Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Arizona AD Dave Heeke joins Wildcats at NCAA Tournament
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Arizona’s new athletic director, Dave Heeke, wasn’t due to punch in until April 1, but he couldn’t resist being part of the Wildcats’ basketball gathering in Salt Lake City.
His credential says “Ticket Staff.”
That’s ironic, because Heeke will essentially be the leader of Arizona’s ticket staff once he moves into his McKale Center office April 1. Among his first orders of business — on a schedule that will likely be endless through the end of 2017 — is to sell more football tickets and rekindle interest in Arizona’s troubled football program.
“This is big-time,” said Heeke, who was Central Michigan’s AD for 11 years. “This is the national level. This is where I want to be. This is the jewel of Arizona.”
Heeke said it was difficult to say his goodbyes in the CMU community, which is essentially his home turf. He grew up in East Lansing, Michigan. But he knows he’s not skipping out of town without giving it his best shot.
“I’ll always be a Chippewa,” he said. “I never looked at Central Michigan as a steppingstone. But I like the challenge at Arizona. I’m ready for it.”
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Sometime Sunday, 20 Pima College basketball players, coaches and staff will split up in Phoenix and board five different flights to Chicago.
Some will arrive for the NJCAA Division II national championships at 2 p.m. Some not until late at night. It’s not the best way — that’s often life in junior college sports — but when the Aztecs reunite and drive 150 miles to Danville, Illinois, they will be a team no one wants to play.
The Aztecs lead the nation with a 100.8 scoring average. They beat No. 8-ranked Phoenix College to get a ticket to Danville. They are no longer a secret.
Last week, Washington State coach Ernie Kent was on PCC’s campus to offer sophomore forward Deion James of Empire High School a scholarship. Later in the day, former Villanova NCAA championship coach Rollie Massimino, now the coach at Florida’s NAIA Keiser University, phoned in attempt to persuade Aztecs shooting star Emilio Acedo to play for him.
James was the ACCAC’s co-player of the year. Acedo scored 27 points in the region-clinching victory in Phoenix. Coach Brian Peabody’s team is an irresistible story.
One night last summer, while Peabody was dining at Fini’s Landing in the Foothills, he was introduced to the bartender, Acedo, who was a Salpointe Catholic standout way back in 2011. Acedo originally played JC basketball at Lincoln College in Illinois, but left at midseason and returned to Tucson.
Now, at 24, he’s an Aztecs shooting machine.
“I almost cut Emilio during our first tryouts,” said Peabody. “But in the ACCAC Jamboree, he hit nine 3-pointers. So I decided not to over-think it. You hit nine 3’s, you can play for me.”
James played last year at North Carolina A&T. He averaged 1.3 points. His team was awful. He returned to Tucson and sometimes worked out at Pima, whose roster includes two of his friends from Cienega, injured Keven Biggs and standout forward Isaiah Murphy.
“After a few weeks, I decided I would at least ask Deion if he’d consider playing at Pima,” said Peabody. “He didn’t say no. After that, I talked to his family, and some Division I coaches called on my behalf. Most of the heavy-hitters in JC basketball were after him. Fortunately, he decided to stay home and everything changed.”
The Aztecs don’t have the most favorable schedule in the NJCAA Division II finals. They open with Illinois power, but unseeded, Waubonsee Community College on its home floor. If Pima wins, it’s likely to play No. 1 Southwestern CC of Iowa in the second round.
“The league we play in, with five Division I schools, from Cochise College to Arizona Western, is as good as anything we’ll see in the nationals,” said Peabody. “I’d like to think we won’t be intimidated after playing those teams all year.”
Peabody coached state high school championships at Ironwood Ridge and Green Fields, and twice took Salpointe Catholic to the title game. One reason he continues to win — he has 513 career victories — is because his coaching staff has so much continuity.
