Hansen's Sunday Notebook: For every UA hoops dollar, Princeton earns about a nickel — proving March isn't all about money

The Star's longtime columnist on the dollars-to-dollars discrepancy visible with Arizona's loss to Princeton, Pima women's hoops coach Todd Holthaus' quest for a 500th career win, how LIV ended up in Marana, the laughable idea that ASU's basketball arena is "a fine facility" and more.

March Madness is about moments, not money

In the fiscal year 2022, Arizona spent $12.2 million on its men’s basketball program. It had revenues of $23.3 million.

According to figures from the U.S. Department of Education, Princeton spent $1.7 million on men’s basketball in 2022 and balanced it with $1.7 million in revenue.

For every dollar Arizona spent on recruiting, travel and coaches’ salaries, Princeton spent about eight cents.

For every dollar Arizona earned from tickets sold, advertising, media rights and attendant income, Princeton banked a nickel, or thereabouts.

Yet Friday's headline in the Daily Princetonian student newspaper read: DAVID 59, GOLIATH 55.

Basketball in March is not about the money. It’s not about brand, recruiting rankings or the championship banners hanging in your arena. It’s about the moment. It’s about 40 minutes of what is often a thin line between heaven and hell.

"We’re imperfect," said Princeton coach Mitch Henderson. "But things that are tough, things that are really hard to do, we take pride in those things."

Arizona, too, was imperfect. A bit soft. Little depth. Inconsistent shooters. A couple of late injuries. A program in need of more time to recruit and develop. No alpha dog to lead the way.

Princeton’s shocking victory over the Wildcats took me back 30 years, to the 1993 morning after No. 15 seed Santa Clara stunned No. 2 seed Arizona 64-61 in Salt Lake City. As I was checking out of a Marriott Hotel a few blocks from the Huntsman Center, Santa Clara’s basketball team and its coaching staff stood in the lobby.

The NCAA had only booked Santa Clara’s stay at the downtown Little America hotel through the night of its game against Arizona. The hotel thereafter booked the Broncos’ rooms to someone else.

So the NCAA scrambled and sent coach Dick Davey and his team to the campus Marriott to occupy Arizona’s rooms, which were booked through the weekend.

The element of surprise is as bewitching as it is beguiling.

Over the last few days, some Arizona fans reacted with more emotion than common sense. Using social media, they suggested the UA should (a) hire a new coach or fire the assistant coaches, (b) stop recruiting foreign players, (c) find a new point guard and (d) stop being so nice and polite.

This can be expected from an oft-injured fan base that has watched helplessly as Arizona lost eight one-and-done upsets over the last 31 years. I haven’t been able to determine if eight first-round upset losses is a record, but it’s got to be close.

• 1992: Loss to No. 14 East Tennessee State.

• 1993: Loss to No. 15 Santa Clara.

• 1995: Loss to No. 12 Miami of Ohio.

• 1999: Loss to No. 12 Oklahoma.

• 2007: Loss to No. 9 Purdue.

• 2016: Loss to No. 11 Wichita State.

• 2018: Loss to No. 13 Buffalo.

• 2023: Loss to No. 15 Princeton.

Such results lead to extreme judgments. Fire Tommy Lloyd? Really?

If you could hand-pick another Pac-12 coach to replace Lloyd tomorrow, who would you pick?

I’ll tell you who: No one.

Oregon’s Dana Altman? He’s an introvert, nervous and fidgety, 64 years old, in the final years of his career. A glass-half-empty guy. The Ducks have become underachievers, losing 69 games the last six seasons.

UCLA’s Mick Cronin? The volcanic sideline stalker, an old-school drill sergeant, inherited franchise players Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Tyger Campbell. His schtick might work or go unnoticed in L.A., but in Tucson the angry-man routine wouldn’t play well.

ASU’s Bobby Hurley? In eight years he has won two NCAA "play-in" games and little else.

At 48, Lloyd is the same age Lute Olson was on the day he was hired by Arizona in 1983. Lloyd is entering the prime of his career, just as Olson was then. Lloyd is without question the Pac-12’s most accomplished recruiter, a positive force.

