Hansen's Notebook: Even if not a dream-killer, FAU loss shows Arizona, Pac-12 are works in progress

The Star's longtime columnist on what UA's hoops loss to FAU means (and doesn't), Arizona football recruiting, Jeff Scurran's forever Southern Arizona football legacy, whether UA president Robert Robbins still has final financial say of the university's athletic budget and more.

Greg Hansen's Sunday Notebook is presented by Rite Way Heating, Cooling & Plumbing.

Arizona should still roll through Pac-12, even after 2OT loss to FAU

Pac-12 basketball teams this nonconference season have lost three games to Santa Clara, two to Colorado State and solo shockers to Cal-Northridge, Cal Irvine, UC San Diego, Montana State, Pacific, Long Beach State and seemingly every underdog except Slippery Rock and IUPUI.

The league has been so substandard that metrics wizard Ken Pomeroy’s currently projects Arizona to go 20-0 in the Pac-12, with no game any greater danger than a 67% chance to win at Colorado.

But if Arizona and its fans have learned anything the last quarter-century, it’s that those positive metrics and projections of grandeur usually seem to end with some frightful, spiteful loss when least expected.

Florida Atlantic? I’m guessing that 90% of the UA fans at T-Mobile Arena on Saturday did not know FAU’s nickname (Owls) or the name of a single Florida Atlantic player. Fear? It wasn’t exactly Duke or Purdue.

Sound familiar? Sound like a game last March when some scholar from Princeton named Tosan Evbuomwan scored 15 points to expedite 28-win Arizona’s exit from the NCAA Tournament?

There’s little doubt FAU could run through the Pac-12 this season with a 15-5 or 16-4 record and challenge for the league title. So, no, losing 96-95 in double overtime to the Owls is not a season-wrecker.

Based on what I saw Saturday, three FAU players, notably shooting guards Johnell Davis and Alijah Martin, could probably start for Arizona, and 7-foot center Vladislav Goldin could improve Arizona’s inside prowess. Jalen Gaffney? He would be a productive core player for any Pac-12 team.

The difference in Saturday’s game? A missing piece? The Wildcats sure could’ve used Azuolas Tubelis, now a 16-points-per-game scorer for Lithuania Neptunas of the EuroLeague, to draw a foul and win the game with two late free throws.

You are missed, Zou.

At this time a year ago, Arizona was 12-1 and ranked No. 5 in the AP poll. Rocking. Rolling. And then 6-10 Washington State, respected by nobody, showed up at McKale Center and clonked the Wildcats 74-61 when little-known center Mouhamed Gueye hammered a 24-14 double-double into the Arizona résumé.

Getting bumped off, teed off or knocked off during a four-month regular season is part of the college basketball landscape. With more than half of its schedule remaining, Arizona is still a work in progress.

Fisch’s recruiting class not highly ranked. Will it matter?

Arizona football coach Jedd Fisch’s 2024 recruiting class ranks near the middle of Big 12 schools, as high as No. 6 and low as No. 11, according to recruiting websites. That’s a steep fall from Fisch’s Class of 2022, ranked No. 19 nationally by Rivals.com.

Fisch said he recruited for need, not necessarily for rankings. Whenever a coach says that, it is concerning. That’s what Kevin Sumlin said when Arizona ranked No. 55 in 2019.

But Fisch has earned the benefit of the doubt; maybe it’s because there aren't many starting positions open, or maybe this coaching staff sees developmental potential where others do not. Either way, it doesn't look good on paper, but you can be sure this isn’t a Sumlin-type operation.

Losing Salpointe Catholic defensive ends Elijah Rushing to Oregon and Keona Willhite to Washington is the difference between being ranked No. 20 and No. 46. But it could be worse: ASU is ranked No. 54. One prospect Arizona didn’t pursue was former Salpointe offensive tackle Jonah Miller, who initially enrolled at Oregon. Miller last week signed with UTSA.

Scurran leaves a forever football legacy

After 50 years in the football coaching industry, roughly 40 of them in Southern Arizona, former Sabino, CDO, Santa Rita and Catalina Foothills coach Jeff Scurran announced his retirement last week on Facebook. He spent the last two seasons at Rio Rico.

One thing about Scurran, no challenge was too big. Rebuilding football-poor Santa Rita to back-to-back state championship game appearances (2008, 2009) was Hall of Fame material.

Numbers suggest that Scurran produced the most successful 10-year period of high school football coaching in Tucson history, leading Sabino to a 112-19-1 record from 1990-99, with three state championships, all against then-heavyweight Phoenix schools. Here’s the list:

• Scurran, Sabino, 1990-99: 112-21-1

• Richard Sanchez, Sunnyside, 1999-2008: 108-22

• Dennis Bene, Salpointe, 2010-19: 103-21

• Howard Breinig, Sahuaro, 1985-84: 94-26-1

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• Jay Campos, Sabino, 2006-15: 94-25

• Vern Friedli, Amphi, 1990-99: 92-29

• Wayne Jones, Mountain View, 1990-99: 90-36

Former UA athletes face imprisonment

In the last six weeks, two former Arizona athletes have been involved in high-profile cases that could lead to prison terms.

