Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Pima Hall of Fame class includes 'all aspects' of sports greatness

Kinsler, Abdirahman lead one of Pima's strongest classes ever

The 30th anniversary of the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame will be celebrated with one of the strongest classes in Tucson history.

The Class of 2019 includes four-time Olympic distance runner and NCAA All-American Abdi Abdirahman of Pima College and the UA; four-time MLB All-Star second baseman Ian Kinsler of Canyon del Oro High School; two-time All-Pac-10 linebacker and six-year NFL veteran Sean Harris of Tucson High and the UA; and Marcus Titus, a 12-time All-America swimmer from Flowing Wells High School and the UA, a three-year member of the USA national swimming team.

The 13-member class will be inducted at an Oct. 27 banquet at the Doubletree Hotel. They will be joined by two high school teams: the 1962 Tucson High boys basketball team, which went 21-0 to win the state championship under coach Tony Morales, and the 1990 Pueblo High girls softball team, which won the state title with a 25-2 record under coach Lisa Pina.

Hall president Pat Darcy, a former Cincinnati Reds World Series champion and a Rincon High School grad, announced the Class of 2019 on Saturday.

“This class includes Tucson native Arte Moreno, owner of the Los Angeles Angels,” said Darcy. “It touches all aspects of sports – athletes, coaches, administrators and those who work behind the scenes.”

The other Class of 2019 inductees are:

• Rich Griffith, a Catalina High School grad who was Arizona’s starting tight end from 1989-92. Griffith was a fifth-round draft pick of the New England Patriots and played 90 NFL games; he was a finalist for NFL Man of the Year in 1997.
• Bill Bland, who coached the Santa Rita High School boys to the 1979 and 1981 state track and field titles.
• Patsy Lee, former head softball coach at Pima College who worked in TUSD athletics for 40 years. She was the first female to coach a boys (volleyball) high school team in Tucson. She was also the top assistant coach for Palo Verde’s boys basketball team when it reached the 2000 state final.
• Dave Lynch, who coached Santa Rita High’s girls basketball team to a 28-0 state championship season in 1984, and, as a handball player, was ranked as high as No. 8 in the United States.
• Bill Fields, president of Tucson’s Challenger Little League organization from 1990-2018 and an assistant coach for USA Special Olympics teams.
• Herman House, executive director of the TUSD athletic program for 10 years, overseeing nine high schools and 24 middle school athletic programs.
• Emma Darlington Munsch, Tucson’s high school swimmer of the year in 2005, at Salpointe Catholic, a two-time state champion and later a two-time All-American at the UA.
• Barry Roth, former swimming coach at Sabino and Sahuaro high schools, the 1994 AIA coach of the year, who later was ranked No. 1 in the world in masters age-group swimming.

UA among first in Pac-12 to create analytics post

Washington’s burst to the Pac-12 basketball championship last year put significant attention on coach Mike Hopkins’ staffing and approach to the game.

Hopkins has the largest staff it the league — 11 full-time employees, including a chief administrative officer, an executive assistant to the head coach and a director of special projects. That’s probably excessive, but when you generate the type of football revenue the Huskies do, why not spread it out to other sports?

By comparison, Arizona is in the process of hiring an eighth full-time member of Sean Miller’s staff: a director of on-campus recruiting and basketball analytics.

In the era of Kenpom.com, analytics is becoming the next big thing in college basketball. Washington’s video and analytics coordinator, Aaron Blue, received a lot of attention last season. Utah last year created a similar position — director of strategy and analytics.

Arizona will be the third Pac-12 team with an employee dedicated to analytics. Expect every other team in the league to do the same in the next year or so.

Four Tucson sports names in the news

1. Andre Iguodala has written a book: “Sixth Man, a Memoir.” It will be available online and in bookstores this week. Iguodala wasn’t an all-time great at Arizona; he scored 594 points in two seasons. But he made the right decision by leaving school early. Iguodala has played in 1,108 NBA games and been paid more than $125 million. Interesting tidbit: In the 2004 NBA draft, Iguodala was selected No. 9 overall. He was sandwiched between No. 8 Rafael Araujo, a BYU center who was a bust, playing in just 139 NBA games, and No. 10 Luke Jackson of Oregon, who also busted, playing just 73 NBA games. The NBA scouts miss a few, too.

2. Mike Crawford was one of the leading high school pitchers in Arizona history. He went 13-1 and 12-2 in his final two seasons at Salpointe Catholic High School, pitched at the UA, and has gone on to coach pitchers for 11 seasons under Utah’s Bill Kinneberg, himself a former Wildcats pitcher. Last week, Kinneberg parted ways with Crawford. Tough business. Crawford and Kinneberg celebrated the 2016 Pac-12 championship at Utah, a seismic upset, but since then the Utes have gone 29-61 in the league.

3. Tim Derksen was the Arizona high school basketball player of the year in 2011, leading Amphi to a state championship. After four solid years at the University of San Francisco, Derksen last week enjoyed the height of his young pro career. Derksen helped Fribourg win the Swiss Cup championship, capping a 5-0 run through the SBL EuroLeague playoffs. Derksen averaged 11 points and four rebounds per game in the playoffs. Earlier this season he averaged 18 points per game for Prievidza in the Slovakian EuroLeague.

