The Star's longtime columnist on Adia Barnes' personal no-day-off strategy of late, Kirsten Smith's long road to UA hoops immortality, UA/Tucson legends taking Minor League Baseball managerial posts, local ties to the still-curious PGA Tour/LIV Golf battle and more...
Barnes: 'We're good, but there's another step'
The most telling number of the week for Adia Barnes and Arizona's women's basketball team wasn't a 10-point victory over No. 4 Utah, Shaina Pellington's epic 35-point outburst or winning a 20th game for the fifth consecutive year.
It was 1207 — as in, American Airlines flight 1207 from Dallas to Tucson.
At about 9 p.m. Monday, Barnes walked through the Tucson airport after a 2 1/2-hour flight from Dallas. It was the best evidence that Barnes has higher goals than being a middle-of-the-pack Top 25 team.
On Monday, her team's day off — less than 24 hours after beating Cal at McKale Center — Barnes flew to Texas for recruiting purposes. How many college basketball coaches will do that in the dog days of February?
Barnes, the mother of two young children, was surely exhausted. She pushed on anyway, immediately beginning prep for a weekend homestand against No. 4 Utah and No. 21 Colorado.
Barnes appropriately calls her first five seasons as Arizona "the climb,'' an inspiring period in which the Wildcats went from 6-24 to the 2021 national championship game. A few days ago, I asked Barnes if she finds it more difficult to rebuild a program or to move to a higher level?
She voted for the higher level, hence her "day off'' recruiting journey to Texas.
"We're good, but there's another step,'' she said. "It's hard to stay good and to sustain success.''
Unless you're Stanford, UConn or South Carolina, nobody in women's college basketball has "arrived.'' You might think the Wildcats are at some stage of "arrival'' — they do lead the Pac-12 in attendance again with 7,637 per game, and the UA roster includes three McDonald's All-Americans, unprecedented in UA women's basketball history.
But Barnes said she is determined to get to the next level. Proof? Her Top 10 recruiting Class of 2023 includes the nation's Nos. 8, 14 and 21 prospects, which is UConn-level recruiting.
Based on those recruiting numbers, it's possible Arizona will open the 2023-24 season with four McDonald's All-Americans on its roster, seemingly bound for another Final Four.
But the game has changed. McDonald's All-Americans don't ensure immediate success. The transfer portal has led to a change seeking more experienced additions. There's much more to winning a Pac-12 championship and getting a high seed in the NCAA Tournament than filling your roster with hot-shot freshmen.
Arizona's freshmen McDonald's All-Americans, guard Paris Clark and center Maya Nnaji, have not started a game. Neither averages more than 4.7 points per game nor plays more than 23 minutes per game. Here's how the 24 McDonald's All-Americans, Class of 2022, have fared this season:
• 9 of 24 are averaging double figures.
• 4 of 24 have started every game.
• 10 of 24 average less than six points.
Those who have started every game are UCLA guard Kiki Rice, Oregon guard Chance Gray, LSU guard Flau'Jae Johnson and Florida State guard Ta'Niya Latson. The other 20 are role players.
From the McDonald's group, Stanford signed the nation's No. 1 recruit, center Lauren Betts. She averages eight minutes per game. The Cardinal also signed the No. 20 overall recruit, guard Indya Nivar. She averages 12 minutes.
Barnes knows the numbers and the limited impact of freshmen, no matter how highly ranked, but she also knows that living in the transfer portal isn't sustainable.
"It's hard to stay good and chase success with constant turnover,'' said Barnes, who indicated her goal is to develop her elite freshmen over four years, one class after another, and fill in with a transfer or two when necessary.
That was Lute Olson's forever-successful formula. Now, all these years later, Barnes is working the same system. The key word here? Working. Barnes trip to Texas last week shows that she understands the job is never done.
Former UA player Kirsten Smith waves to the crowd as she’s introduced as the latest Wildcat to have her name elevated into the Ring of Honor at McKale Center Friday.
Smith's long road to McKale's Ring of Honor
In the Southern California CIF basketball playoffs of 1982, Kirsten Smith and Charli Turner of Bishop Alemany did so well — second place in the state — that recruiters noticed.
Turner accepted a scholarship to Stanford. Now known as Charli Turner Thorne, she went on to win 488 games in 25 years as ASU's head coach.
