Hansen's notebook: Arizona jumps coach Bob Myers synonymous with school's 45-year Pac-12 run

The Star's longtime columnist on UA track and field assistant Bob Myers paralleling the Wildcats' Pac-12 run, the Herculean task of being TUSD's district athletic director, TJ McConnell outlasting his Pac-12 class as an NBAer, the value of a Caleb Love UA hoops return and more.

UA track assistant Myers with UA for virtually all of school's Pac-12 history

From the beginning of the Pac-10 to the end of the Pac-12, Arizona assistant track and field coach Bob Myers has seen it all.

He was a young UA assistant coach at the inaugural Pac-10 track and field championships in 1979 at ASU. He was a not-as-young UA assistant coach at the final Pac-12 track and field championship a week ago in Colorado.

After due research, I discovered that Myers is probably the only remaining Pac-10/12 coach, any sport, from the historic 1978-79 Pac-10 season. One thing has remained the same: Myers hasn’t stopped winning.

“I remember that first year at the conference finals in Tempe, there was a haboob and they delayed the meet for two or three hours,’’ Myers says. “But I don’t think about the years that have passed as much as I think about how well (UA high-jumpers) have performed.’’

Arizona’s James Frazier won the first Pac-10 high jump in 1979. The gates opened.

Arizona’s track and field program has produced 20 Pac-10/12 high jump champions in the league’s 46-year history. More impressive, the UA has produced 15 of the league’s last 32 high jump champions, men and women.

“That’s why some people call us not only Point Guard U, but High Jump U,’’ says Myers, who coached Pac-12 champions Justice Summerset, Lisanne Hagins (two titles) Karla Teran, Talie Bonds and Emma Gates the last seven years. Myers succeeded jumps coach Sheldon Blockburger, now at Long Beach State, who coached Beloved Promise (competed at UA as Brigetta Barrett) to three Pac-12 titles and the 2012 Olympics silver medal, and Nick Ross, who also won three Pac-12 titles.

Those who consider writing a history of Pac-10/12 sports would be wise to contact Myers, who was a UA assistant coach from 1978-92, and then again, Act II, after he returned to Tucson in 2012 and has been on Fred Harvey’s staff for 11 seasons.

Of the 250 or so full-time employees on the UA athletic department staff, Myers had the earliest starting date, 1978, a few years ahead of senior associate AD Judi Kessler, who began work at McKale Center in 1984, and voice of the Wildcats Brian Jeffries, whose employment began in 1986.

In his years away from Tucson, Myers was a USA Olympic coach/manager for track and field in Atlanta in 1996. He coached various other U.S. national teams in the 1980s and ’90s, including being head USA coach for the World Cup and assistant coach for the World University Games.

From 1992-2011 he was the Dean of the School of Human Performance and Human Development at Solano (Calif.) College where he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. Upon his return to Tucson he taught a Business of College Athletics course at the UA's Eller College of Management for two years.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise last week when Myers coached Gates, a sophomore, to the Pac-12 title. In the early 1990s, Myers successfully recruited two NCAA high jump champions, J.C. Broughton and Tanya Hughes.

Is there more to come at High Jump U?

“I couldn’t be happier than doing what I'm doing now, I love being a mentor to the kids,’’ says Myers. “I’m eager for next season.’’

Tucson’s most taxing sports job remains available

Dee Dee Wheeler scored 1,966 points — third-best in school history — during her days as an Arizona point guard, 2002-05. After she was inducted into the McKale Center Ring of Honor, she returned to Tucson in 2020 for an even greater challenge.

Wheeler succeeded Pima County Sports Hall of Famers Sheila Baize and Herman House as TUSD’s Director of Interscholastics. If there’s ever been a 24/7 job in Tucson sports, that’s the one.

Wheeler chose to leave TUSD earlier this spring and return to her hometown of Chicago and make a living as a basketball instructor. TUSD is still in the process of finding a replacement. Here’s the daunting job description:

• Work directly with purchasing, facilities, personnel, grounds, finance, transportation, and other TUSD departments as a resource to assist them with service and function related to Interscholastic activities.

• Direct a team of nine full-time high school athletic directors, nine full-time high school athletic trainers, 500-plus coaches, 400-plus officials, and two administrative assistants, one middle school coordinator, and one elementary athletic coordinator.

• Investigate and respond to parental concerns and serve as a resource regarding interscholastic policies, procedures, activities, and programs. Serve as the district’s primary liaison for NCAA Clearinghouse for academic qualifications.

• Monitor the district’s Title IX program, investigate Title IX compliance issues and recommend actions to ensure compliance. Manage/collaborate with over 90 school administrators assigned to interscholastic activities.

• Manage/monitor an athletic budget of $4.5 million to ensure equity of uniforms, equipment, and facilities to more than 20 schools.

When House retired four years ago, he told me the TUSD Interscholastics job was “huge, almost mind-boggling,’’ yet one whose importance never ends.

Finding a qualified replacement for Wheeler this summer might be one of the biggest challenges facing the TUSD and its many high school and middle schools.

McConnell outlasted Pac-12’s Class of 2015

Arizona point guard T.J. McConnell was one of only two players on the 2015 All-Pac-12 team not drafted in the NBA. Yet in the last seven games of the ongoing NBA playoffs, the Indiana Pacers’ backup point guard has averaged 13 points and 6.3 assists in 19 minutes per game. He is a rock, better with age.