Mike Morgan, Joe Hickle, Dylan Hidalgo and Matt Minder are all ranking names in Tucson basketball coaching. Sometime Sunday, they’ll all be together again in Illinois, this time going for the biggest prize in their game.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Ironwood Ridge grad and four-year Arizona linebacker Jake Matthews made good in his college days. He was a walk-on who earned a scholarship and became a starter. Injuries limited his on-field success, but at the end he leaves the school in triumph. A neuroscience and cognitive science major, Matthews has plans to attend medical school and become a doctor. He recently learned he has been accepted in a program that will allow him to accompany a Chinese doctor this summer in the Henan Province, beginning a post-graduate medical education.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
One of the top new names in high school baseball is Tyler Porter, a pitcher-infielder at Canyon del Oro, a key part of the Dorados’ 11-3 start. Porter, a lefty hitter, is the son of ex-CDO and Arizona All-Pac-10 power hitting standout Colin Porter, who played for the Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals. Porter allowed just two earned runs in his first 18 innings for the Dorados this season. One of the marquee games of the high school baseball season will be Tucson High’s visit to CDO on Wednesday afternoon. The Badgers, who won 101 games under Oscar Romero the last four seasons, have three of the best baseball players in Southern Arizona: Alex Kelch, UA commit George Arias Jr. and Jacob Federico.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Tucson High grad Alex Robles had a week to remember pitching and hitting for Austin Peay University. He pitched a shutout with 11 strikeouts to beat Ohio Valley Conference favorite Jacksonville State on March 11. A day later, he hit a walk-off home run to beat JSU 6-5 in the 14th inning. A senior, Robles is one of the top pitchers/hitters in college baseball.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
A Las Vegas reporter included Arizona senior associate athletic director Mike Ketcham among those on a potential list of ADs at UNLV. Whoever gets that job, and Ketcham would be a no-brainer, will immediately be involved in one of the most challenging jobs in college athletics. UNLV has little money, no football punch and iffy coaching situations in football and basketball. Other than that, no problem.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Arizona senior golfer Wanasa Zhou, who already has qualified to play on the LPGA Symetra Tour, shot 13 under par last week to win the MountainView Collegiate at SaddleBrooke. It was the best score in UA history, ahead of those Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa and NCAA champions Jenna Daniels and Susan Slaughter ever posted at Arizona. Zhou had 17 birdies and an eagle in three days. Now come the moments of truth for the NCAA title-seeking Wildcats. They play No. 6 USC in a three-day, 16-team event near San Diego this week, then go to Arizona State’s powerful Ping Invitational in early April before playing host to the Pac-12 championships later that month.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Salpointe Catholic senior Trevor Werbylo, who has signed to play golf at Arizona next year, won the Arizona Championship last weekend at Randolph North. He shot 67-68-71 over three days to beat former Pima College All-American David Rauer by two strokes.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
The Pac-12 Networks really missed the train, plane and all boats leaving shore last week at the Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament. It did not have a presence on site at T-Mobile Arena, leaving studio analysts Kevin O’Neill and Matt Muehlebach in their workaday San Francisco studio. There was no buzz, which is unfortunate because O’Neill and Muehlebach are excellent analysts. Nor did the Pac-12 Networks react timely to the NCAA’s Selection Sunday, delaying their coverage until 7 p.m. Yet I couldn’t help but see Larry Scott’s Pac-12 entourage toasting one another with champagne after Arizona won an epic tournament. The money was in the bank but the TV stuff was second-rate.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
The Arizona-Oregon championship game in Las Vegas drew 2,079,000 viewers on ESPN. And Friday’s Arizona-UCLA game had an ESPN audience of 1,625,000. Both totals were below the Arizona-UCLA February game at McKale Center, which drew 2.2 million, the highest audience of the year for a Pac-12 cable broadcast. How does that compare nationally? The Duke-North Carolina game in the ACC Tournament drew 3,597,000.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Four-year Arizona starting center Kaleb Tarczewski has left the NBA D-League’s Oklahoma City Blue and signed with Armani Milano, currently in first place in the Italian EuroLeague. Milano wanted Zeus for the final five regular-season games leading to the EuroLeague playoffs. He averaged 10 points and 7.3 rebounds in the D-League, which are almost exactly his career averages at Arizona.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Tarczewski’s Arizona teammate, Ryan Anderson, was named Player of the Week in Belgium last week, scoring 19 points and gathering 10 rebounds for Antwerp. Anderson is averaging 13.4 points and 8.1 rebounds for Antwerp.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Kyle Fogg, an All-Pac-12 guard at Arizona in 2012, has helped Unicaja Malaga into the final of EuroLeague EuroCup . Fogg is the third-leading scorer for Malaga, at 10 points per game.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
One of the reasons the likable Lorenzo Romar was fired at Washington was because he broke up his coaching staff, dumping veteran X’s and O’s ace and chemistry-first assistant Jim Shaw to hire recruiting-centric assistants, similar to what Lute Olson did in 2006 when he let the anchor of his program, Jim Rosborough, go. It didn’t work then, either. Shaw spent two years under Randy Bennett at Saint Mary’s after leaving Washington. He was also Gary Payton ’s assistant coach at Oregon State. Now he’s the head coach at Western Oregon.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Not sure that former Arizona QB Nick Foles doesn’t have one of the top jobs in sports. He’ll now be paid $11 million over two years (with $7 million guaranteed) to be the Philadelphia Eagles’ backup quarterback. He could ride that No. 2 train for another decade. He’s only 28, he’s a class act, he’s smart, and with 36 career starts in the NFL, he knows how it all works. Plus, he’s likely to suffer a minimum of physical damage.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
As Todd Holthaus coached Pima College to the NJCAA’s No. 1 ranking in women’s basketball this season, another 20-win campaign, he added one of the best women’s basketball players in Tucson history to his staff. Sybil Dosty of Salpointe Catholic, who played at Tennessee and Arizona State in college, joined PCC as a volunteer assistant after leaving her coaching job at Hawaii to move back to Tucson while contemplating her next career move.