Stanford didn't recruit Smith, but her father phoned Arizona coach Judy LeWinter and told her all about his daughter, a 5-foot-4 point guard driven to succeed. The Smith's paid for their own recruiting trip to Tucson and subsequently accepted a scholarship.
By the time Kirsten left Arizona in 1986, she was the UA's career scoring leader; she then spent three years as a graduate assistant coach before marrying her college sweetheart, Daniel Cambron, and moving to Boise, Idaho, their home for more than 30 years.
Last fall, Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke phoned Kirsten and told her that while researching the record books, it had been discovered that she qualified to be in McKale Center's Ring of Honor. The memories flooded back.
"I remember when I scored 1,000 points, (associate athletic director) Rocky LaRose gave me 1,000 pieces of bubble gum as a present,'' Smith said Friday at McKale.
She holds the school record for making 39 consecutive foul shots, and also for shooting .893 percent from the foul line in a season (100-for-112). As she watched Arizona beat Utah on Friday, she saw two Wildcats chasing her free throw records. UA guards Madi Conner and Helena Pueyo are a combined 60-for-64 from the foul line this season, or .938 percent.
"I hope they break it,'' said Smith with a half-smile.
Smith's popularity became clear Friday; nine UA teammates from 1983 through 1986 attended her Ring of Honor ceremony. Before she returns to Boise, she and Dan will have dinner Monday with her old Bishop Alemany teammate, Charli, and her husband.
Talk about coming full circle.
Cochise College basketball coach Jerry Carrillo, shown during a game against Pima Community College on Dec. 16, 2005, is now in his 29th season at Cochise. His 2022-23 team has a chance to become the first team to go undefeated in ACCAC play since Chuck Lavetter’s Eastern Arizona College unit did it in 1993-94.
SHORT STUFF I
UA lineman-turned-ref of a different football era; Tucson loses local golf legend
• I was sitting in the bleachers at a Rincon/University High School playoff basketball game last week when a tall, imposing figure walked up the steps. A friend next to me said "that guy must be somebody important.''
It was Rich Hall, a starting Arizona lineman, 1973-75, who played for coach Jim Young's 8-3, 9-2 and 9-2 teams. Hall made a career not out of playing football, but officiating it. After refereeing Tucson prep football in the '70s and '80s, Hall went on to be an NFL umpire for 18 years, working 12 playoff games. At 68, Hall retired before the 2022 season.
"I had a wonderful career, working the Big Sky and WAC conferences and NFL-Europe before going full-time to the NFL,'' said Hall, who was recruited to Tucson from Antioch, California 50 years ago. I asked him about the controversial fourth-quarter pass interference call that helped to decide Kansas City's victory in last week's Super Bowl. He laughed. "Not my problem,'' he said. ...
• Sad news: Terry Wilks, one of the most prominent golf pros in Tucson history, died last week. He was 71. Wllks was the first club pro at Fred Enke Golf Course when it opened in 1984 and stayed there for a decade. He then became the head pro at the Randolph Golf Complex for seven years before moving to another head pro position at the Davis-Monthan Golf Course, which is now closed.
Wilks was part of the glory days of local club pros in Tucson, joining those like Homero Blancas, Willie Kane, Trini Alvarez, Fred Marti. Those days are gone. Now most clubs don't have a pro running the operation, but allow independent contractors to give lessons on a contract basis. ...
• Salpointe Catholic and UA alumnus Jerry Carrillo had coached Cochise College to an ACCAC record of 19-0 after a win Saturday against Chandler-Gilbert Community College. Two more games await. The last ACCAC men's team to have a perfect regular season was Tucson native Chuck LaVetter's 1993-94 season as head coach at Eastern Arizona College. LaVetter's club went 32-0 that season before losing in the NJCAA finals. "This is my 29th year here,'' said Carrillo, who has won 624 games at Cochise. "It never gets any easier but this has been a special year so far.''
Shelley Duncan, a native Tucsonan and former MLB player and current coach, addresses the estimated 600 youth players at his Jan. 2017 baseball clinic.
