Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Utes have talent, schedule to win Pac-12

Utah drew 14,140 to Friday’s Pac-12 opener against USC, a night when students were on winter break, and it was brutally cold in Salt Lake City.

The 10th-ranked Utes lead Arizona in virtually every statistical category, and especially those of the most significance: fewest points allowed, shooting percentage (including free-throw percentage), defensive field-goal percentage and rebound margin. The Utes have made more three-pointers than Arizona and, if the season were to end today, would likely have the Pac-12’s Player of the Year, Delon Wright.

Utah’s schedule has been as difficult as Arizona’s, with games against Kansas, Wichita State, San Diego State, UNLV and BYU. (Only the Wichita State game was in Salt Lake City.)

The Utes have depth, size, reliable perimeter shooting and a freshman class, especially star-level big men Jakob Poeltl and Brekkott Chapman, that is superior to Arizona’s newcomers.

Perimeter shooter Brandon Taylor is someone Arizona could use today.

What I’m saying is, I think Utah is going to win or tie for the Pac-12 title. It will likely be close, perhaps a game separating the Utes and Wildcats, or maybe even a tie with both teams at 15-3.

The schedule-makers smiled on the Utes, who don’t have to play at Stanford or Cal, two potential losses for everybody else. Here’s how I call the Pac-12 race:

1. Utah (16-2). The title game should be Feb. 28 against Arizona in SLC.

2. Arizona (15-3). Those harrowing games at UTEP and UNLV portend bigger trouble at Cal, Stanford, Washington and Colorado.

3. Washington (12-6). Seven-footer Robert Upshaw and point guard Nigel Williams-Goss give Huskies a chance every night.

4. Cal (11-7). Backcourt of Tyrone Wallace and Jordan Mathews as good as it gets in Pac-12.

5. Stanford (11-7). The Cardinal doesn’t look like an NCAA tournament team, but its win at Texas makes it fearsome.

6. Colorado (11-7). The Buffaloes are a player short of being a contender.

7. UCLA (9-9). No bench; the Iron Five will get worn down by March and Bryce Alford will shoot too much.

8. Oregon (8-10). No road games at Utah or Colorado will help.

9. Arizona State (7-11). Better than you think.

10. USC (4-14). It lost to Army at home.

11. Oregon State (3-15). Wait till 2017.

12. Washington State (1-17). Was Ernie Kent hired to be fired?

Arizona will use Pac-12 resources to stir some unprecedented interest in its spring football game: Rather than be played on a (too) warm afternoon at Arizona Stadium, it will now be played at 6 on a Friday night, April 10. The Pac-12 Networks will televise it.

Even though freshman quarterback Anu Solomon passed for 3,793 yards and 28 touchdowns this season — even though he took more than 1,100 snaps — spring ball at Arizona will chiefly be a chance for redshirt freshman quarterback Brandon Dawkins to audition for the starting QB job.

“My job isn’t set,” Solomon told me in the UA’s locker room Wednesday night at the Fiesta Bowl. “I’ve got to compete every day with Jerrard Randall and Brandon Dawkins. They want to be No. 1, they’re trying to take the job. I can’t have the mentality that I’m all set.”

Staying at the elite level in the Pac-12 South demands more from its quarterbacks than Arizona got in the conference championship game and at the Fiesta Bowl, a pair of games in which the Wildcats were a dismal 37-for-76 passing (48.7 percent) with three interceptions.

Worse, the UA defense yielded 1,098 yards and 89 points in those games.

UCLA returns 18 of 22 starters, USC started 18 non-seniors in the Holiday Bowl, and Arizona State has 15 starters scheduled to return.

The Pac-12 won’t be getting any easier.

It has been a good holiday season for Jason Terry. The former Arizona point guard became just the third NBA player ever to make 2,000 three-pointers, joining Ray Allen and Reggie Miller in the exclusive club. Then the Pac-12 and UA combined to rule that Terry is now eligible to have his No. 31 Arizona jersey retired, ending a long ban triggered when Terry admitted he took money from an agent during his UA senior season of 1998-99. Terry has more than paid penance for that long-ago transgression. UA athletic director Greg Byrne said that school president Ann Weaver Hart was active and influential in making Terry’s jersey retirement (Feb. 19 at the USC-Arizona game) a reality. “It’s the right time,” Byrne said Saturday. “He’s a good citizen; the past is the past.” The UA will re-condition the retired jerseys of Sean Elliott, Steve Kerr, Jason Gardner and Mike Bibby, giving them a 21st century look, for the February celebration.

Here’s a name to keep in mind in the future of Tucson basketball: 14-year-old Majok Deng, a 6-foot-5-inch eighth-grader in the Flowing Wells School District, last month was named the outstanding prospect in an Area Codes Showcase event in Phoenix. Deng participated Saturday in the Tucson Super 80 Hoops Showcase at Pima College as arranged by PCC coach Brian Peabody. He will be part of the recruiting class of 2019 and is probably the top prospect in Tucson since Santa Rita’s Terrell Stoglin.

Austin Nehls, the Star’s 2014 Southern Arizona basketball player of the year, is now playing for the Cheshire Academy in Connecticut. He scored 21 points, making five three-pointers, in his final game before Christmas break on a team with several other college prospects. Nehls tweeted that he received his first Division I offer, from Central Connecticut State. 

