Hansen's Sunday Notebook: History says losing out on hoops transfer Ryan Nembhard won't set Arizona back long

The Star's longtime columnist on UA track star Talie Bonds' hurdles history ... Pima track's Joel Gardner's tide turns ... bad news-turned-worse for Salpointe beach volleyball's Megan Muehlebach and Frankie Pieroni ... appointment TV viewing on the baseball career of Terry Francona ... Draft day-cometh for Bijan Robinson this week ... and more.

Not getting Nembhard no different than losing Reggie Miller, others; better fits came quick

It would’ve been a gut punch to lose a basketball recruiting battle to Gonzaga in 1983, 1993 and 2003. But today? Unless you are Duke or Kansas, beating Gonzaga in a recruiting battle would probably be an upset.

Yet when Creighton transfer point guard Ryan Nembhard chose Gonzaga over Arizona last week, it was as if Arizona had lost to Princeton in the NCAA Tournament all over again. Tucson’s basketball’s community mourned.

In retrospect, we should’ve seen it coming.

Nembhard’s brother, Andrew Nembhard, flourished under Mark Few at Gonzaga. He played on teams that went 59-5 and reached the Final Four. After his two seasons at Gonzaga, Nembhard accepted an $8.4 million contract from the Indiana Pacers and played 27 minutes per game as an NBA rookie.

Thank you, Mark Few.

That’s a basketball blood connection that Tommy Lloyd couldn’t match.

No matter what choice Ryan Nembhard made, there was no edge for either school in available playing time. Gonzaga returns its starting point guard, Nolan Hickman, who started 36 games last season. Arizona returns Kylan Boswell, who has the chops to be Arizona’s team leader in 2023-24.

But given the holes on Arizona’s basketball roster, the inability to acquire Nembhard is probably one of the three or four most high-profile recruiting setbacks since Lute Olson arrived at McKale Center in 1983. Remember?

• Reggie Miller, 1983. Almost as soon as Olson was hired, he pursued the future NBA All-Star, a senior in Riverside, California. Beating UCLA in 1983-84 in recruiting wasn’t the same as it was under John Wooden. Bruins coach Larry Farmer was about to begin his third year, one in which the Bruins would go 17-11 and Farmer would get fired.

Olson persuaded Miller to visit Tucson a few days before letter-of-intent day. Miller had narrowed his choices to Arizona and UCLA, thanks to the work by Arizona assistant coach Scott Thompson. However, Miller chose UCLA when, according to Olson, Miller saw a rattlesnake in the backyard of UA super-fan Paul Weitman while on his recruiting visit.

Regrets? A few months later, Arizona signed Sean Elliott.

• Tony Gonzalez, 1993. On the first day coaches could contact recruits in the summer of 1993, Olson and UA football coach Dick Tomey collaborated to phone Los Angeles super-recruit Tony Gonzalez, a 6-foot-5 football-basketball combo athlete who went on to become an Pro Football Hall of Fame tight end.

Gonzalez took a recruiting visit to Tucson in November 1983 and seemed to be sold on playing for Tomey and Olson, both operating Top 10 programs then.

Gonzalez later told the Star he planned to commit to Arizona but then added a final trip, to Cal.

“I went to my visit at Cal thinking ‘I’m going to Arizona,' " said Gonzalez, who was a part-time basketball starter for the Bears for three seasons. Instead, he chose Cal, adding: "But Coach Olson was great."

Regrets? Arizona signed future Final Four MVP Miles Simon that month.

• Ivan Rabb, 2015. Sean Miller had been recruiting the 6-11 Rabb since he had been a freshman in the Bay Area, playing at the same high school as previous Arizona five-star signee Brandon Ashley.

“I could see helping Arizona get over the hump and into the Final Four," Rabb told the Oakland Tribune.

But once Cal coach Mike Montgomery retired, Rabb was influenced by new Bears coach Cuonzo Martin. Rabb signed with Cal, which failed to become a Pac-12 contender in his two seasons. He jumped to the NBA and was a second-round choice. Rabb played parts of two NBA seasons.

Regrets? Arizona signed Lauri Markkanen a few months later.

