The Star's longtime columnist on the Arizona men's and women's basketball NCAA Tournament double early Saturday, UA football's connection with past (and local high schools) growing under Brent Brennan, Tucsonans' efforts to make Major League Baseball rosters and more.
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Greg Hansen is the longtime sports columnist for the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson.com
Who's Tommy Lloyd gonna call? Jaden Bradley and KJ Lewis help Cats dispel some ghosts of brackets past
The old familiar feelings came flooding back Saturday morning. Paranoia. Insecurity. It was like a "Seinfeld" episode with George Costanza proclaiming: “I’m totally inadequate, completely insecure.’’
Such is the annual Madness for Arizona and its fans. No pain, no gain.
Arizona’s 78-68 victory over Dayton ended with a stress-relieving dose of “serenity now." We’ve been there before, right? Remember the ‘97 great escape over South Alabama, the numbing rally to beat UC-Santa Barbara in ‘02, and the thank–God-for-Bennedict Mathurin overtime triumph over TCU in ‘22?
Arizona guard KJ Lewis (5) tries to bounce the ball off Dayton forward DaRon Holmes II (15) while falling out of bounds in the first half of Saturday’s second-round game.
This time the Ghostbusters rescued the Wildcats and made those haunting NCAA exit memories of Princeton, Santa Clara and Buffalo go poof.
The Ghostbusters? In this case it wasn’t Bill Murray and Dan Akryoyd, it was an off-the-bench rescue from Jaden Bradley and KJ Lewis, who had the game’s only statistics that mattered Saturday — a combined 19 points, seven rebounds, four steals and five blocks.
The Ghosbusters idea came from Tommy Lloyd, a master chess move, one of the best of his young coaching career. Lloyd subbed out 7-footer Oumar Ballo, a man who had posted 13 double-doubles in his last 14 games, subbing in the two troublemaking guards.
That strategy stopped Dayton’s comeback and sent the Flyers out the exit door.
“At times it felt like we were down 20 when Dayton was making its run,’’ UA assistant coach Jack Murphy said in a postgame radio interview. Yet the Flyers never got closer than three. The Ghostbusters were as effective as the guy from Terminix, exterminating an infestation of doom and gloom
Year by year, you can almost always point to softness when Arizona has been eliminated prematurely from the NCAA Tournament. It is usually accompanied by poor shooting from Wildcat guards, like Kerr Kriisa shooting 1 for 7 in an elimination game to Princeton, Allonzo Trier going 4 for 15 against Buffalo and Salim Stoudamire inexplicably going 2-for-13 against Illinois.
There was no backup plan. No Ghostbusters in reserve.
“I can’t say enough about Jaden, 'Mr. Cool, Calm and Collected,' " Murphy said. “We knew we could not be soft.’’
Soft gets you a ticket home in March. Bradley and Lewis were a tag-team of toughness on Saturday.
To beat either Clemson or Baylor in Thursday’s Sweet 16 in Los Angeles, Arizona will again have to play with a mean streak. When the Wildcats lost to substandard Oregon State and Stanford teams in January, they were soft, almost inviting the Beavers and Cardinal to shoot open 3-pointers.
Stanford shot 16 for 25 from 3. Oregon State drilled 12 of 20.
That’s what made the Dayton game so fragile. The Flyers ranked No. 3 nationally, shooting 41% from 3-point distance. They had made 10 or more 3s in 18 games, almost double Arizona’s total of 10.
But on Saturday, Arizona limited Dayton to seven 3s, shooting just 29%. The game was played on Arizona's terms.
On Saturday, serenity reigned.
Arizona head coach Adia Barnes talks with UA forward Breya Cunningham, right, in the first half of the Wildcats’ NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament first-round matchup with Syracuse Saturday in Storrs, Connecticut.
Adia Barnes did do more with less; can the Wildcats turn that into doing more with more?
The legacy of Arizona’s 2023-24 women’s basketball team might be "What Might Have Been." Or will it be, "Doing More With Less."
The Wildcats had what was considered by some to be the No. 1 recruiting class of 2023 — a unit that could have formed a Final Four contender alongside a five-some of previous former Top 100 recruits in Maya Nnaji, Madison Conner, Paris Clark, Lauren Ware and Aaronette Vonleh.
But after Adia Barnes’ club ran out of fuel after 38 winning minutes Saturday, losing 74-69 to Syracuse in a first-round game in Connecticut, the final numbers betrayed Barnes’ elite recruiting since that 2021 Final Four.