- Greg Hansen
- Updated
Tucsonan Michael Thompson, in his seventh year on the PGA Tour, has slumped a bit lately, missing the cut in his last three events.
He is not playing in the ongoing Arnold Palmer Invitational, but it has a special meaning for the Rincon/University High grad.
When Thompson won the Albertson’s Boise Web.com Tour championship on Sept. 18 last year, earning his PGA Tour privileges for 2017, he opened the mail and found a letter from Palmer, congratulating him.
“When I saw that signature, it gave me chills,” Thompson told reporters in Florida last week. “I think we all have a predestined plan for us, and I was meant to be there, and I was lucky enough to win. It also speaks a lot to him, that he would write to the winner of a Web.com tournament.”
Palmer died five days after Thompson received the letter.
- Greg Hansen
Arizona’s new athletic director, Dave Heeke, wasn’t due to punch in until April 1, but he couldn’t resist being part of the Wildcats’ basketball gathering in Salt Lake City.
His credential says “Ticket Staff.”
That’s ironic, because Heeke will essentially be the leader of Arizona’s ticket staff once he moves into his McKale Center office April 1. Among his first orders of business — on a schedule that will likely be endless through the end of 2017 — is to sell more football tickets and rekindle interest in Arizona’s troubled football program.
“This is big-time,” said Heeke, who was Central Michigan’s AD for 11 years. “This is the national level. This is where I want to be. This is the jewel of Arizona.”
Heeke said it was difficult to say his goodbyes in the CMU community, which is essentially his home turf. He grew up in East Lansing, Michigan. But he knows he’s not skipping out of town without giving it his best shot.
“I’ll always be a Chippewa,” he said. “I never looked at Central Michigan as a steppingstone. But I like the challenge at Arizona. I’m ready for it.”
- Greg Hansen
Sometime Sunday, 20 Pima College basketball players, coaches and staff will split up in Phoenix and board five different flights to Chicago.
Some will arrive for the NJCAA Division II national championships at 2 p.m. Some not until late at night. It’s not the best way — that’s often life in junior college sports — but when the Aztecs reunite and drive 150 miles to Danville, Illinois, they will be a team no one wants to play.
The Aztecs lead the nation with a 100.8 scoring average. They beat No. 8-ranked Phoenix College to get a ticket to Danville. They are no longer a secret.
Last week, Washington State coach Ernie Kent was on PCC’s campus to offer sophomore forward Deion James of Empire High School a scholarship. Later in the day, former Villanova NCAA championship coach Rollie Massimino, now the coach at Florida’s NAIA Keiser University, phoned in attempt to persuade Aztecs shooting star Emilio Acedo to play for him.
James was the ACCAC’s co-player of the year. Acedo scored 27 points in the region-clinching victory in Phoenix. Coach Brian Peabody’s team is an irresistible story.
One night last summer, while Peabody was dining at Fini’s Landing in the Foothills, he was introduced to the bartender, Acedo, who was a Salpointe Catholic standout way back in 2011. Acedo originally played JC basketball at Lincoln College in Illinois, but left at midseason and returned to Tucson.
