Hansen: Derksen 'the best' at both Amphi, USF

On a rainy Friday morning, I walked into the basketball office at War Memorial Gymnasium and was introduced to USF Dons assistant coaches Sundance Wicks and Frank Allocco.

Before I could ask a question, the answers rolled in.

“Tim Derksen is the best,” said Wicks. “Just the best kid you can have on a basketball team. Do you know him?”

I said that I watched Derksen play on Amphitheater High School basketball teams that had successive records of 29-2 and 29-3. I saw him win the 2011 state championship. I saw him become Arizona’s 2012 Gatorade Player of the Year.

Allocco took it from there.

“When you get a young man like Tim, it validates why you are in this business,” he said. “Special guy.”

Tim Derksen has scored 1,221 points for the Dons, which puts him on the school’s top-25 career list that includes basketball immortals Bill Russell and K.C. Jones. He has scored 185 more points for USF than Arizona senior transfer Mark Tollefsen did.

But what makes Derksen’s years as a USF Don so rewarding is that it’s not about scoring 27 points against Portland, or forcing a recent game against Gonzaga into overtime with a last-ditch three-pointer. It’s not even about basketball.

“I just love this place, the school, the culture, the diversity and the city,” he said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

Derksen is the son of a basketball coach, Pat Derksen, who was something of an institution over a 25-year career at Amphi. He taught his son not just how to shoot a jumper (a lefty jumper at that) but how to carry himself, how to speak to adults, how to buy into a team concept and that someday, when basketball ends, what he does in the classroom will be more important than what he does at War Memorial Gym.

Derksen will graduate from USF’s business administration school in May, and you can’t imagine how much work that took. He spent the last four summers in school, not on the beach.

“Given the academic standards here, the schoolwork can get stressful,” he said. “But that’s the way I wanted it.”

Derksen chose USF because, frankly, he didn’t have a lot of big-time college suitors. He’s a 6-foot 4-inch forward who isn’t blessed with over-the-rim jumping ability. Yet he has played for a school that has gone 60-45 and can hold its own against anybody.

Sometimes at a place like USF, you are asked to do more with less. Derksen, for example, was asked to guard 6-10 Kyle Wiltjer of Gonzaga earlier this month. He was giving up 6 inches to a possible NBA lottery pick, but forced the game into overtime when he drilled that 3-pointer with 6.2 seconds left in regulation.

“They haven’t asked me to do too much,” he said. “Coach (Rex) Walters has had my back from Day One. I’d run through a brick wall for him. I don’t think anyone knows how good our coaches are.”

Over the next 30 or 40 years, people will be able to look back at Derksen’s Amphi career and justifiably include him as one of the 10 or 15 leading prep ballplayers in Tucson history.

His contemporaries, Palo Verde’s Bryce Cotton, Santa Rita’s Terrell Stoglin and Amphi teammate Lester Medford have had more high-profile college careers. Cotton was an All-Big East standout at Providence who has since played for the Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz. Stoglin led the ACC in scoring at Maryland and is an all-star pro player in Turkey. Medford is the starting point guard at No. 13 Baylor.

By comparison, in a Thursday victory over Santa Clara, only 1,413 people sat in the aging USF gym. Whenever a Dons game is televised, it is usually on THEW.TV, which is the West Coast Conference’s small regional network.

“We’ve been close,” said Derksen, who is something of a Lone Survivor. “But I’m the last one left from my freshman year.”

He described Tollefsen’s decision to transfer to Arizona as “the toughest part of my career.” The two remain in frequent contact, friends forever.

In his role as a senior leader, Derksen is averaging 15.3 points and 6.1 rebounds for a 10-9 USF team that has struggled to keep pace in recent years with WCC powers Gonzaga, BYU and Saint Mary’s. He will get a final crack at the Zags next weekend, or perhaps in the WCC tournament March 4-8 in Las Vegas.

After May’s graduation ceremony, Derksen plans to hire an agent, work strictly on basketball and begin a pro career, probably in Europe, next fall.

But that’s a story for another day.

“This isn’t a college town and we don’t have a huge following,” he said. “But I’ve enjoyed all of it. I’m not going to leave a stone unturned this year. Every place we play, every team we play, it’s special. There’s nothing like your senior year.”