Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Free throws a worry – but history, stats say not to Cats' ultimate success

At halftime of Thursday’s Arizona-Oregon game, Aaron Gordon was featured in a get-to-know-you Q&A video in which he was asked what he does in his free time.

“I play video games and the piano,’’ he said.

Can you imagine the reaction, the unconditional love, had he smiled and said “and practice my free-throw shooting’’?

Gordon is shooting .422 from the foul-line after a 2-for-11 effort against the Ducks. His teammates shot 17-for-24, and Sean Miller said “it’s going to do us in if we don’t improve.’’

The Wildcats are now at .664 as a group, which places them 273rd of 345 NCAA Division I teams.

That said, Arizona’s worst free-throw shooting clubs in the last 25 seasons were bunched from 1995-97, when they had successive years of .657, .660 and .655.

Perspective? A national championship and a Sweet 16 came from those teams.

In 1995, Joseph Blair, Corey Williams and Reggie Geary combined to go 59 for 122 from the line, or 48.3 percent. And the Wildcats still won 23 games and finished second behind national champion UCLA in the Pac-10.

But Gordon’s free-throw shooting has now attracted the wrong kind of attention. It reminds me of the time Dodgers second baseman Steve Sax, a star-level player, developed a psychological fear of making a routine throw to first base. Everybody watched, expecting the worst.

Pac-12 teams have overcome unreliable foul-shooting. Arizona State’s best team of the '90s, it’s third-place, 24-win team of 1995, featured star center Mario Bennett, who shot .491 from the foul line (115-for-234).

According to the UA media guide, its worst career foul-shooter (with at least 75 attempts) was Larry Harris, a forward from Camelback High School, 1961-64. It lists him as shooting 104 for 232, or 44.8 percent.

But that’s a typo. I checked Harris’ stats. He was actually 146-for-232, or 62.8 percent.

Next in line is Kevin Flanagan, who shot .453 in his Arizona career, 1990-94. But say this for Flanny: he left Arizona as one of the most well-liked players of the Lute Olson years. He was a winner.

Flanny’s last game as a Wildcat was at the 1994 Final Four.

So much for missing a few free throws.

Twenty years ago Tuesday, Pima College center Horacio Llamas set the school scoring record with a 52-point outburst against Arizona Western.

That record survived its first real challenge last week when Pima sophomore guard Shakir Smith scored 42 against South Mountain CC. It improved Smith’s scoring average to 30.1, which is the highest in the ACCAC going back 20 years. The previous high was in 1994, when Chandler-Gilbert CC’s Davin White averaged 27.5. Smith, a former quarterback and all-region guard from Tucson High, began his college career at Wyoming. He left the Cowboys in the winter of 2011-12 and sat out last season. More important, Pima, under new coach Brian Peabody, has re-invented itself. After going 0-18 to finish last season, the Aztecs were 13-12 entering Saturday’s game against Mesa College.

Nike packaged Rich Rodriguez and ASU coach Todd Graham, not exactly buddies, to be part of the Coach of the Year clinic this weekend in Washington D.C. It was smart enough to schedule Graham’s presentation for Friday night and RichRod’s on Saturday.

Under Priority Sports’ management, Ka’Deem Carey spent the week at a speed camp in San Diego, working on his 40-yard dash time in advance of the NFL Combine Feb. 19-22 in Indianapolis. Carey then attended a “life after football” seminar in Las Vegas as organized by Priority Sports. Competition for the NFL draft is so intense that 36 running backs have been invited to the NFL Combine. No other Arizona player was invited to the Combine, which makes you wonder how Arizona has won 16 games under RichRod. 

If you read between the lines at RichRod’s comments on letter-of-intent day, you could sense that junior college transfer Jerrard Randall, who spent two years as an LSU quarterback, is the most intriguing of all incoming UA players. “When I got a chance to meet the kid, that’s when I was sold,” Rodriguez said. “He has been there, done that, done the junior college thing, and just seems hungry. He had a little spark about him. I think he is hungry and talented, and I’m really, really excited about him.” Randall is a big “if,” because last year’s JC quarterback of the moment, USC refugee Jesse Scroggins, was not ready to play when he got his audition. If Randall is Arizona’s starter when it opens the season Aug. 30 against UNLV, it could entirely change the UA’s 2014 expectations from mid-pack to division contender.

History alert: If Arizona loses to ASU in women’s basketball today at McKale, dropping to 0-12 in the Pac-12, it will not threaten a record. Washington State went 0-18 in 2001-02.

Sabino tackle Andrew Mike, who flipped from Vanderbilt to Florida on letter-of-intent day, was part of a game of dominoes. Florida hoped to sign five-star tackle Damian Prince of Forestville, Md., but when he made a late declaration to stay near home and play for the Maryland Terrapins, Florida activated Plan B, which was Mike. College football is a game of here-and-now. At Florida, Mike will be playing for offensive-line coach Mike Summers, who was coaching at Oregon State in 1995 and since then has worked for nine schools.