Now, at 24, he’s an Aztecs shooting machine.
“I almost cut Emilio during our first tryouts,” said Peabody. “But in the ACCAC Jamboree, he hit nine 3-pointers. So I decided not to over-think it. You hit nine 3’s, you can play for me.”
James played last year at North Carolina A&T. He averaged 1.3 points. His team was awful. He returned to Tucson and sometimes worked out at Pima, whose roster includes two of his friends from Cienega, injured Keven Biggs and standout forward Isaiah Murphy.
“After a few weeks, I decided I would at least ask Deion if he’d consider playing at Pima,” said Peabody. “He didn’t say no. After that, I talked to his family, and some Division I coaches called on my behalf. Most of the heavy-hitters in JC basketball were after him. Fortunately, he decided to stay home and everything changed.”
The Aztecs don’t have the most favorable schedule in the NJCAA Division II finals. They open with Illinois power, but unseeded, Waubonsee Community College on its home floor. If Pima wins, it’s likely to play No. 1 Southwestern CC of Iowa in the second round.
“The league we play in, with five Division I schools, from Cochise College to Arizona Western, is as good as anything we’ll see in the nationals,” said Peabody. “I’d like to think we won’t be intimidated after playing those teams all year.”
Peabody coached state high school championships at Ironwood Ridge and Green Fields, and twice took Salpointe Catholic to the title game. One reason he continues to win — he has 513 career victories — is because his coaching staff has so much continuity.
Mike Morgan, Joe Hickle, Dylan Hidalgo and Matt Minder are all ranking names in Tucson basketball coaching. Sometime Sunday, they’ll all be together again in Illinois, this time going for the biggest prize in their game.
- Greg Hansen
Ironwood Ridge grad and four-year Arizona linebacker Jake Matthews made good in his college days. He was a walk-on who earned a scholarship and became a starter. Injuries limited his on-field success, but at the end he leaves the school in triumph. A neuroscience and cognitive science major, Matthews has plans to attend medical school and become a doctor. He recently learned he has been accepted in a program that will allow him to accompany a Chinese doctor this summer in the Henan Province, beginning a post-graduate medical education.
- Greg Hansen
One of the top new names in high school baseball is Tyler Porter, a pitcher-infielder at Canyon del Oro, a key part of the Dorados’ 11-3 start. Porter, a lefty hitter, is the son of ex-CDO and Arizona All-Pac-10 power hitting standout Colin Porter, who played for the Houston Astros and St. Louis Cardinals. Porter allowed just two earned runs in his first 18 innings for the Dorados this season. One of the marquee games of the high school baseball season will be Tucson High’s visit to CDO on Wednesday afternoon. The Badgers, who won 101 games under Oscar Romero the last four seasons, have three of the best baseball players in Southern Arizona: Alex Kelch, UA commit George Arias Jr. and Jacob Federico.
- Greg Hansen
Tucson High grad Alex Robles had a week to remember pitching and hitting for Austin Peay University. He pitched a shutout with 11 strikeouts to beat Ohio Valley Conference favorite Jacksonville State on March 11. A day later, he hit a walk-off home run to beat JSU 6-5 in the 14th inning. A senior, Robles is one of the top pitchers/hitters in college baseball.
- Greg Hansen
A Las Vegas reporter included Arizona senior associate athletic director Mike Ketcham among those on a potential list of ADs at UNLV. Whoever gets that job, and Ketcham would be a no-brainer, will immediately be involved in one of the most challenging jobs in college athletics. UNLV has little money, no football punch and iffy coaching situations in football and basketball. Other than that, no problem.
- Greg Hansen
Arizona senior golfer Wanasa Zhou, who already has qualified to play on the LPGA Symetra Tour, shot 13 under par last week to win the MountainView Collegiate at SaddleBrooke. It was the best score in UA history, ahead of those Annika Sorenstam, Lorena Ochoa and NCAA champions Jenna Daniels and Susan Slaughter ever posted at Arizona. Zhou had 17 birdies and an eagle in three days. Now come the moments of truth for the NCAA title-seeking Wildcats. They play No. 6 USC in a three-day, 16-team event near San Diego this week, then go to Arizona State’s powerful Ping Invitational in early April before playing host to the Pac-12 championships later that month.