SHORT STUFF II
Ex-UA sluggers take over minor-league teams; Predictably tough local prep hoops postseason road just that
• When the Triple-A baseball season opens this spring, two prominent ex-Wildcat baseball players will be rivals in the International League. The Buffalo Bison (a Blue Jays affiliate) last week hired Casey Candaele to be their manager; Candaele was a key figure on Arizona's 1980 NCAA championship team. He will find opposition in the league from new Scranton-Wilkes Barre (a Yankees' affiliate) manager Shelley Duncan, Arizona's career home run leader from Canyon del Oro High School.
What's more, former Palo Verde High, Pima College and UA third baseman Jack Howell last week was hired to manage the Los Angeles Angels' Single-A affiliate — the Tri-City Dust Devils — of the Northwest League. Combined, Candaele, Duncan and Howell played in 2,025 MLB games. ...
• Tucson has just five of the 64 remaining teams in the state basketball playoffs as boys and girls teams in classes 4A, 5A, 6A and the Open Division begin "Elite Eight'' play this week.
The Game of the Week could be Tuesday's rematch between Steve Botkin's 24-6 Sahuaro girls team and Izzy Galindo's 21-7 Pueblo club. Pueblo swept two games against Sahuaro in the regular season. The only local boys team to advance is that of Cienega High's first-year coach Jason Apodaca, 21-7, who plays at No. 1 seed Campo Verde in 5A on Wednesday. ...
• Kevin Sumlin has agreed to be the tight ends coach and co-offensive coordinator for the Maryland Terrapins. The Terps will pay Sumlin $450,000 a year, which might seem like small change after his combined payouts from Arizona and Texas A&M exceeded $15 million. Sumlin is 58. His coaching career peaked in 2012 when he coached A&M to an 11-2 record. Let’s hope Sumlin finds the energy that was missing during his Tucson days.
Former UA golfer-turned-commentator Jerry Foltz (left, interviewing former professional baseball player John Smoltz during the 2019 LPGA Tournament of Champions) will be back in Tucson next month when the controversial LIV Golf circuit visits the Gallery Golf Club in Marana. Foltz left his longtime gig with Golf Channel for LIV, calling the move both “exciting” and “frightening.”
MY TWO CENTS
Former UA golfer Foltz's move from Golf Channel penthouse to upstart LIV a curious one
Jerry Foltz was a 1984 All-Pac-10 golfer at Arizona who went on to become one of Golf Channel's leading on-course commentators from 1995-2022.
But Foltz resigned from Golf Channel last year to become the LIV golf tour's lead analyst. He will be at the Gallery Golf Club in Marana on March 17-19 for the LIV tour's first event in Arizona.
In an interview with the golf-centric Living It Up podcast last week, Foltz said it was an "agonizing decision'' to leave the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour for the heavily-criticized but money-friendly LIV organization.
"It was exciting and it was frightening,'' said Foltz, 61. "I feel comfortable with my decision on the moral ground. We're still viewed as a disruptive force in the game, but in time LIV will be viewed as something that is very good for golf.''
Or probably not.
Foltz also said "we have almost all the great personalities in the game.''
Whoa. Most of LIV's few top names are a collection of sourpusses: Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau, Sergio Garcia, Phil Mickelson and Ian Poulter, many of them over-the-hill golfers whose best days are long gone.
Said Foltz: "Golf on TV has gotten stagnant through the years; it's boring to watch on TV. We're trying to present it in a much more exciting format.''
Good luck with that. The LIV tour has a confusing, four-man team format, with more confusing shotgun starts and lacks relevance, legacy, rising stars and is played on mundane courses that aren't named Pebble Beach, Augusta National, St. Andrews, Bethpage or TPC Sawgrass.
Foltz jumped from the winning team to the controversial, obscure, Saudi Arabian-backed money grab that has little or no soul or charisma.
His return to Tucson next month will probably be met with disinterest and unimaginably small crowds at Dove Mountain.
UA film student Zoe Lambert made a documentary about UA women's basketball coach Adia Barnes after the team won the WNIT tournament in 2019.
Guard forward Jade Loville, left, and forward Cate Reese discuss Arizona's upcoming matchups with Utah and Colorado, senior day festivities at McKale Center and more during a scheduled session with local media Feb. 15 at McKale Center. Video by Aidan Wohl, Special to the Arizona Daily Star
