Graduate transfer Mark Tollefsen said heβll spend his final season with the Arizona Wildcats.
A 6-foot-9 stretch forward from San Francisco who will be immediately eligible next season, Tollefsen was also considering Cal, Washington and San Diego State but quickly found a fit in Tucson during a visit last weekend.
βI could see myself going there and liked to see where coach (Sean) Miller has put that team and that program, and seeing what a great person and great coach he is,β Tollefsen told the Star.
Tollefsen, a native of the East Bay area in California, said he also liked the way fellow Bay area forwards Brandon Ashley and Aaron Gordon were used and developed in the program. In addition, he said he liked the idea of playing against Pac-12 competition every game.
Tollefsen will join a post rotation that includes Kaleb Tarczewski, Dusan Ristic, Ryan Anderson and Chance Comanche. He will likely play power forward along with Anderson but Tollefsen said UA coaches indicated he could also play some small forward.
Tollefsen averaged 14 points per game for USF last season, and Dons coach Rex Walters said he could have been the best player in the West Coast Conference next season.
Already having played in 96 games, starting 70 of them, Tollefsen steadily improved through his San Francisco career. He redshirted in 2011-12, averaged 7.2 points a game as a freshman in 2012-13, 10.3 as a sophomore in 2013-14 and finished his junior season with 1,036 points, putting him 31st on the school's alltime list.
But after last season, when San Francisco finished 14-18, Tollefsen started looking elsewhere.
"I was coming to the end of the season giving 100 percent," Tollefsen said. "But after the season, I wanted to try something new. I got my release and schools started contacting me. Arizona sounded like the right place for me."
USF announced on April 1 that Tollefsen would transfer and, he said, only three hours after other schools had permission to call him, UA associated coach Joe Pasternack did just that.
"They did a great job of recruiting me," Tollefsen said.
Of his other choices, Tollefsen said San Diego State was crowded with players at his position, especially after Winston Shepard announced he is returning. He said Washington wasn't a great fit although he spoke highly of coach Lorenzo Romar.
While Tollefsen said he took a quick unofficial visit to Cal but turned the Bears down, too.
"Cal was a place I had always liked, and it was tough to say no to them," Tollefsen said.
Tollefsen said he is scheduled to graduate from San Francisco on May 22 and will probably arrive in time for the first summer session of classes at UA on June 7.Β
The addition of Tollefsen probably cements Arizona's 2015-16 roster with 12 scholarship players. Even though the Wildcats have one more opening, Miller said Thursday before Tollefsen committed that he didn't plan to add more than one extra player.
