The Star's longtime columnist on free-agent DB coach Duane Akina, Wildcats who've scored 40-plus in the NBA and revelations from Chip Hale's MLB Network appearance.
The case for Duane Akina as Arizona's CB coach
Arizona football coach Jedd Fisch is in North Carolina this weekend for the annual American Football Coaches Association convention, something of a calm before the 24/7 football storm that will soon consume him and every Power Five head football coach.
Upon his return to Tucson, Fisch will have a chance to make a personnel acquisition every bit as important as any four-star recruit or transfer-portal addition. It will be his opportunity to hire the man I believe to be the nation’s most accomplished defensive backs coach of the last 35 years, Duane Akina.
The only problem is that Akina has never met Fisch.
Let me offer an introduction: Akina coached the three most high-profile defensive backs in UA history: Chuck Cecil, Darryll Lewis and Chris McAlister, all consensus All-Americans. In addition to Lewis, Akina further coached two more Jim Thorpe Award winners during his 15-year stint at Texas: Michael Huff and Aaron Ross (Cecil and McAlister were finalists).
Akina spent the last nine years on David Shaw’s staff at Stanford, coaching in the 2013, 2014 and 2016 Rose Bowls, which added to his 2005 and 2006 Rose Bowls on Mack Brown’s staff at Texas, as well as the 2010 BCS title game.
In my opinion, Akina is without rival as the top football assistant coach in UA history, 1987-2000, a time in which he served as both Arizona’s offensive and defensive coordinators.
I talked to Akina, 66, last week. Although he declined to speak on the record, he indicated he has the energy and desire to continue his coaching career. He was not among those retained by new Stanford coach Troy Taylor, who allowed his new defensive coordinator, Bobby April III – son of 1980s Arizona assistant coach Bobby April Jr. – to assemble a defensive staff.
Neither Taylor nor April took the time to interview Akina. Big miss.
Akina has a Dick Tomey-type demeanor. He helped Rich Ellerson and Larry MacDuff operate Arizona’s Desert Swarm defenses. He is a teacher and mentor like few in the game. His recruiting contacts in California, Texas and the Polynesian football community are gold.
All five of Duane and Donna Akina’s children were born in Tucson. He is a humble man who would surely agree to replace departed Arizona cornerbacks coach DeWayne Walker without being given a title or boasting about the time in the 1990s when both Bill Belichick and Nick Saban tried to hire him.
Akina chose to stay at Arizona until Tomey and the UA parted ways.
If there is ever a “good fit’’ for a coaching position at Arizona, it would be Duane Akina.
Utah’s Lauri Markkanen goes up for a shot as Houston’s Usman Garuba defends during the second half of the Jazz’s 131-114 victory on Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023.
Lauri Markkanen moves into exclusive company
My lasting memory of Arizona’s 2017 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year Lauri Markkanen is not of the night he scored 29 against UCLA at the Pac-12 Tournament, or of the afternoon he scored 30 to beat Arizona State at McKale Center.
Instead, it was his final UA game, a crushing 73-71 Sweet 16 loss to a 24-13 Xavier team, a game in which Markkanen scored just nine points and didn’t get off a shot in the final 6½ minutes.
A few days later, Markkanen and his father announced he would enter the NBA draft. On Thursday, Markkanen scored 49 points in the Utah Jazz’s victory over Houston. It made Markkanen the seventh ex-Wildcat to score at least 40 in an NBA game. Here are the ex-Wildcats who preceded him::
- 60, Gilbert Arenas, 2006. Arenas scored 40 or more points 30 times in his NBA days, including games of 54 and 51 for the Washington Wizards.
- 54, Damon Stoudamire, 2005. “Mighty Mouse’’ never had a game in which he scored in the 40s, but he had an unforgettable 54-point game against New Orleans in his 10th NBA season.
- 46, Jason Terry, 2002. In his third NBA season, Terry scored 46 against Atlanta. He scored 43 later that season.
- 44, Mike Bibby, 2006. It took Bibby 25 shots to get his 44 points against Philadelphia. Bibby scored 40 or more points fivetimes.