Lloyd has had just 1½ recruiting seasons at Arizona. He hasn’t had time to develop a Henri Veesaar or watch one of his recruits blossom into a full-blown franchise player the way Cronin has been blessed with stay-for-the-long-term stars Jaquez and Campbell.

Yet Lloyd’s record is 61-11. While the loss to Princeton felt like the end, it is, in fact, just the beginning for Tommy Lloyd.

This too shall pass.

Going for No. 500 on a big stage

Pima College women’s basketball coach Todd Holthaus quietly won his 499th career game (combined at Flowing Wells High School and PCC) in the region championship game against Scottsdale Community College last weekend.

Tuesday morning at 10 Tucson time, Holthaus and the Aztecs will play for No. 500 in the opening round of the NJCAA Division II championships in Port Huron, Michigan, seeded No. 7 in the nation.

The route to Port Huron was not easy — it never is — and that doesn’t include PCC’s budget-influenced journey to Michigan that included 1:30 a.m. wakeup calls Friday, followed by a 2:30 a.m. bus ride to the Phoenix airport, a flight to Detroit and a 90-minute bus ride to Port Huron.

Holthaus knows the drill and has never let it become a negative factor. Since 2009, the Aztecs have finished in the top five at the NJCAA finals in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2016 and 2019. And he’s done it with a roster almost entirely made up of women from Arizona. Pima, which is 25-7, expects to start Angel Addleman of Palo Verde High School; Luisa Chavez of Rio Rico; Torrance Begay of Page; Matehya Aberle of Holbrook; and Alona Johnson of Shiprock, N.M.

The road to the national championship is daunting. No. 1 Morton CC of Illinois is 31-0; No. 2 CCBC Essex of Maryland is 27-1; No. 3 Kirkwood College of Illinois is 25-2; and No. 4 seed Johnson County College of Kansas is 28-1.

"Getting here is such a battle," Holthaus said. "Our competition in the ACCAC is as good as it gets nationally. In all the years we’ve been here, we’ve never been in over our heads."

LIV’s path to Dove Mountain paved years ago

In the fall of 2016, two years after the WGC-Accenture Match Play championship left Marana’s Dove Mountain, the Texas-based firm of Escalante Golf purchased the 36-hole Gallery Golf club for $7.1 million. A year later it bought the Dove Mountain golf course as well.

That’s how this weekend’s LIV Golf tournament found its way to the Gallery’s south course on Dove Mountain. A year ago, the Escalante group was one of the few in America receptive to the LIV Golf tour. It staged one of four American events at its Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club near Portland, Oregon.

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It’s not exactly the Match Play Championships with the world’s 64 leading golfers.

LIV events are essentially meaningless except to the 48 golfers who are paid millions of dollars. The tournaments are more entertainment than riveting competition played on historic courses. Most of the LIV’s big name golfers like Phil Mickelson are on the backside of their careers.

I watched most of Saturday’s LIV event on the CW channel. It was different. The commercials were mostly promotions for upcoming shows on CW, totally unlike a PGA Tour event on CBS or NBC that is stacked with seemingly never-ending commercials from big-name sponsors.

Aerial views of Dove Mountain from drone cameras were inspiring. The announcers freaked out when a rattlesnake was spotted crawling across the 12th fairway. Otherwise, it was mostly a non-event.

The PGA Tour has been shook up and reconstituted, with bigger purses, but it retained most of the game’s top names and its historic venues. It’s not going anywhere.

The LIV tour? It’s a costly, precarious experiment and not much else.

Short stuff: Romero blasts off for UA baseball, Stoudamire's Georgia Tech gamble and more

Arizona senior first baseman Kiko Romero, a Canyon del Oro High School product, last week became the 12th UA position player from Tucson to become the Pac-12's baseball player of the week. It’s a select group and reflects on the quality of high school baseball played in Tucson.

