Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Better UA prospects than Azuolas Tubelis have struggled early in NBA

The Star's longtime columnist on: The difficult path to playing time for NBA rookies ... Jason Hisey's coaching chops ... the Tucson pipeline to Emporia, Kansas ... a thumbs-down for Scottsdale in late May ... Cassidy Morrow's ongoing productivity ... and more.

Tubelis wants to play right away in NBA? Good luck with that

Last week at the NBA Draft Combine in Chicago, Azuolas Tubelis told the Star’s Bruce Pascoe, “I don’t want to sit on the bench.’’

That’s not reality.

For better or worse, a year or two of bench-sitting has been the route taken by most of Arizona’s leading NBA Draft picks. For example:

• NBA rookie Luke Walton, blessed with an incredible basketball IQ, started just two games, averaged 10 minutes and scored 2.4 points per game.
• 2015 lottery pick Stanley Johnson started six games and averaged 23 minutes as a rookie.
• 2014 lottery pick Aaron Gordon was exiled to the bench as an NBA rookie, starting eight games, averaging 17 minutes and 5.2 points.

Earning playing time in the NBA is so difficult as a younger player that UA forward Derrick Williams, the No. 2 overall draft pick in 2011, averaged just 21.5 minutes with 15 starts as a rookie. Jerryd Bayless, a lottery pick in 2008, did not start a game his rookie season and averaged 12 minutes.

Bison Dele, who might’ve had as much talent as any UA basketball player ever, started just two NBA games as a rookie, averaging 19 minutes.

Said Tubelis: “I want to be a role player, not the 10 to 11 player who sits on the bench.’’

Again, that’s a stretch.

Based on the NBA rookie seasons of Arizona’s leading draft picks of the last 40 years, only one ex-Wildcat, Andre Iguodala, started every game. Damon Stoudamire and Deandre Ayton started 70, Sean Elliott 69, Lauri Markkanen 68 and Mike Bibby 50. Even UA first-round picks Chris Mills, Richard Jefferson and Khalid Reeves started 18 games or fewer as a rookie.

It doesn’t mean an unproductive, bench-sitting rookie season leads to a short career, exiled to garbage time.

Gordon, for example, the No. 4 overall pick in 2015, was considered something of a bust as an Orlando Magic rookie. He didn’t get off the bench at all in 35 games, was considered a risk on offense and had no ball-handling skills. Remember: He shot 42% from the foul line in his one Arizona season.

It seems incredulous now, but in the 2014 draft, Gordon was selected 37 spots ahead of Denver’s all-world center, Nikola Jokic, the Joker.

But today, Gordon is a $19-million-a-year, defense-first forward for the Denver Nuggets who has started his last 388 NBA regular-season games. Even though he rarely gets more than 10 “touches’’ per game — getting the ball in a scoring situation — Gordon will likely become the eighth ex-Wildcat to score 10,000 regular-season points in the NBA. The list:

• Jason Terry, 18,881
• Jefferson, 14,904
• Bibby, 14,698
• Iguodala, 13,968
• Stoudamire, 11,763
• Gilbert Arenas, 11,402
• Elliott, 10,554
• Gordon, 7,996

This isn’t to suggest that Gordon and Tubelis have similar upsides; they are completely different players. But if the NBA was so wrong on Jokic in the 2014 draft, it’s possible the early 2023 draft projections on Tubelis are skewed as well. Tubelis was a much better college player than Gordon.

So check back in 2028.

CDO's Hisey climbs impressive list

If there’s one thing that defines the baseball career of Jason Hisey, it’s perseverance.

After Hisey’s Canyon del Oro High School baseball team won a second consecutive state championship last week, it gave Hisey 579 career coaching victories, including those at Catalina Foothills (256 wins), Pima College (196), Ironwood Ridge (38) and CDO (89) from 1995-2023.

No other man coaching Tucson baseball teams except Arizona’s Jerry Kindall (860) and Frank Sancet (831) has won more games locally.

You can trace much of Hisey’s success to his stick-with-it desire.

After being recruited from Klamath Falls, Oregon, Hisey played on UA teams that included future MLB players Scott Erickson, Willie Morales, J.T. Snow, George Arias and Lance Dickson. But Hisey was twice set back by arm injuries at Arizona, which continued to plague him when he played in the St. Louis Cardinals minor-league system and cut his pro career short.

After his pitching days, Hisey returned to UA and earned a master's degree with a 4.0 GPA. He then became the first baseball coach at the new Catalina Foothills High School and went 256-78, reaching state championship games in 2002, 2004 and 2005.

He subsequently became the head coach at Pima College and Ironwood Ridge before taking over the history-blessed CDO baseball team, one that coaches Roger Werbylo, Phil Wright, Kent Winslow, Len Anderson and Keith Francis had coached to state championships.

Talk about a tough act to follow.

Finally, 17 years after his third state-title runner-up finish at Foothills, Hisey’s CDO team broke through and won it all last year. They repeated last week.

And it’s not as though Hisey has nothing else on his plate. He is the president of The Hisey Group, a full-service development and consulting services corporation that includes property management, consulting and brokerage.

It’s a job well done.

