Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Wildcats will survive without sure-handed receiver Dorian Singer

The Star's longtime columnist checks in on the NCAA transfer portal, honors a departing McKale Center staffer and puts Bijan Robinson's place in Southern Arizona football history:

Cats have pieces to endure Dorian Singer's departure

Given a week to process the transfer portal departure of UA receiver Dorian Singer, the damage doesn’t seem as significant as initially thought.

Reason No. 1: Arizona is a volume passing program. The Wildcats attempted 459 passes in 2022, which inflates statistics. The Wildcats ranked No. 8 of 131 FBS teams in passing yards per game (318).

Singer caught 66 passes.That’s nowhere near the highest total over Arizona’s last 25 seasons. Here’s the leaderboard:

93: Bobby Wade, 2002.

88: Dennis Northcutt,1999.

87: Austin Hill, 2012.

85: Jacob Cowing, 2022.

83: Mike Thomas, 2007.

82: Juron Criner, 2010.

Reason No. 2: Cowing was not only Arizona’s leading receiver, he also had more yards-after-catch than Singer. Freshman tight end Tetairoa McMillan caught eight touchdown passes, two more than Singer.

Even without Singer on the 2023 roster, receiving will not be viewed as a problem position.

No UA receiver made more TV-replay-worthy catches than Singer, who at times appeared to be a football magician, catching with one-hand, in traffic, in the tightest windows a receiver can imagine. But against opponents with the most effective defenses — Utah and Oregon — Singer caught just four total passes. He was prolific against defensive-challenged Colorado and Cal, against whom he caught 17 total passes.

But receivers are in abundance in college (and pro) football. It’s the easiest position to replace.

It will be interesting to see if Singer can get more touches, more receptions, if he accepts offers to play at Utah or Oregon, programs with more balanced offenses. If he is looking to be the No. 1 receiver somewhere, he might have to accept his offers from among Rutgers, Kansas or ASU.

Ultimately, I would not put Singer on my list of the biggest transfer losses of the UA’s Pac-12 years. Those would be:

Leon Wood, basketball. A first-team prep All-American from Los Angeles, Wood quit after his freshman season at Arizona, 1979-80, in which he averaged 9.2 points. He transferred to Cal State Fullerton and averaged 19.7,18.1 and 24.0, becoming the No. 10 overall NBA draft pick in 1984.

Shelby Pendley, softball. After hitting .331 with 19 homers and 55 RBIs as an Arizona freshman shortstop in 2012, Pendley transferred to Oklahoma where, over three seasons, she hit 65 home runs, batted .430 and .413, and was twice a consensus All-American.

Jason Gore, golf. Upon winning the Pac-10 individual championships of 1993 and 1994, Gore transferred to Pepperdine, where he led the Waves to the 1997 NCAA championship and embarked on a 14-year PGA Tour career.

A more significant transfer loss at Arizona this season was that of softball catcher Sharlize Palacios to UCLA. She hit .326 with 20 homers and 65 RBIs for the Wildcats and was a first-team All-Pac-12 choice.

Singer was not a first-team all-conference choice, but some of that is on the Pac-12. The league only allows two first-team receiver slots, which is a bad decision. Every team in the league has three starting receivers. Singer, who made the second team, would have benefited from being in the ACC, the Big 12 of the Mountain West Conference, all of which select three first-team receivers.

Angie Ponce leaves behind legacy of love

There are more than 250 full-time employees in the UA athletic department. One of the longest-tenured and most appreciated is Angie Ponce, who is retiring this month after more than 30 years working with the UA volleyball, soccer, track and field, soccer and gymnastics programs.

Her official title is “athletic equipment specialist,” but that doesn’t begin to describe her value to the school.

“Our athletes are her ‘kids’ and she always makes them feel loved,” says UA track coach Fred Harvey. “They love her and have come away feeling special when they picked up any pieces of equipment. She is our family.”

Ponce graduated from San Manuel High School and enrolled at Arizona in the early ‘80s. She was initially hired by Ed Thomas, who ran the UA athletic equipment operation from 1950-1985 and was elected to the UA Sports Hall of Fame. Talk about a link to a first-class mentor.

Along the way, Angie and her husband, former San Manuel High School state wrestling champion John Ponce, raised three kids and also worked with more than 200 UA student-athletes every season.

“Angie was a welcome presence, always upbeat and smiling,” says UA volleyball coach Dave Rubio, whose teams have worked with her for 30 years. “As I look back on my years here, Angie is one of the people who have made it so special. I would see her every day and she was always so affable and so gracious. I’m really going to miss her; she was great with the kids.”

Bijan Robinson among the country's best

When Salpointe Catholic High School graduate Bijan Robinson won the Doak Walker Award last week, symbolic of the top running back in college football, it was no fringe honor.

The 150-man voting panel for the Doak Walker Award includes many of the most celebrated running backs in history: Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders, Earl Campbell, Bo Jackson and Tony Dorsett.

After the award ceremony, several Texas media outlets reported that the Longhorns’ junior running back plans to skip the Dec. 29 Alamo Bowl against Washington and prepare for the NFL Draft. One mock draft — profootballnetwork.com — projects Robinson as the No. 25 overall pick.

Robinson became the fifth Tucsonan to gain 1,000 yards in a college football season.

Here’s the elite list:

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Ka’Deem Carey, Canyon del Oro/Arizona: 1,929 yards, 2012; 1,885 yards in 2013.

Bijan Robinson, Salpointe Catholic/Texas: 1,580 yards in 2022; 1,127 yards in 2021.

David Adams, Sunnyside/Arizona: 1,175 yards in 1986.

Mario Bates, Amphitheater/ASU: 1,111 yards in 1993.

Jon Volpe, Amphitheater/Stanford: 1,027 yards in 1988.