Most recently, ex-UA basketball center Chance Comanche, 2015-17, an NBA G League player, allegedly admitted to strangling a woman in Las Vegas in a murder plot that had him posing as a prostitute's customer. Comanche, 27, appeared in a court in California, and waived his extradition back to Nevada, where he'll face charges of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

In November, former UA shooting guard Will Bynum (2001-03) was among 18 former NBA players indicted in the scheme to commit health care and wire fraud to the NBA’s players’ retirement operation. Bynum was convicted by a Manhattan jury of a scheme to defraud the NBA, punishable up to 10 years in prison.

Previously, two of the most high-profile legal cases against former UA athletes involved 1989 All-Pac-10 defensive end Anthony Smith and 1960s basketball player Bradley Greene.

Smith, the No. 11 overall NFL draft pick in 1990 who played eight NFL seasons, was charged and convicted of committing three murders in Los Angeles in 1999 and was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. Greene was sentenced to 15-50 years in prison after pleading guilty to being involved in the murder of a Chicago policeman in 1970.

In a sad juxtaposition, two other high-profile former UA athletes were on the opposite side of such crimes. Former basketball star Michael Wright was murdered in New York in 2015, while former Wildcat and NBA forward Brian Williams (he later changed his name to Bison Dele) is believed to have suffered a similar fate after he disappeared at sea in the South Pacific in 2002.

Short stuff: Gonzales signs with NYY, UCLA's Cronin coaching himself out of job, Larkin's wrestling legacy, more

• Former Catalina Foothills baseball player Luis Gonzalez, who missed most of the 2023 MLB season with injuries, signed with the New York Yankees last week. He has been invited to the Yankees’ spring training camp. Gonzalez, 28, has played in parts of three big league seasons between the White Sox and Giants. The 2017 third-round pick was sidelined by a lower back strain last year. ...

• UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin appears to be heading down a road to unemployment. The Bruins are 5-6 this year, with a home loss to Cal-Northridge, perhaps the lowest moment in UCLA history since the John Wooden years. Cronin is a defense-first, in-your-face, old-school coach, a style that doesn’t work well in the 2020s. The bleachers at Pauley Pavilion are usually half-empty, or more. Cronin’s a volcano of negativity, stalking the sidelines, yelling, screaming, whining, blaming his players publicly. The only two Pac-12 basketball coaches I’ve seen to match Cronin’s negativity the last 40 years were Cal’s Lou Campanelli and UCLA’s Ben Howland. Campanelli was fired mid-season in 1993, and Howland, despite going to three Final Four at UCLA, was fired after winning the Pac-12 regular season title in 2013. Once Cronin lost two elite players (Tyger Campbell and Jamie Jaquez he inherited from fired Bruins coach Steve Alford, his recruiting and coaching abilities have shown to be inadequate. ...

• Pat Ryden, 53, was elevated from defensive coordinator to head football coach at Salpointe last week. He appears to be a lifer, a rare item in high school sports these days. Talk about old school: Ryden is a TUSD social studies teacher. Ryden began his coaching career in 1989 at his alma mater, Flowing Wells, and has since coached at CDO, Santa Rita, Pima College and Rincon/University, where he went 6-14 as head coach in 2007-08. Ryden has a strong foundation in coaching. He played for Flowing Wells state championship basketball and volleyball coach Ed Nymeyer in the 1980s. Can’t beat that. ...

• Eric Larkin’s wrestling legacy rolls on. His son, Kyler Larkin, on Friday accepted a scholarship to wrestle at Arizona State, joining his older brother, Kaleb Larkin, on the Sun Devil roster. Kaleb has already qualified for the 2024 USA Olympic Trials. Kyler, a high school senior, is ranked the No. 7 overall recruit in the Class of 2024. He wrestles at his father’s wrestling-centric school, Valiant Prep, in Phoenix's East Valley area.

Eric Larkin probably ranks with Roman Bravo-Young as one of the two leading wrestlers of Sunnyside High School’s 50-year wrestling dynasty, or close. Larkin went 130-2 at Sunnyside and then 123-12 as a four-time All-American at ASU, where he won the NCAA championship and was named the Hodge Trophy winner, similar to football’s Heisman Trophy.

My two cents: Is UA president Robbins ceding financial authority?

If you watched the Dec. 13 Arizona Board of Regents meeting with UA president Robert Robbins — or read the ABOR instructions — the message is that Robbins is not actually in charge of the school’s budget, and therefore not free to rule independently on financial matters for the school’s athletic department.

John Arnold, the ABOR executive director, is now the central financial authority, the go-to agent for ABOR. That means what Robbins wants for the athletic department has to be filtered through Arnold. Or at least that’s the way the instructions are stated.

Meeting with financial donors in Phoenix before last week’s basketball game against Alabama, UA athletic director Dave Heeke told the donors that the athletic department will continue to invest in men’s basketball and football, which is the only way Arizona can be competitive in the Big 12.

Robbins, who continues to be highly visible — the most visible athletics-centric Pac-12 president since UCLA’s Charles Young in the 1970s and 1980s — sat on the front row at UA men's and women's basketball games against Alabama and Gonzaga, respectively, in Phoenix, and the Arizona men's game in Indianapolis against Purdue. He has been on the sideline for almost every UA football game this season. He also sat behind the bench for last week’s UA-ASU women’s basketball game in Tempe.

But what Robbins thinks, says or knows on athletic financial issues is secondary. For now, Arnold is the decision-maker.