Arizona went 2-10 against Top 10 teams.
Arizona finished 18-16, its fewest victories and most losses since 2018, when Barnes was in the early stages of her massive reconstruction project at McKale Center.
Barnes gets the benefit of the doubt. She has gone 54-33 in the wickedly difficult Pac-12 the last five seasons. She has won an NCAA Tournament game all four times Arizona qualified for the field. But this was supposed to be a year Arizona challenged Top 25 teams Stanford, USC, UCLA, Utah and Colorado at the top of the Pac-12.
It didn’t happen because of a mass exodus of talent. Conner averaged 19.3 at TCU, Ware averaged 9.1 at Texas A&M, Clark averaged 10.1 at Virginia and Vonleh, an All-Pac-12 selection, averaged 14.2 at Colorado; Nnaji left the UA program in December.
Put those five with the eight-woman roster that Barnes somehow coached into the NCAA Tournament and it’s not a stretch to think the Wildcats would be challenging Iowa, USC and South Carolina in the chase for a national championship.
So what happens now?
If Barnes can create some stability in a college basketball world of instability, Arizona seems to have the resources to return to the Top 25. She is a superior recruiter and, as we witnessed this year, a master at doing more with less.
Now the challenge is to do more with more.
Competition will be greatly diminished in the Big 12 next season; only one returning Big 12 team, Baylor, was ranked in the AP’s final Top 25 poll.
Arizona led the Pac-12 in attendance again, 7,333 per game. Interest hasn't waned, and the foundation has been laid. Now it’s up to Barnes to make McKale Center the place her elite recruits make home for more than just a year or two.
Mica Mountain's Jimmy Leon (1) gets held just a bit as he tries to spin his way toward Northwest Christian's Ben Lueders (20) in a state 4A playoff quarterfinal game at Mica Mountain High School on Nov. 18, 2023.
Short stuff: Brennan prioritizing local high schools, Flannigan-Fowles (Tucson HS, UA) re-ups with 49ers; rightful honor for UA running legend Skieresz Wilson
• UA football coach Brent Brennan has wisely addressed local recruiting before spring practice starts next week. He spent time on campus with Mica Mountain High School defensive end Jimmy Leon last week.
Leon was more productive than Salpointe Catholic’s high-profile defensive ends Elijah Rushing (Oregon) and Keona Willhite (Nebraska) last season. Leon had 17 sacks and 72 tackles for Mica Mountain; Rushing (13 sacks, 55 tackles) and Willhite (eight sacks, 61 tackles) couldn’t match that. What’s more, Leon played full time on offense as a tight end, scoring six touchdowns.
Salpointe Catholic's Roman Fina (70) and Keona Wilhite (50) support each other just after a Salpointe loss in their State 6A playoff game at Salpointe Catholic High School on Nov. 24, 2023.
Brennan also hosted a recent visit from Salpointe offensive lineman Roman Fina, a legacy recruit, son of Arizona’s 1991 All-Pac-10 tackle John Fina, a 12-year NFL offensive lineman. When Fina’s oldest son, Bruno, was a top prospect out of Salpointe in 2018, the UA was tardy recruiting the Salpointe tackle, not responding until USC and UCLA had offered Fina a scholarship. Fina completed his UCLA career as a starting left tackle last fall. ...
San Francisco 49ers linebacker Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles (45) reacts after a stop against the Los Angeles Rams on Jan. 7 in Santa Clara, California.
• Former UA and Tucson High football player Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles signed a new contract with the San Francisco 49ers last week. The 27-year-old linebacker/special teams player agreed to a $1.77 million deal for 2024. He was signed as a free agent by the 49ers in 2019 and has been on the 49ers roster since. ...
• Amy Skieresz Wilson is the greatest women’s distance runner in UA history and perhaps the Pac-12. She won seven NCAA championships for the Wildcats from 1996-98 before retiring from running, eschewing a shot at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
The 10-time All-American last week was selected to the USA Track and Field Coaches Hall of Fame and will be inducted before the NCAA championships June 2 in Eugene, Oregon.
After three years on coach Fred Harvey’s UA staff, 2004-07, Amy married former Arkansas All-American distance runner Ryan Wilson, a wealth management executive in Palm Springs, California. They have three teenage children.
Arizona runner Amy Skieresz Wilson set an NCAA and UA record in the 5K in 1998. She won seven national championships.
She is part of a star-studded 2024 Hall of Fame class with ex-Oregon coach Bill Dellinger and USA Olympic star Marty Liquori. ...
