Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Arizona's new, big building part of the Pac-12 facilities race

Before Mark Harlan arrived at Thursday’s Utah-Arizona basketball game in Salt Lake City wearing a bright red Utah pullover, he appeared before a Utah state legislative committee to get consent to build an $80 million addition to the Utes’ Rice-Eccles football stadium.

Now in his first year as Utah’s athletic director, Harlan is a University of Arizona graduate who spent 19 years working for Dick Tomey’s UA football operation and later, under athletic director Jim Livengood’s command as a UA events manager and fundraiser.

When Harlan worked at Arizona, the UA football program spent essentially nothing on its football plant. UA, UCLA, USC, ASU, Washington State, Cal and Stanford were tardy keeping up with big-spending, football-first Oregon and Washington.

Now Arizona is a few days away from celebrating the completion of the $16 million Cole and Jeannie Davis Indoor Sports Center, which already has a mammoth presence on campus.

At best, the Davis Center will turn heads of future UA recruiting prospects. More to the point, it keeps Arizona competitive in the latest round of Pac-12 eye candy.

The Davis Center is a 45,000-square foot facility with a 90-yard artificial turf and a roof height of 65 feet.

Here’s how it fits with the Pac-12’s other indoor facilities:

Oregon: The Ducks built the massive 117,000-square foot Moshofsky Center 21 years ago. Cost: $14 million. It can hold as many as 5,000 fans for events. Donor: Ed Moshofsky, a 1943 UO grad who made his money in the lumber industry.

Oregon State: The Beavers built the Truax Indoor Center in 2001. It is 85,000 square feet. Cost: $12 million. Donor: Merritt Truax, a 1935 OSU grad who made his fortune in the oil business.

Washington: Built in 2001, the Dempsey Indoor facility is 80,000 square feet, with a full track facility included. Cost: $17 million. Donor: 1964 UW grad Neal Dempsey, who became a venture capitalist.

Washington State: The Cougars’ Indoor Performance Center, with its 100,000 square feet, cost $14 million when it was built in 1999. It is an old-fashioned “bubble” that has become dated. The Cougars are in the process of planning a $28 million arena. A title donor is being sought.

Arizona State: Built in 2008, the Verde Dickey Dome is also a bubble (that once collapsed in a monsoon storm). Cost: $2 million. It has 103,000-square feet. Donor: Verde Dickey, a SMU grad who worked in the steel industry.

Colorado: Built in 2016, the Indoor Performance Facility is 120,000 square feet, with a six-lane track. It was part of a $145 million athletic department facelift. No title donor has been identified.

Utah: The Eccles Fieldhouse was built in 2013 for $7 million. It has 74,000 square feet and was part of a $32 million athletics project. Donor: Spence Eccles, a 1956 Utah grad who became a Salt Lake City banker.

None of the league’s four California schools have an indoor sports center.

If you think athletic spending and debt service in the Pac-12 is excessive, keep this in mind: According to the UA’s 2018 capital projects financial report, the school has $1.6 billion in such debt campus-wide. It retired $74 million of debt a year ago and incurred $191 million of new capital projects debt.

In that perspective, the Davis Center is just another (but very large) building.

Sunnyside High school won its first state championship in 1965, when coach Jim Mielke’s boys cross country team finished No. 1 in state.

The Blue Devils won another cross country title in 1975, and have since added a softball title and two football state championships.

But the ranking dynasty in Tucson prep sports continues to be Sunnyside’s wrestling program. It won its 32nd state championship a week ago, a streak that began in 1979. What’s just as impressive is that four coaches have kept that streak humming: Don Klostreich won the first nine Sunnyside wrestling titles, Richard Sanchez added five, Bobby DeBerry then won 15 and now Anthony Leon has won three for the Blue Devils.

They long ago surpassed Tucson High’s total of 29 state baseball championships to lead all Tucson teams. The Tucson High track program has won 18 state titles.

In Arizona, Sunnyside continues to chase the Phoenix Brophy Prep boys swimming program, which has won 41 state championships, and the Xavier Prep girls golf team, with 36.

Then come the Blue Devil wrestlers.

UA president Robert C. Robbins used his connections to get former UA football coach Dick Tomey admitted to the prestigious MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Tomey is undergoing treatment for lung cancer there, but hopes to be able to return to Tucson in the next week or so. The MD Anderson corporation advertises that “we shall be the premier cancer center in the world” and “we are making history in cancer treatment” as part of the University of Texas medical system.