I suspect Tommy Lloyd will soon make the inability to acquire Nembhard as painless as it became to lose Reggie Miller, Tony Gonzalez and Ivan Rabb.

Track star Bonds moves into elite company

As far as I can determine, UA senior hurdler Talie Bonds and her sisters Quincy Bonds (soccer) and Tiana Bonds (track) are the only set of three sisters to become letter-winners in UA history.

Not that it’s surprising. All three were Nevada Gatorade Player of the Year award winners (track and field) while competing for Las Vegas’ Centennial High School over the last decade. A fourth sister, Zoey Bonds, became the fourth Bonds sister to win Nevada’s Gatorade award. Zoey now competes at BYU.

Arizona track coach Fred Harvey refers to them as having “the right stuff."

Over the last three months, Talie has gone beyond “right stuff" to “elite stuff."

When she ran a 12.65 in the 100 meter hurdles at the Mt. SAC Relays last week, Talie moved into fifth place in Pac-12 history in the event. Talk about impressive. At No. 4, with a time of 12.61 in 1988, is Olympic gold medalist Gail Devers of UCLA.

In the upcoming Pac-12 and NCAA championship meets, Harvey said “I feel Talie has a chance" to break Devers’ record, the fastest 100-meter hurdle time in the Pac-12 championship competition. The overall league record is 12.48 set in 2006.

Here’s some perspective on Bonds’ climb to prominence: In UA women’s track history, only three Wildcats rank higher than Bonds’ current No. 5 Pac-12 history standing in the 100 hurdles: high jumpers Brigetta Barrett and Tanya Hughes and 1991 javelin thrower Louise Perreault.

Talie Bonds already has a degree in sociology/criminal justice and hopes to be an FBI agent.

Pima’s Gardner attracts national attention

Before last week’s Triton Invitational in San Diego, Pima College sophomore Joel Gardner of Ironwood Ridge High School had run a personal best of 14:36.50 in the 5,000-meter race, which earned him seventh place and All-American honors at the NJCAA indoor championships this year.

Even that performance did not attract much attention from the nation’s top NCAA distance-running recruiters.

But when Gardner ran the race of his life, winning the 5,000 meters at 14:12.84 — knocking 24 seconds off his best time — it didn’t take long for elite-level schools to notice. A few days after his epic San Diego run, Gardner was offered and accepted a scholarship to Alabama.

Gardner’s time broke the 18-year Pima College record set by 2005 All-American Craig Curley, who that season ran 14:23.2 to break five-time American Olymplan Abdi Abdirahman’s PCC record. It puts Gardner on the map and then some.

Gardner, who began his running career innocently enough in a middle-school jog-a-thon, comes from good athletic genes. His older brother, Mitch Gardner, was an all-city offensive lineman at Ironwood Ridge in 2018.

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Short stuff: RhettRod after football; a beach bummer for Salpointe's Muehlebach; Ochoa's wins in perspective; more...

I would’ve missed all my guess on the career path of quarterback Rhett Rodriguez, who led Catalina Foothills to the 2016 state championship game, and despite being undersized, used his football IQ and resourcefulness to start games for Arizona and Louisiana-Monroe in his college career.

It seemed to be a gimme that Rhett would someday become an offensive coordinator or head football coach like his father, Rich Rodriguez, now the head coach at Jacksonville State.

But the Pac-12’s 2020 football Scholar-Athlete of the Year did not accompany his father to Jacksonville State. Instead, he has become a business development associate at the Northern Trust Corporation, working in Phoenix. ...

•  •  • 

... Megan Muehlebach, who has helped Salpointe Catholic to three state volleyball championships — the 2020 indoor title and the 2021 and 2022 beach volleyball titles — will be unable to compete for the beach volleyball pairs championships even though she and her partner, Frankie Pieroni, are undefeated and ranked No. 1 entering the state championships.

The daughter of Arizona basketball point guard Matt Muehlebach, 1988-1991, was eliminated from the state tournament field when Pieroni broke her leg last week. The Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) ruled that it does not allow substitutions for injured players.

Whoa. What a bad decision.

To make it worse, Megan missed this year’s indoor volleyball championships with an injured ankle. Coach Heather Moore-Martin’s team is seeded No. 1 and play Northwest Christian in Monday’s state semifinals. ...