- 41, Sean Elliott, 1992. In the only 40-point game of his NBA career, Elliott had 41 against Dallas when he made 16 of 22 shots.
- 41, Aaron Gordon, 2017. Although he is known as a dunker more than a scorer – Gordon has never averaged more than 17.6 points per season – he scored 41 in his second game of the 2017-18 season, against Brooklyn.
Arizona coach Chip Hale talks to his Wildcats just before first pitch against Hermosillo at the Mexican Baseball Fiesta at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium on Oct. 6, 2022.
Hale’s MLB Network interview linked him to his past
Arizona baseball coach Chip Hale last week was featured on MLB Network’s “Hot Stove’’ program with Harold Reynolds and Matt Vasgersian.
There was some history involved. Both Hale and Vasgersian grew up in Moraga, California, and attended Campolindo High School. Both joked about a Russian Language course they took in high school. Hale did it to prepare for what he then thought would lead to enrollment at the Naval Academy. Vasgersian – the Tucson Toros’ 1996 play-by-play radio broadcaster – did so to help qualify him for a possible career in the state department.
Both chose baseball instead. Good move.
Hale spoke about how difficult the recruiting process in college baseball can be and how it has changed since he left Campolindo in 1983.
“We have a player who committed who hasn’t even played a high school game yet,’’ he said. “We’ll probably have known some of our (players) for eight years by the time they are finished with college baseball.’’
Hale, a standout high school quarterback, said he encourages high school prospects to play other sports. “It’ll make you a better athlete,’’ he said.
One example: Arizona Class of 2023 recruit Andrew Cain, a lefty hitter from Ironwood Ridge High School, is averaging 18.5 points per game for the Nighthawks, which is fifth among all Southern Arizona prep scorers this season
“Unfortunately,’’ Hale said, “because of NCAA rules, I can’t even go watch him play basketball.’’
Short stuff: Soaring Sahuaro, Dykes' baseball background, a smart NIL hire and more
• Coach Jim Henry’s 13-2 Sahuaro High Cougars are ranked No. 1 in 4A the AIA’s first boys prep basketball rankings of the season. The Cougars, led by senior Titus Palmer’s 16.6 points per game, play three games this week, including a home showdown at Sahuaro on Wednesday against the 13-5 Pueblo Warriors, who are led by junior forward Isaiah Hill and his 21.6 scoring average. Hill is the top college prospect in Tucson this season. Henry, who graduated from Sahuaro in 1996 and coached with Hall of Famer Dick McConnell from 2003 until his 2007 retirement, is in his 13th year at Sahuaro, with 231 victories. Henry has been a teacher at Gridley Middle School for 22 years.
• Former Arizona offensive coordinator Sonny Dykes, 2007-09, will coach TCU in the national championship game Monday night against Georgia, What most don’t know is that Dykes didn’t play college football. He was a baseball standout in his hometown of Lubbock, Texas. One day at a UA practice many years ago, I asked Dykes about his baseball days. He said he attended the Bo Belcher Baseball Camp in Chandler, Oklahoma, for three weeks every summer as a high school athlete. Small world. I also attended the Belcher Baseball camp as a teenager. A few days after our conversation, I brought an old picture of me and my Bo Belcher teammates and coaches to a UA practice. Dykes laughed and pointed to two of the coaches. “They coached me, too,’’ he said. From that day on, Dykes referred to me as “Bo.’’
• One of Arizona’s NIL-driven operations – Friends of Wilbur and Wilma – made a strong move last week when it appointed the UA’s 2002 All-Pac-12 special-teams player/linebacker Ray Wells to be its executive director. Wells, a graduate of the UA’s Eller College of Management, is a former NFL player and fundraiser in the Arizona athletic department who knows the turf. Friends of Wilbur and Wilma have represented, among others, UA football players Jayden de Laura and Jordan Morgan. Wells is also the president of the Marana Broncos youth football organization. Good hire.