The Gregory School grad Frankie Mgbolu, one of the top all-around athletes in Tucson the last decade, is starting at point guard for undefeated Division II St. Edwards University of Austin, Texas. Mgbolu scored 18 points on New Year’s Day against Arkansas-Fort Smith as a starting point guard. Mgbolu, averaging 12.3 points, missed his freshman season with a knee injury and has one more year of eligibility.

Tucsonan George Cunningham, a freshman at Arizona, tied for first place (he lost in a playoff) at the prestigious Patriot All-American Golf Classic played at the Phoenix Wigwam Golf Course Dec. 29-31. Cunningham, a freshman, shot rounds of 74-69-66 (or 6-under par) in the nation’s top amateur golf event of the month. 

Salpointe Catholic junior defensive lineman Justin Holt was chosen to the U.S. Army All-American Combine all-star team Saturday in San Antonio. The 24/7 recruiting service wrote that Holt, who is 6 feet 2 inches and 300 pounds, “has an offer from the Arizona Wildcats and showed why as he typically left offensive linemen in their stance as he blew by them.” Holt’s father, Julius Holt, a starting lineman for Arizona in 1981 and 1982, said that his son is not ready to make a recruiting commitment. 

Another name to watch: Derrick Silva won the USATF Junior Olympic National Cross Country Championships late last month in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The Doolen Middle School student previously won the USATF 800 meters championship for boys 11-12 in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Silva? Sound familiar? His brother, Ryan Silva, who was one of Tucson’s top distance runners of the last 25 years, is now a sophomore on the cross-country and track teams at Stanford. 

One of the reasons Pima College women’s basketball coach Todd Holthaus has been among the leading coaches in Tucson for the last 10 years is that he isn’t afraid of a challenge. He took his (then) 15th-ranked Aztecs to Peoria, Illinois, last week to play national-level JC teams from Iowa, Michigan and Illinois, even though it required a travel schedule that would bow most coaches. The Aztecs left Phoenix on a 1 a.m., flight to St. Louis, drove three hours to Peoria, arriving at sunrise, and then played the first of three games that day at 1 p.m. And now it gets even tougher: Pima resumes ACCAC play this week against two of the top programs in the country, Arizona Western and Central Arizona. 

Shelley Duncan, the UA’s career home run leader, will be leaving his position as an Arizona undergraduate baseball coach to become manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Rookie League team in Hillsboro, Ore. Check back in 10 years: Duncan has the personality and acumen to be a big-league manager. Duncan, a CDO grad who retired from baseball last summer, will hold his annual Tucson Youth Baseball Association camp Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Kino Sports Complex. Among those who will serve as instructors are Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy and Tigers second baseman Ian Kinsler. Information: tucsonyouthbaseballassociation.org.

The Pac-12 this year, for the first time in 20 years, has eliminated a weekly teleconference with its men’s basketball coaches. Why? There was not enough interest from media members in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Phoenix. The only coaches who regularly got enough questions to fill each 10-mintue segment were Sean Miller, Larry Krystkowiak and Lorenzo Romar. 

My lasting concern about the Fiesta Bowl was the excessive spending on unnecessary items. For example, bowl volunteers had eight vans available until midnight with which to shuttle reporters to a place of their choice: golf courses, movie theaters, or a late-night pizza run. That’s absurd. The Boise State marching band, about 200 strong, arrived via bus, a 950-mile journey, paid for by the Fiesta Bowl (that is, ESPN). Each school was required to use 150 rooms for six nights at tony Scottsdale resorts as part of the Fiesta Bowl contract, and another 125 rooms for three nights when support staff arrived later. There is so much TV money in college sports it is scary. 

Pitcher Taylor McQuillin and power hitter Alyssa Palomino, considered to be two of the top Arizona softball recruits in years, are in Los Angeles this weekend as part of the USA Softball national selection team camp. McQuillin and Palamino are in competition for spots on the Junior World National team. They will arrive in Tucson in August.

It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if an NFL owner, playing off the success of ex-Pac-12 coaches Pete Carroll and Chip Kelly, pursued Rich Rodriguez.

Would he bite?

“I never thought about it until the last few years,” Rodriguez told me last week. “I’ve watched Chip Kelly and some of the college guys go to the pros; I think the lines are blurred a little bit more. NFL teams do more of what colleges do now. I think more guys are going up and down, between the NFL and colleges, than ever before.”

On Friday, Kelly was given control of the Philadelphia personnel decisions. I suspect RichRod would demand as much before leaving a college job.

“I can’t imagine not having a say on who you sign, leaving that decision to a general manager or the organization,” he said. “I can’t imagine not having control of who your assistant coaches are. I wouldn’t like a job if I couldn’t pick my staff.”

RichRod has a vacation home about 50 miles from Atlanta and has often spent time at Hilton Head, South Carolina, which is also relatively close to Atlanta.

And the Falcons have a head coaching vacancy.

But Atlanta owner Arthur Blank is a noted control freak, with a veteran GM, Thomas Dimitroff, and a long-time president in Rich McKay. The Falcons are an organization that has been old-school in its approach to offense and defense.

Maybe next year. If Arizona continues to climb the college football ladder, it wouldn’t take much to imagine an NFL owner taking a serious look at RichRod.

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