Here’s the list of those who preceded Romero, who was hitting .391 with a team-high 24 RBIs through Friday:

• 1986: Steve Strong, Sabino High (UA)

• 1987: Ted Dyson, Amphi High (ASU)

• 1989: Steve Martin, Sahuaro High (ASU)

• 1993: Willie Morales, Tucson High (UA)

• 1995: Diego Rico, Sunnyside High (UA)

• 1995: Robbie Kent, Sahuaro High (ASU)

• 1998: Colin Porter, CDO (UA)

• 1999, 2001: Shelley Duncan, CDO (UA)

• 2001: Ernie Durazo, Tucson High (UA)

• 2007: T.J. Steele, CDO (UA)

• 2012: Seth Mejias-Brean, Cienega High (UA)

• • •

After a five-year climb to become a major-league starter, Catalina Foothills High school alumnus Luis Gonzalez hit .254 in 94 games for the San Francisco Giants last year.

Unfortunately, Gonzalez, who was an All-Mountain West Conference player for the New Mexico Lobos, will miss at least the first four months of the 2023 season. He is to undergo surgery for a disc problem in his lower back this week.

• • •

In the last 10 years, Salpointe Catholic basketball player Majok Deng was one of Tucson’s leading players, pushing the Lancers to the 2017 and 2018 state championship games, scoring more than 1,700 career points. Deng chose to play at Pepperdine for former Arizona assistant coach Lorenzo Romar, but it hasn’t been productive.

Last week, Deng announced he has entered the transfer portal and is leaving Pepperdine, where he scored just 67 points and started four games in four seasons. Romar, too, has struggled: The Waves have gone 7-25 and 9-22 the last two seasons.

• • •

Gilbert Perry High School sophomore Koa Peat last week was selected Arizona’s Gatorade boys basketball player of the year. Since the award was initiated in 1986, only three Tucson ballplayers have been so honored: Sunnyside’s Deron Johnson in 1989 and 1990, Sunnyside’s Jermaine Watt in 1993 and Amphi’s Tim Derken in 2012. In a basketball-crazy precinct like Tucson, it seems odds that it hasn’t produced more big names.

It’s not that the UA hasn’t benefited from Arizona’s Gatorade award winners. The Wildcats successfully recruited seven Gatorade winners from Phoenix: Mike Bibby, Richard Jefferson, Channing Frye, Dylan Anderson, Jerryd Bayless, Nico Mannion and Alex Barcello.

• • •

Damon Stoudamire is such a good and well-meaning person that I wish him nothing but the best. However, I fear he has taken over a hired-to-be-fired job at Georgia Tech. I hope I am wrong. Georgia Tech has had just two winning seasons in the ACC dating to 2003-04.

It is the equivalent of Cal or Oregon State in the Pac-12. Stoudamire went 71-77 in five years as head coach at Pacific, about as well as any Pacific coach can hope, but was smart enough to get out and find a spot on the Boston Celtics staff.

My point is this: Josh Pastner is a relentless recruiter, a 24/7 basketball-manic coach who went 109-144 at Georgia Tech. If Pastner couldn’t get the Yellow Jackets on track, Stoudamire will need a basketball miracle to get a second contract in about 2028.

My two cents: Crow's ASU arena claim laughable

ASU president Michael Crow last week told The State Press, the school's student news outlet, that the Sun Devils’ 50-year-old Desert Financial Arena "is completely functional."

"It’s a fine facility," he said. "It just needs some updates. It does not determine if we win basketball games at all."

That has got to be good news to the rest of the Pac-12 schools. The Sun Devil arena is so blah and sterile that it hurts recruiting, which hurts winning. Only Oregon State has a less-appealing arena.

Perhaps this is Crow’s way of saying: "I’m leaving this problem for the next ASU president."

Since 1994, Arizona athletic directors Jim Livengood, Greg Byrne and now Dave Heeke have combined to spend about $150 million, proactively remodeling the interior of McKale Center each decade.

Even though Washington, Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Oregon have spent as much or more to redo their basketball arenas the last 25 years, McKale remains the Taj Mahal of Pac-12 hoops.