Incredibly, McConnell has played more NBA games, 627, than any of the other players on the 2015 All-Conference team. Here’s how it stacks up:

• McConnell: nine years, 627 games

• Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Arizona: six years, 305 games

• Stanley Johnson, Arizona: seven years, 449 games

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• Gary Payton II, Oregon State: eight years, 208 games

• Norman Powell, UCLA: nine years, 558 games

• Chasson Randle, Cal: four years, 114 games

• Tyrone Wallace, Cal: four years, 112 games

• Delon Wright, Utah: nine years, 508 games

• Joseph Young, Oregon: three years, 127 games

• DaVonte Lacy, WSU: no NBA games

One thing about McConnell: His competitive fire is such that you can almost feel it through the TV screen.

Short stuff: Pima CC expected to axe golf programs; Anderson's UA men's golf rebuild impressive

• New Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois continues to reorganize the UA’s administrative staff. Last week, she hired Rachel Blunt, who was Reed-Francois’ senior women’s administrator at Missouri, and, ironically, one of the key operatives of former UA athletic director Dave Heeke’s staff at Central Michigan.

Reed-Francois also hired Tony Daniels from the Missouri staff; he was the senior associate AD for revenue generation. Previously, two members of Heeke’s front office staff, Brent Blaylock and Kristle Swindlehurst, left the UA. ...

• New Arizona swimming coach Ben Loorz, hired from a similar role at UNLV, coached just one All-American in eight years with the Rebels. That almost makes you shake your head. There was a decades-long period when Frank Busch’s Arizona teams produced 10 or 12 All-Americans per year in combined men’s and women’s swimming.

But Busch’s epic 22-year run at Arizona has been over since 2011, and Loorz should be able to operate without Busch’s legacy lurking over his shoulder. Loorz will find swimming in the Big 12 a much more sane way to start the rebuild at Arizona. The Big 12 returns only four schools that sponsor men’s swimming: TCU, BYU, Cincinnati and West Virginia; none are national powers. That’s quite a difference from the Pac-12; the Cal-Stanford block that has dominated college swimming for decades. ...

• Pima College is expected to eliminate its men’s and women’s golf programs for the 2024-25 season. The Aztecs have been one of just six ACCAC schools (of 16) to sponsor men’s and women’s golf. With a small portion of the yearly PCC budget of about $2.5 million, you can imagine how quickly that is spent when it costs about $50 per golfer for each round (and practice round) of golf, plus bus transportation to Phoenix that can cost $1,200 per day, or more.

Pima had six tournaments in Phoenix this season and another in Thatcher. After building PCC’s men’s and women’s golf teams to the NJCAA Top 25 rankings in 2022 and 2023, coach Marcus Smith left to become head coach at South Mountain CC, which has won eight NJCAA national titles. Best golfer in Pima history: Sahuaro High grad Rich Barcelo, who went on to play on the PGA Tour for three full seasons. ...

• Arizona men’s golf coach Jim Anderson, whose rebuild of the UA men’s golf team has been impressive, has piloted the Wildcats to this week’s NCAA Championships, which is news. In the last 13 years, the once-national powerhouse UA men’s golf team has only reached the NCAA finals in 2011 and 2022. What a change; Arizona finished in the top three in the NCAAs in 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004, the end of a fertile 25-year period when it produced PGA Tour players Jim Furyk, Robert Gamez, Larry Silveira, Mike Springer, David Berganio, Manny Zerman, Ted Purdy, Jason Gore, Rory Sabbatini, Ricky Barnes and Nate Lashley.

Since then, the UA has produced just one PGA Tour player, Trevor Werbylo. Arizona hasn’t finished higher than No. 19 in the national finals since 2005.

My two cents: Does Love returning to UA benefit the Wildcats?

In my opinion, the four best transfers in Arizona basketball history were, in order: Chris Mills from Kentucky, Loren Woods from Wake Forest, Bison Dele (who played collegiately as Brian Williams) from Maryland, and T.J. McConnell from Duquesne.

Age surely played a factor in their production and excellence. All turned 23 the final year they played at Arizona. Now comes North Carolina’s Caleb Love, who turns 23 in September. He has not declared if he will play another season at McKale.

The best of Love should be yet to come, right?

This might be difficult to comprehend, but from those I’ve talked or listened to in the basketball community, it’s about a 50-50 split on whether they think Love returning is good for the Wildcats.

He’s a volume shooter who attempted a school-record 277 3-point shots, making just 33%, often going cold at the worst possible times, shooting 1 for 22 on 3-pointers in late-season losses to Clemson, Oregon and USC.

The debate is this: Does Tommy Lloyd want to give Love another 277 distance shots as developing guards K.J. Lewis, Jaden Bradley and, potentially, 5-star guard Joson Sanon, become secondary options?

Or can we expect Love to improve, as Mills, Williams, Woods and McConnell did in their final college season?

Mills went from 16.3 points to 20.4 as a UA senior, 1993.

Williams went from 10.6 points to 14.0 in his final UA season, 1991.

McConnell went from 8.7 points to 10.4 as a UA senior in 2015, upping his assists from 5.3 to 6.3.

Woods averaged 13.2 points and 6.5 rebounds on the 2001 Final Four team, probably the most talented, one-through-seven lineup, in school history. Woods willingly modified his offensive game as Gilbert Arenas, Richard Jefferson, Michael Wright, Jason Gardner and Luke Walton got their shots. That's what Lloyd is likely to ask of Love, if he returns.

Love's decision might turn on compensation. If reports are accurate that ex-UA forward Keshad Johnson was paid $400,000 in NIL money last season — or anything close to $400,000 — it would be a signal that Love might be similarly compensated for one last college season.

How do you turn that down, especially when the NBA doesn’t seem like a reality?