4. Those who played golf at the El Conquistador Country Club 25 years ago might’ve recognized the caddy working for U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland last week at Pebble Beach. Brennan Little, who graduated from New Mexico State and moved to Tucson to work at then-new El Conquistador club in Oro Valley, has gone on to become one of the top caddies in the world. He earlier was on the bag for Mike Weir during a championship run at the 2003 Masters.

Nick Gonzales joins elite company as ABCA All-American

Former Cienega High School baseball player Nick Gonzales last week was selected an ABCA first-team All-American, long considered the top honor in college baseball.

Gonzales, a sophomore at New Mexico State, hit .432 with 16 homers and 80 RBI and has become the leading second baseman in college baseball.

The ABCA — American Baseball Coaches Association — began selecting All-American teams in 1949. The only other Tucsonans to make the first team were Tucson High/UA catcher Bob Murray in 1950; Rincon High School pitcher Dan Schneider of Arizona in 1962, UA shortstop Eddie Leon of Tucson High in 1965 and 1966, and Sunnyside High School catcher Carlos Ramirez of ASU in 2009.

The other Arizona Wildcats selected to the ABCA’s first team were Terry Francona, Trevor Crowe, Alex Mejia and Scott Kingery, all of whom reached the major leagues. Jerry Stitt, the UA’s longtime assistant coach and later head coach, was a first-team ABCA All-American in 1968.

Jonah Miller the latest Salpointe Catholic standout to receive offer from USC

USC football coach Clay Helton last week offered a scholarship to Salpointe Catholic offensive lineman Jonah Miller, who has also been offered by, among others, Arizona and Oregon. In Tucson prep football, there has never been anything quite like the demand for four Salpointe seniors: Miller, lineman Bruno Fina, running back Bijan Robinson and defensive back Lathan Ransom. All have been offered by USC. That’s unprecedented. It’s not like USC hasn’t monitored Tucson prep football — the Trojans have signed nine Tucsonans over the years: Tucson High lineman Marvin Lewis; Amphi linebacker Riki Ellison; Sabino kicker Cole Ford; Sahuaro quarterback Rodney Peete; CDO receiver Junior Rickman; Sabino linebacker Greg Tellam; Sahuaro linebacker John McGee; Sabino tight end Doyle Butler; and Salpointe center Kris O’Dowd. Perhaps USC’s “Fight On” booster club should establish a branch in Tucson.

Ray Scott's minimalist style on the mic still missed today

Former “Voice of the Wildcats” Ray Scott would’ve turned 100 last week. One of the handful of Mount Rushmore-type play-by-play broadcasters of the 20th century — known mostly for his NFL work — Scott called Arizona football and basketball games from 1984-87 and was a talk-show host on KNST. Scott, who died in 1998, might’ve had the single greatest call of a famous UA play in history. When Chuck Cecil returned an interception 106 yards to beat ASU in 1986, Scott began in his typical minimalist style: “This is Cecil. …” In what I believe was the top single play in the Lute Olson era, a length-of-the-court pass and basket to beat then-Pac-10 power Oregon State at the buzzer in 1986, leading to the UA’s first league basketball championship, Scott simply said “… Kerr will throw it in from about 90 feet away. … Three seconds to go. … Cats trail by one. … McMillan grabs it. … Gooooooood.” Perfect.

Ex-Cat keeps NBA's newest stars looking fresh

Few people in sports had a better week than Percy Knox, one of the UA’s most accomplished sprinters and long jumpers, part of Arizona’s 1990 4x100 NCAA championship team with Michael Bates, and the No. 3 all-time long-jumper in UA history, 26-feet 3¾ inches. Knox is now the president of The Elevee Lifestyle group, a Phoenix-based custom clothing company that tailors and creates wardrobes for athletes. At last week’s NBA Draft, Knox was front and center, part of the team that styled the wardrobes for first-round selections Zion Williamson, PJ Washington, Romeo Langford and Kevin Porter Jr., among others. Knox has been in the business for 12 years and has outfitted, among others, Larry Fitzgerald, Justin Verlander and eight of the NFL’s top 10 draft picks in 2013 alone. Knox once told me he began reading GQ magazine at age 11. It has paid off.

My two cents: Academic counselor will be deeply missed inside hoops, swimming programs

A lot of attention was paid to Arizona basketball recruit Terry Armstrong last week. The four-star recruit from Michigan, generally ranked in the top 100 of most recruiting polls, has chosen not to enroll at the UA and will instead turn pro.

It was a significant loss, but the biggest loss in the UA basketball department got no public attention. It was last week’s resignation of Kiaira Ladd, the school’s senior academic counselor for men’s basketball and men’s and women’s swimming.

Ladd is a keeper; she will be deeply missed inside the basketball and swimming programs.

Before arriving at Arizona two years ago, Ladd was the director of football academics at Washington, working directly with Huskies head football coach Chris Petersen and about 100 UW football players.

I’m not directing blame at anyone for Ladd’s departure from the UA’s academic services staff, but in a university setting it seems amiss that a person of Ladd’s expertise and experience was paid $57,000, which was less than all three of UA’s full-time assistant swimming coaches and nowhere near the $134,946 paid to the strength and conditioning coach for the Wildcats’ men’s basketball team.

The mission here is still to educate and graduate students, right?

But somewhere along the way, 20 or 25 years ago, the compensation to coaches and administrators got wildly out of proportion compared to their contribution to a student-athlete’s experience.