•  •  •

... When Arizona women’s golf coach Laura Ianello and her young team led heavily favored Stanford and USC until the final nine holes of the 54-hole Pac-12 women’s golf championships last week, the history of the UA women’s three-time NCAA championship golf program gained perspective.

Stanford’s Rose Zhang won the Pac-12 title, her 10th overall championship at Stanford and sixth this year. Those numbers sound unbeatable.

But Zhang couldn’t reach the league record of 12 championships won by Arizona’s Lorena Ochoa in 2000-01, nor match Ochoa’s record of eight victories in a season, set in 2001. Arizona’s Marisa Baena, with 10 championships from 1996-98, is tied with Zhang. Annika Sorenstam had seven tournament titles in 1990-92. ...

•  •  • 

... Suggested viewing Sunday: MLB Network presents "Tito: The Terry Francona Story." It’s a 90-minute documentary on Arizona’s 1980 NCAA Player of the Year, now in his 11th season as the Cleveland Guardians manager.

Francona, who lives in Tucson in the offseason, managed the Boston Red Sox to the 2004 and 2007 World Series championships and famously was the manager of Michael Jordan’s 1994 teams in Double-A and the Arizona Fall League.

Through Friday, Francona had 1,884 career managing victories, No. 15 in baseball history. He has battled health issues since 2005 and, at 64, is working toward 2,000 career wins, which seems to be an automatic number for selection to the baseball Hall of Fame. ...

•  •  •

... Tucson’s Nico Montañez finished 13th overall at the Boston Marathon last week — third of all Americans — completing the event in 2 hours, 10 minutes and 52 seconds. The only Tucson or UA runner to ever beat Montañez’s time was Abdi Abdirahman, who has a career best of 2:08.56.

Montañez, who won 10 state championships in distance running events at Tucson’s St. Augustine High School, was an All-American at BYU and last year won the USA 15K championships. At 29, Montañez should be a top competitor at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials.

My two cents: Bijan a star at every stop, why would NFL be different?

I sat alone in the bleachers at the Salpointe Catholic football field on a May afternoon, 2017. Coach Dennis Bene’s Lancers were going through spring camp, and he was kind enough to invite me to watch,

“Keep an eye out for No. 5," said Bene. “Bijan Robinson."

I wasn’t the only person at Salpointe to watch Robinson that day. Two assistant coaches from ASU were on the field, as was UA offensive coordinator Rod Smith. The Wildcats soon became the first team to offer Robinson a scholarship.

But by the time Robinson was a Salpointe senior, 2019, Arizona had no chance to get him. The UA coaching staff, under Kevin Sumlin, delivered an underwhelming recruiting presence, and Robinson ultimately chose Texas over USC and Ohio State.

This week, Robinson is expected to be a first-round NFL draft pick. He rushed for 7,036 yards at Salpointe and 3,410 at Texas. He is easily the top running back prospect in the draft. If he indeed is chosen in the first round he will join an elite company in Tucson. In its sports history, Tucson high schools have produced seven first-round draft picks in men's sports:

• 3rd overall — Sean Elliott, Cholla (UA), basketball, 1989

• 7th overall — Sam Khalifa, Sahuaro, baseball, 1982

• 7th overall — Nick Gonzales, Cienega (New Mexico St.), baseball, 2020

• 9th overall — Eddie Leon, Tucson (UA), baseball, 1965

• 11th overall — Fat Lever, Pueblo (ASU), basketball, 1982

• 22nd overall — Mike Dawson, Tucson (UA), football, 1976

• 27th overall — John Fina, Salpointe (UA), football, 1992

The next closest were Cholla’s Vance Johnson, a UA receiver, No. 31 overall in 1985, and Palo Verde’s Mark Arneson, a UA linebacker, No. 32 in 1972.

Robinson has supreme athletic genes. His uncle, Paul Robinson of Marana High School and the UA, was a third-round pick of the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968, who went on to become the league’s Rookie of the Year as a running back, gaining 1,023 yards.

Now comes Bijan Robinson. It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if he surpasses his uncle’s totals in his first NFL season.