• Barstool Sports CEO Erika Ayers last week said the Dec. 30 Arizona Bowl drew 133,000 “concentrated’’ viewers for the Wyoming-Ohio game and had almost 1 million overall viewers on its streaming platform. How good is that? ESPN announced that of the 40-ESPN televised bowl games, the average viewership was 2.33 million. By comparison, the lowest viewership for any ESPN bowl game was 822,000 for the Bahamas Bowl, UAB v. Miami (Ohio).
• Mountain View High School senior Aissa Silva last week announced she had graduated from MVHS in December and will enroll at the UA this week and play for Caitlin Lowe’s softball team this season. Silva thus becomes the first midseason early enrollee in the UA softball program and hopes to join a needy pitching staff that includes junior Devin Netz and freshman Sydney Somerndike. The last UA athlete to enroll and play at midseason was current Wildcat sophomore basketball guard Madi Conner. In her debut season at Arizona, 2020-21, the Phoenix Compass Prep product played in just six games and scored six points.
• Loren Woods, Arizona’s shot-blocking all-conference center on the school’s 2001 Final Four team, is in the movies. The 7-foot 1-inch Woods appears with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds in the new movie “Spirited,’’ in which’ Woods is outfitted as a Scrooge-type, deadly silent ghost. Reynolds told reporters that Woods “was just the sweetest guy. He was a delight." Woods, who played for the Miami Heat and Toronto Raptors during his six-year NBA career, earlier appeared on the HBO Los Angeles Lakers TV series "Winning Time."
• Arizona’s men’s and women’s basketball teams are both playing out-of-state games this upcoming week, one of just two such occasions this season. Thus, I recommend attending a Wednesday doubleheader at Pima College. At 5:30 p.m., Brian Peabody’s 13-1 men’s basketball team, averaging a nation-leading 109 points per game and ranked No. 14, plays ACCAC powerhouse Arizona Western. That game will be followed at 7:30 p.m. by Todd Holthaus’ No. 10-ranked Pima women’ basketball team, which meets the 10-3 AWC women’s club.
My two cents: A loss that will live in McKale Center infamy
Until Saturday, the biggest clunker I remember seeing at McKale Center featured Washington State and Arizona in early January 2014.
The Cougars lost 60-25, making just nine baskets in 60 minutes. But that was understandable. Arizona was 14-0 and ranked No. 1. The Cougars would finish 3-15 in the Pac-12, dead last, and fired coach Ken Bone.
If you flip the clunker role and make Arizona the clunkee, Saturday’s 74-61 loss to a 6-10 Washington State team was, in my memory, the worst performance by an Arizona home team since the Wildcats lost to Texas-Rio Grande Valley 65-60 in the third home game of Lute Olson’s Arizona career.
That was December 1983. Such is the magnitude of the UA’s crack-up Saturday.
That’s how good Arizona has been on its home floor. It has lost a score of painful, heartbreaking games the last 40 years, but rarely, if ever, one so stupefying.
Maybe there was another career-type smash-up mixed in there somewhere, but when you’re No. 5 nationally — when the Cougars haven’t beaten a higher ranked team since stunning No. 4 Oregon State in 1980 — it is a game that will live in McKale Center ignominy.
Two months ago, Washington State lost 70-59 at Prairie View A&M. Homecourt advantage? Nope. Only 863 attended. Banner year for A&M? Nope. It has gone 2-10 since.
That same WSU wasn’t overpowering Saturday. Arizona was underpowering, if that’s a word. The Wildcats spent the afternoon chunking free throws and 3-pointers to the point that the final three minutes were all but garbage time.
What now? It won’t take long to find out.
The Wildcats must still play four games against UCLA and USC and, perhaps more troubling, travel for a now-formidable return trip to WSU and Washington later this month.
“You’ve got to be sure you don’t let a day like this take your mojo,’’ Tommy Lloyd said after leaving the losers' locker room..
Mojo? On Saturday that was just another word for nothing left to lose.
No. 1 Georgia is a near two-touchdown favorite against No. 3 TCU in the college football national championship game, which kicks off Jan. 9 from SoFi Stadium
