best in recent memory
When Tommy Lloyd coaches Arizona into Hawaii’s Maui Jim Invitational in November, it seems likely that six of the eight teams will be in the Top 25. On paper, it’s perhaps the most difficult preseason tournament Arizona has ever scheduled. In ESPN’s "Way Too Early Top 25" of late June, it ranks the Maui Jim teams this way: 7. Creighton; 10. Arkansas; 16. Arizona; 21. San Diego State; 22. Texas Tech and lists Ohio State in its "next five." The only two Maui Invitational teams not ranked are powerhouse programs Louisville and Cincinnati. Big time.
My two cents: Big hires, major investments give Wildcats a chance
Jedd Fisch easily won the off-season in Pac-12 football with a combination of unexpectedly productive recruiting, six months of positivity training and the addition of defensive assistant coaches Johnny Nansen and Jason Kaufusi of UCLA.
From 2012-2020, Arizona couldn’t touch the caliber of assistant coaches like Nansen and Kaufusi.
But there’s more. Fisch convinced UA athletic director Dave Heeke to spend $15 million to upgrade the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility. Among other things, Arizona built an Oregon-type locker room, which might not be as much of a factor as in pre-NIL and pre-transfer portal days, but it’s still a key variable to recruiting successfully.
It's here..New Locker Rooms ✅#ItsPersonal | #RiseWithUs pic.twitter.com/rbsY1tuTGt
— Arizona Football (@ArizonaFBall) August 3, 2022
There has been so much off-field progress since the Rich Rodriguez and Kevin Sumlin years that it doesn’t seem possible. Fisch’s predecessors had little or no vision, poor staffing, inept recruiting and often inadequate administrative support. Little or no interest was generated in the community. As such, the Wildcats lost an unimaginable 20 consecutive games.
What impresses me is that Fisch was quick to see that the $75-million LSSF, which was built as recently as 2013, was blah. It wasn’t cheap, but it was standard-issue. I remember the first time former AD Greg Byrne gave me a tour of LSSF; I wondered, "is this all you get for $75 million?"
It was vanilla times two.
No one’s predicting Arizona to reach .500 or be much of a threat this season, but if you’ve been paying attention, this isn’t the Arizona of 2016 or 2018 or 2020.
At the Pac-12 media day, Fisch said "talking season is over." If starting quarterback Jayden de Laura is able to stay healthy through November, the Wildcats should be the most improved team in the Pac-12.