First-year coach Doug D’Amore takes Catalina Foothills into the playoffs this week with Tucson’s best Division II record, 22-5, including 11-0 in league play and a 13-1 streak. When the Falcons won in front of a packed Salpointe Catholic gymnasium on Tuesday night, one of their leading players was senior guard Austin Miller — Sean Miller’s son. Austin mostly guarded Salpointe star Cameron Denson, a UA football signee, and limited him to two field goals and six points, one of the leading factors in Foothills’ victory. Miller scored just one point in the game, and is averaging 4.5, but is a key in D’Amore’s defense, which has permitted 47.4 points a game during that 13-1 streak. Defense should help Foothills challenge Phoenix Shadow Mountain for the state title. Does that ring a bell? Shadow Mountain (24-2) is led by Michael Bibby, son of former UA great Mike Bibby, who averages 18.7 points as a sophomore and has made 84 three-pointers this season.

UA point guard T.J. McConnell made the most telling basket of the UA’s 67-65 victory over Oregon on Thursday, but he couldn’t match his brother Matty McConnell’s quadruple-double of two nights earlier. Matty, playing for 20-1 Chartiers Valley (Pa.) High, coached by his father, Tim McConnell, had 46 points on 17-of-29 shooting, 10 rebounds, 10 steals and 10 assists. He’s only a junior.

Pima College softball coach Armando Quiroz, whose Aztecs have finished No. 3 and No.4 in the NJCAA women’s softball finals the last two seasons, has lost his most heated rival. Yavapai College canceled its softball season last week after academic and disciplinary problems cut its roster to six players. Yavapai won the national title in 2009 and 2011 under UA assistant coach Stacy Iveson. Pima benefitted right away as YC third baseman Valerie Luera, who hit .533 for Cienega in 2012, transferred to Pima and is eligible. She hit .335 as a YC freshman in 2013 with 10 homers.

An under-the-radar signing on Wednesday’s national letter-of-intent day was Salpointe Catholic senior Michaela Crunkleton Wilson, who chose Stanford over Arizona. She has won back-to-back state championships in the 100 and 200 meters and was accepted by Stanford’s academic board in December. 

It’s beginning to look like freshman Michael Hoard, an all-Southern Arizona first baseman from Salpointe, will open the season as Andy Lopez’s starting first baseman when the Wildcats debut Friday night against Kent State. Last local player to start as a UA freshman: Cienega third baseman Seth Mejias-Brean, who became a College World Series star. 

One thing Lopez has done with his schedule that has been years in coming is to schedule a three-day round-robin at Hi Corbett against UC Santa Barbara and Mississippi State, staging three day-night doubleheaders in early March. 

Nick Johnson’s 1-for-14 shooting performance at Cal wasn’t new to Arizona’s big-game players. Jason Gardner shot 1 for 19 in two games against UCLA in 2001. Salim Stoudamire had a 2-for-19 night against Kansas, at McKale Center. Chase Budinger was 1 for 12 in a loss at Arizona State in 2008. And in the 1998 Elite Eight loss to Utah, future NBA players Mike Bibby, Michael Dickerson and Miles Simon were a combined 6 for 36, 0 for 13 from three. The only star-level UA player who didn’t had a significant off-night was Sean Elliott, whose “worst” night as a Wildcat was 3 for 11 as a freshman at ASU. 

One question the Tucson Conquistadores will strongly consider if and when Accenture and the PGA Tour take the Match Play spectacle from Dove Mountain, is this: “How will Tucson golf fans respond to a Champions Tour event?” Would you rather watch Fred Couples, Ben Crenshaw and Tom Watson than Justin Rose, Ian Poulter and Zach Johnson? The Champions Tour schedule has two available weeks in February and March. Getting an encumbered PGA Tour replacement tournament in Tucson doesn’t seem possible or popular.

The McKale Center game-day presentation has evolved so much in the last decade that the UA pep band is now used more as dancing/cheering troupe than an actual band.

At the Arizona-Oregon game, the band did not play “Bear Down, Arizona,” during the game. Not even during a late-game rally, when it used to be a crowd-inspiring staple. For better or worse, the $2 million video board and piped-in music has essentially replaced the band. For example, at the 11:52 second-half media timeout Thursday, with the Ducks leading 50-45, there was no music, but rather the Delta Dental Smile Cam.

There’s a Dance Cam, a Kiss Cam and even the starting lineup introductions are now sponsored by an insurance company. As such, McKale Center has become a profit center unlike any in Pac-12 basketball. When you’re trying to raise $80 million to renovate the 40-year-old building, you create sponsorship ideas.

Have you noticed that the ballboys, those kids who sweep up moisture from the court, now wear sponsored clothing? Have you noticed that the backboard structure now has four sponsors?

Arizona reported basketball revenues of $25,406,258 to the U.S. Department of Education for the 2012-13 school year. That dwarfs the Pac-12.

UCLA was second at $14,914,052, followed by Washington at $10,907,589. Arizona State was sixth at $8,416,593.

Arizona is the first Pac-12 school to create an NBA, entertainment-style atmosphere at a basketball game. Welcome to the 21st century. The only thing that might be forgotten are the words to “Bear Down, Arizona.”