- Greg Hansen
Salpointe Catholic senior Trevor Werbylo, who has signed to play golf at Arizona next year, won the Arizona Championship last weekend at Randolph North. He shot 67-68-71 over three days to beat former Pima College All-American David Rauer by two strokes.
- Greg Hansen
The Pac-12 Networks really missed the train, plane and all boats leaving shore last week at the Pac-12 men’s basketball tournament. It did not have a presence on site at T-Mobile Arena, leaving studio analysts Kevin O’Neill and Matt Muehlebach in their workaday San Francisco studio. There was no buzz, which is unfortunate because O’Neill and Muehlebach are excellent analysts. Nor did the Pac-12 Networks react timely to the NCAA’s Selection Sunday, delaying their coverage until 7 p.m. Yet I couldn’t help but see Larry Scott’s Pac-12 entourage toasting one another with champagne after Arizona won an epic tournament. The money was in the bank but the TV stuff was second-rate.
- Greg Hansen
The Arizona-Oregon championship game in Las Vegas drew 2,079,000 viewers on ESPN. And Friday’s Arizona-UCLA game had an ESPN audience of 1,625,000. Both totals were below the Arizona-UCLA February game at McKale Center, which drew 2.2 million, the highest audience of the year for a Pac-12 cable broadcast. How does that compare nationally? The Duke-North Carolina game in the ACC Tournament drew 3,597,000.
- Greg Hansen
Four-year Arizona starting center Kaleb Tarczewski has left the NBA D-League’s Oklahoma City Blue and signed with Armani Milano, currently in first place in the Italian EuroLeague. Milano wanted Zeus for the final five regular-season games leading to the EuroLeague playoffs. He averaged 10 points and 7.3 rebounds in the D-League, which are almost exactly his career averages at Arizona.
- Greg Hansen
Tarczewski’s Arizona teammate, Ryan Anderson, was named Player of the Week in Belgium last week, scoring 19 points and gathering 10 rebounds for Antwerp. Anderson is averaging 13.4 points and 8.1 rebounds for Antwerp.
- Greg Hansen
Kyle Fogg, an All-Pac-12 guard at Arizona in 2012, has helped Unicaja Malaga into the final of EuroLeague EuroCup . Fogg is the third-leading scorer for Malaga, at 10 points per game.
- Greg Hansen
One of the reasons the likable Lorenzo Romar was fired at Washington was because he broke up his coaching staff, dumping veteran X’s and O’s ace and chemistry-first assistant Jim Shaw to hire recruiting-centric assistants, similar to what Lute Olson did in 2006 when he let the anchor of his program, Jim Rosborough, go. It didn’t work then, either. Shaw spent two years under Randy Bennett at Saint Mary’s after leaving Washington. He was also Gary Payton ’s assistant coach at Oregon State. Now he’s the head coach at Western Oregon.
- Greg Hansen
Not sure that former Arizona QB Nick Foles doesn’t have one of the top jobs in sports. He’ll now be paid $11 million over two years (with $7 million guaranteed) to be the Philadelphia Eagles’ backup quarterback. He could ride that No. 2 train for another decade. He’s only 28, he’s a class act, he’s smart, and with 36 career starts in the NFL, he knows how it all works. Plus, he’s likely to suffer a minimum of physical damage.
- Greg Hansen
As Todd Holthaus coached Pima College to the NJCAA’s No. 1 ranking in women’s basketball this season, another 20-win campaign, he added one of the best women’s basketball players in Tucson history to his staff. Sybil Dosty of Salpointe Catholic, who played at Tennessee and Arizona State in college, joined PCC as a volunteer assistant after leaving her coaching job at Hawaii to move back to Tucson while contemplating her next career move.
- Greg Hansen
Tucsonan Michael Thompson, in his seventh year on the PGA Tour, has slumped a bit lately, missing the cut in his last three events.
He is not playing in the ongoing Arnold Palmer Invitational, but it has a special meaning for the Rincon/University High grad.
When Thompson won the Albertson’s Boise Web.com Tour championship on Sept. 18 last year, earning his PGA Tour privileges for 2017, he opened the mail and found a letter from Palmer, congratulating him.
“When I saw that signature, it gave me chills,” Thompson told reporters in Florida last week. “I think we all have a predestined plan for us, and I was meant to be there, and I was lucky enough to win. It also speaks a lot to him, that he would write to the winner of a Web.com tournament.”
Palmer died five days after Thompson received the letter.
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