Carey completed his college career with 4,239 yards. Robinson has gained 3,410 yards at Texas.

Ainsley Malis wins national title

Ainsley Malis, one of the leading volleyball players in Tucson history, was a key factor last week when West Texas A&M won the NCAA Division II national championship. Malis, a sophomore from Tanque Verde High School, led the Buffaloes by playing in 127 sets this season. Ainsley’s championship added to her family’s impressive sports careers. Her brothers, Zach and Ethan, helped Desert Christian School to state baseball championships from 2013-15; her mother, Michelle Bartsch-Malis, was a UA volleyball standout and coached Cal State Bakersfield to a No. 2 finish in the NCAA Division II finals; and her father, AJ Malis, was an assistant coach on Arizona’s 2001 Final Four volleyball team. ….

Salpointe sophomores offered scholarship by ASU

Salpointe Catholic sophomore basketball player Taliyah Henderson last week was offered a scholarship by Arizona State coach Natasha Adair, which followed offers from Utah and BYU. Henderson, who had a 14-points, 16-rebounds double-double as a freshman when Salpointe Catholic won the state championship last season, is also being evaluated by Illinois and Iowa. She is averaging 19 points per game this season and will attract even more attention Dec. 19-22 when Salpointe plays in the Nike Tournament of Champions in Phoenix. Henderson is probably the top girls basketball prospect in Tucson since Salpointe’s Sybil Dosty 20 years ago. (Dosty attended Tennessee and ASU). …

Former BYU player has Tucson ties

One name to remember as college football’s transfer portal process plays out: BYU 2021 freshman All-American offensive lineman Campbell Barrington. The 6-foot-6-inch, 295-pound Barrington entered the NCAA transfer portal last week and has more ties to Arizona than perhaps any of the 1,000-plus players in the portal. Barrington’s father, Shawn Barrington, was a starting pitcher for Arizona’s baseball team in the mid 1990s, and his mother, Jacque Clark Barrington, was the starting center for Arizona’s 1997 WNIT basketball championship team. The Barringtons live in Spokane, Washington. …

Stanley Johnson heads back to G League

After being released by the Utah Jazz six weeks ago, Stanley Johnson, Arizona’s 2015 Pac-12 freshman of the year, is back in basketball. Johnson last week signed with the NBA G League’s Sioux Falls Skyforce, an affiliwate of the Orlando Magic. Johnson was the No. 8 overall draft pick in 2015. He scored two points in his Sioux Falls debut last week. Also in the NBA G League is former Arizona backup center Chance Comanche, who plays with the Stockton Kings, an affiliate of the Sacramento Kings. Comanche is averaging 10.7 points per game after playing in the Turkish EuroLeague last season and previously spending time with three G League clubs. ...

EAC athletic director Jim Bagnall retiring

The ACCAC is losing one of its leading athletic administrators: Jim Bagnall. The athletic director at Eastern Arizona College is retiring this month after 26 years. Bagnall was one of Tucson’s elite athletes of the 1970s, a first-team all-city quarterback at Salpointe and a first-team all-state infielder for the Lancers. Bagnall played for Arizona’s 1980 NCAA championship baseball team and was the UA’s team captain in 1982. He ultimately became an assistant coach at Georgia, helping the Bulldogs win the 1990 NCAA championship before returning to Arizona and becoming EAC’s baseball coach and athletic director in 1996. ….

Edna Peete dies; husband was UA assistant

Sad to hear that Edna Peete, wife of longtime Arizona assistant football coach Willie Peete, died last week in Southern California. Edna Faye Peete is the mother of former Sahuaro High School elite athletes Rodney Peete and Skip Peete, who went on to have distinguished college football careers at USC and Kansas, respectively. Rodney was an NFL quarterback for 16 years, and Skip is the running backs coach for the Dallas Cowboys and has been an NFL coach for 24 years. The Peete family lived near Sahuaro High School from the late 1960s until the family moved to Kansas City in 1983 when Willie, a former Arizona tight end, accepted a spot on the Chiefs coaching staff under John Mackovic.

My two cents: Southern Arizona shut out again in high school football finals

The state football championship playoffs were completed Saturday in Phoenix, and for the ninth consecutive year, no Tucson-area team won the title in a big school classification, Class 4A to 6A and in the Open Division

Salpointe Catholic, 2013, was the last Tucson mid-to-big school to win a state football championship. Pusch Ridge won the Division IV state football title in 2015.

That’s it. It’s the longest drought for Tucson prep football teams since the 1980s, but even that figure is misleading because in the 1980s Arizona had just two classifications for mid-to-big schools. Now there are four.

That means this nine-year drought — no state titles — in Tucson prep football is the longest in 100 years.

As recently as the decade of 2000-09, five Tucson teams — Sunnyside, Santa Rita, CDO, Sabino and Palo Verde — made the state finals.

In the 1990s, five more Tucson teams — Sabino, Sahuaro, Amphi, Mountain View and Salpointe — reached the finals.

It’s a sobering reflection on the diminished nature of prep football in Tucson, from the days when there were a legion of legendary coaches on the sideline every season: Vern Friedli, Howard Breinig, Richard Sanchez, Todd Mayfield, Wayne Jones, Dennis Bene and Jeff Scurran.

Now the state is ruled by Phoenix and its suburban, open-enrollment schools, as well as new schools such as ALA-Queen Creek, ALA-Gilbert North, Mesa Eastmark, Gilbert Williams Field and so many others.

Rural Thatcher High School, which as recently as 10 years ago couldn’t have imagined playing eye-to-eye with Tucson “football schools” like Sahuaro, Sabino and Palo Verde, routed those three teams by a combined score of 148-33 this season.

Soccer, anyone?