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Tucson group re-establishes Alday’s baseball connection

After Tucson High quarterback Rich Alday led the Badgers to the 1965 state championship, he concentrated on baseball. He went to Emporia State University in Kansas and created a pipeline of Southern Arizona baseball players that, over several decades, included about 50 Tucsonans.

In 1978, Emporia State won the NAIA national championship behind Tucson ballplayers Pete Villaescusa, Darrell Alexander, Rick Barnes, Tommy Riesgo, Fred Riesgo and Jeff Stanley.

Alday’s boyhood baseball rival, Dave Bingham of Palo Verde High School, subsequently became Emporia State’s head baseball coach. Alday died in 2021 after coaching Pima College to 518 baseball victories, among other coaching jobs.

Now Bingham, Villaescusa and Fred Riesgo, among others, have created the Rich Alday Memorial Scholarship Fund at Emporia State, hoping to fund a baseball scholarship for a Tucson player every year. They call it the “Cactus Connection.’’

To help raise money for the Tucson-to-Emporia State endeavor, the Cactus Connection Golf Tournament will be held June 17 at Randolph North Golf Course at 7:30 a.m. Proceeds will go to the Alday Scholarship Fund. For information, contact Bingham at 402-540-6324.

Scottsdale is not a prime spot in May

The Pac-12 once had a tentative plan to stage the league’s postseason baseball tournament at Salt Lake City’s Triple-A stadium. It was a wonderful idea. The weather would be spring-like, Salt Lake City had enough baseball fields to allow teams to warm up appropriately and it was a central location for the Pac-12 schools.

That plan fell through, and the tournament, which begins its second year Tuesday, is held at Scottsdale Stadium. The facilities are second to none, but the unforgiving heat makes it a negative to the players and what few fans are willing to sit through 100-degree baseball.

Last year, 11 of the 14 games began when it was 90 degrees or more. And college baseball isn’t a quick affair. The 14 games played averaged 3 hours and 41 minutes. One game went 5:44. Another 4:32, and another 4:24.

The Pac-12 would be wise to follow the NCAA men’s and women’s golf tournaments, which have staged their national championships at Scottsdale’s Grayhawk Golf Course the last two years. It has been wall-to-wall heat. It was 91 degrees when Laura Ianello’s Arizona women’s golf team teed off at Round 2 at Grayhawk late Saturday morning.

Fortunately, this is the last year of the NCAA golf championships in Scottsdale. Next year they’ll move to San Diego for three seasons. What an overdue idea.

Short stuff: Magnificent Morrow, unparalleled Geist, rising Flowers

Red Morrow, a longtime TUSD educator, coached Rincon High School to the 2002 boys golf state championship, fueled by senior Michael Thompson, who has gone on to win two PGA Tour events and be the runner-up in the 2007 U.S. Amateur.

But now Morrow has probably seen a more compelling performance — and it’s from his daughter, Cassidy Morrow. A hard-hitting infielder, Cassidy has helped lead Eastern Arizona College to the NJCAA Softball World Series. Last week she was selected to the ACCAC All-Region team by hitting an impressive .477 with 16 home runs and 67 RBIs. She is still undecided on where to play next year, sorting through scholarship offers.

EAC will open the NCJAA World Series Tuesday in Oxford, Alabama, against Northwest Florida State College. ...

• • • 

... Arizona sixth-year senior Jordan Geist, who won the Pac-12 shot put and hammer throw championships last week, giving him six Pac-12 titles in his career, subsequently became the only person in league history to be named the Field Athlete of the Year three times, 2019, 2021 and 2023. And that’s in a league whose history is stocked with Olympians.

The only Track Athlete of the Year to win the award three times is also from Arizona. That was distance runner Robert Cheseret, who was so honored in 2004, 2005 and 2006. ...

• • • 

... The next time a Pac-12 softball team has an opening for a head coach, it probably won’t take long for it to take a long look at Loyola Marymount coach Tairia Mims Flowers, a standout at Salpointe Catholic in 1998 who became an All-American at UCLA and played on Mike Candrea’s 2004 Olympic gold-medal team

Flowers coached LMU to the ongoing NCAA Regionals; the Lions lost 3-2 on Friday to Florida. Mims was named the West Coast Conference Coach of the Year last week, her second straight award. She previously won 254 games as head coach at Cal State Northridge.

My two cents: Recruit Murauskas looks like a shooting star

If you’ve got two minutes, I recommend watching the highlight video of 6-foot 8-inch Lithuanian shooting wing Paulius Murauskas, who reportedly has committed to play basketball for Tommy Lloyd at Arizona.

Murauskas buries eight 3-pointers in the brief video, many creating his own shot, exhibiting terrific ball-handling skills. Unless I’m blind, Murauskas is the equivalent of a five-star American prospect.

European basketball scout Ignacio Rissotto describes Murauskas as a player whose “optimal size for the position allows him to create mismatches against opponents, as he’s too fluid with the ball in his hands for opposing big men, and too strong and physically imposing for opposing guards and wings.’’

You can find the video from the FIBA U18 European Championships online at “Ljubljana Adidas NET Murauskas.’’ You will be impressed.