• Saddened by the news that Jackie Sorich, 86, died last week in Oro Valley. In 1957, she met and married Ted Sorich, one of the leading names in Tucson prep sports history. It was a year before Ted, an NAU quarterback from Bisbee, was the MVP of the NAIA football national championship game.
Ted and Jackie moved to Tucson after he graduated from NAU, where he became the football coach at Flowing Wells High School and the Southern Arizona representative for the Arizona Interscholastic Association. Ted was the athletic director during the Flowing Wells glory days of the ’60s and ’70s when the Cabs won state titles in football, basketball and baseball. Jackie was a fitness enthusiast, a regular at the Tucson Racquet Club and the Sun City Oro Valley Fitness Center. ...
• In the UA-ASU baseball series last week at Hi Corbett Field, the Sun Devils deployed freshman pitcher Wyatt Halvorson, who was the state’s pitcher of the year last season at Scottsdale Chaparral High School. Ring a bell? Wyatt is the son of Canyon del Oro's 1995 all-state catcher Greg Halvorson, who was a Sun Devil starter from 1996-98 and a roommate of current ASU head coach Willie Bloomquist. Greg’s youngest son, Parker, a junior at Chaparral, is considered one of the top five or 10 hitting prospects in Arizona in the Class of 2025. His dad was not only a 1998 draftee of the New York Mets, but the Arizona Daily Star’s 1995 Tucson prep basketball player of the year, averaging 23 points and 11 rebounds at CDO. ...
• Former Cienega High second baseman Nick Gonzales, the No. 1 draft pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2020, will not open the season with the Pirates this week. He was assigned to Triple-A Indianapolis last week after playing 35 games and hitting .209 for Pittsburgh last season.
Also assigned to Triple-A were former Sahuaro High and UA catcher Cesar Salazar, who played 13 games for Houston last season; and ex-Salpointe catcher Donny Sands, who left the Detroit Tigers roster last week to report to Triple-A Toledo. Sands made his MLB debut for Philadelphia in 2020. Ex-Catalina Foothills outfielder Luis Gonzalez, who played six games for the New York Yankees in spring training, is expected to open the season at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre under manager Shelley Duncan, Tucson’s career leader in high school home runs at CDO (35) and in career home runs at Arizona (55). ...
• It was quite a week for new UA athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois. She was named one of four finalists for the nation’s AD of the Year by Sports Business Journal. The finalists include Texas’ Chris Del Conte, Virginia’s Carla Williams and Nebraska’s Trev Alberts, now at Texas A&M. Last year’s winner was J.D. Wicker of San Diego State. Reed-Francois and the finalists will be honored May 22 in New York City at Sports Business Journal’s annual Sports Business Awards. Later in the week, Reed-Francois flew to Salt Lake City to take in the Arizona-Long Beach State NCAA Tournament men's opener.
Tedy Bruschi talks about how his love for the game began at a young age during the 2023 Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl kickoff luncheon in October 2023 inside the Tucson Convention Center.
My two cents: UA football's reconnection with past in healthy place
The UA football program has chopped $163,962 from its 2024-25 fiscal year budget by not retaining Arizona College Football Hall of Famer Tedy Bruschi on the staff. Bruschi was hired to be Jedd Fisch’s special advisor from 2021-23 and spent time on campus at the UA spring football games of 2021, 2022 and 2023.
That connection to Bruschi was of great importance as Fisch began his Arizona career with no UA ties and a reputation as, at the time, a “bad hire." It gave him a cushion as he got started. Its value was worth the half-million dollars paid to Bruschi, building a bridge to the past that had decayed under Rich Rodriguez and Kevin Sumlin.
Now, thanks in part to Fisch and his relationships with Bruschi and Rob Gronkowski, among others, Arizona’s football staff is loaded with ex-Wildcat “name’" players Chuck Cecil, Ricky Hunley, Brandon Sanders, Syndric Steptoe and Bobby Wade, along with ex-UA coaches Dino Babers and Duane Akina.
The connection to the past continues. Last week, standout UA quarterback Tom Tunnicliffe, 1980-83, owner of a real estate firm in Los Angeles, returned to campus and went to dinner with Brennan, Cecil, Hunley and Akina, among others on the football staff. Just like old times, huh?
After a late push in the second half to solidify their lead, Arizona defeated Dayton, 78-68, to advance to the Sweet Sixteen. (March Madness YouTube)
Aldi is opening its first Tucson grocery store
