In his 11 seasons as Pima College’s men’s basketball coach, Brian Peabody has almost seen it all.
His 2017-18 team opened the season 14-1, went 31-4 and finished second in the NJCAA championships. On the other side, he was also removed as PCC’s coach in 2004, a failed one-year stint in an athletic department then shaken by administrative turmoil.
Pima’s head coach Brian Peabody pleads his case to one of the game officials after not getting a call against Glendale in the second half of their NJCAA Region I, Division II semifinal at Pima Community College West, March 7, 2024.
Peabody has seen his boyhood friend, Jerry Carrillo of Cochise College, coach the Apaches to the only undefeated ACCAC season this century, 22-0, in 2022-23.
Now Peabody is on a similar path. The Aztecs are 15-0 and have a reasonable chance to finish the regular season 30-0, including 18-0 in the ACCAC. Conference play resumes Saturday against Scottsdale Community College and it’s not a stretch to say PCC will be favored in its 13 remaining league games.
Under Peabody, Pima has been good enough the last decade that talking about championships isn’t unrealistic.
The ACCAC this year has fully split into two divisions — seven teams in Division I and seven in Division II. The Aztecs no longer have to play home-and-home schedules with the “big boy’’ schools such as Eastern Arizona, Cochise College, Arizona Western and Central Arizona, schools that offer housing to scholarship players.
If Peabody’s Aztecs can run the table undefeated, he’ll join Carrillo and former Tucson High and UA basketball player Chuck LaVetter as the third Tucsonan to do so. LaVetter coached Eastern Arizona College to a 32-0 regular season in 1992 before finishing second in the NJCAA finals.