Former Ironwood Ridge and UA linebacker Jake Matthews last week was accepted to medical school Still University of Health Sciences in Kirksville, Missouri, an established medical school that has been in business for 127 years. Matthews joins at least four other UA football players of the modern era to go to medical school: All-WAC lineman Jon Abbott, an academic All-American at Arizona, is now an orthopedic surgeon in Oro Valley; Ivan Lesnik, a second-team All-Pac-10 defensive lineman in the early 1990s, served as a surgeon for the Navy Surgeon General before opening a pain management center in Seattle; Kevin Schmidtke, a former UA running back, attended Boston University for dental school and now runs a practice on La Cholla Boulevard; and Tucson orthopedic surgeon William “Billy” Prickett, a starting UA quarterback in 1991 who has returned to be part of the UA’s football medical staff.

Former Canyon del Oro softball standout Alexis Kaiser made her college debut at Syracuse a memorable one, hitting a home run last week against Grand Canyon in the San Diego State kickoff tournament. Kaiser is the daughter of former UA and NFL linebacker John Kaiser, a member of the Tucson Conquistadores. Kaiser batted No. 4 in the Syracuse lineup Friday, with a run-scoring double against Penn State.

The Pac-12’s media rights deal with, among others, ESPN, isn’t always a priority. Thursday’s Arizona-Utah game was shown on ESPNU, which isn’t included in millions of ESPN customer packages. So what did ESPN broadcast on its main outlets Thursday instead of Pac-12 basketball? It chose a series of UFC skirmishes for ESPN and the Austin Peay-Murray State game for ESPN2. Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News last week reported that the Pac-12 Networks is down to 17.9 million subscribers, down seven percent from 2016. Not good.

As Pima College sophomore point guard Abram Carrasco bids to become PCC’s career scoring leader and the ACCAC player of the year, he could also become the school’s fifth first-team NJCAA men’s All-American, a list that began with Greg Cook in 1980. The second PCC All-American, in 1990, was James Ford. Much like Carrasco, who sat out two years before enrolling at PCC, Ford played for the Aztecs in 1984-85, and then pursued other interests before returning to Pima for the 1989-90 season. He then averaged 21 points for a 24-7 team.

Reece Nilsen, formerly of Catalina Foothills High School, plays golf for the No. 3-ranked team in the NAIA poll, Rocky Mountain College. Nilsen last week was informed that he is under consideration for the Arnold Palmer Cup, which includes 12 of the leading college players. The top six non-Division I golfers will be part of the 23rd Palmer Cup June 7-9 in Norman, Oklahoma. Nilsen, a lefty, won two consecutive tournaments for Rocky Mountain College last fall.

Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke is likely to be an interested spectator at this month’s Cologuard Classic at Omni Tucson National, which will include baseball Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz. Heeke and Smoltz grew up as baseball competitors and teammates in Lansing, Michigan, and were teammates in the 1983 AAABA tournament in Pennsylvania. Heeke was the lead catcher and Smoltz was the star pitcher. “I certainly knew he was destined to be something special,” Heeke says now. “He was also a great basketball player.”

In its diligence to hire an offensive line coach, Arizona turned some heads by acquiring 34-year-old Kyle DeVan, a four-year NFL lineman who coached at Ball State last year. DeVan, who played at Oregon State, previously served on the staffs at his alma mater and USC, giving him valuable recruiting contacts in the region. After Arizona hired DeVan, Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy hired Arizona alumnus and 12-year UA offensive line coach Charlie Dickey, who is a top hire anywhere. Gundy did it one day after it was reported that the Cowboys had an opening. “I’ve tried to hire coach Dickey before but was unsuccessful because of his loyalty to Coach (Bill) Snyder at Kansas State,” Gundy wrote in a Twitter message. In this case, Arizona and OSU both appear to have hired the right guy.

On Friday night, Arizona drew 3,431 for a baseball game at Hi Corbett Field, 2,358 for a softball game at Hillenbrand Stadium and 2,002 for a women’s basketball game at McKale Center. Those numbers could flip in the coming years as Adia Barnes’ women’s basketball team bids to enter the upper level of the Pac-12 with No. 3 Oregon, No. 7 Oregon State and No. 11 Stanford. The Wildcats are likely to win Sunday, then lose their final four games — against the Oregon schools, Stanford and Cal — and finish 7-11 in the Pac-12, but if Barnes can add even one more top player to the Aari McDonald-led nucleus, crowds at McKale could double or triple next season.

Former Sabino High School and UA pass-rusher Brooks Reed, an All-Pac-10 defensive player in 2010, signed a one-year, $2 million deal with the Arizona Cardinals last week. Life in the NFL has been good to the 31-year-old Reed. He previously signed a $22 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons also got married while in Atlanta. Brooks and Natalie Reed are expecting their first child, a boy, in July.

Steve Kerr was the guest of honor last week at San Francisco’s KZV Armenian School. It was the annual fundraiser for the school, but it turned out to be an event of great history and magnitude.

During the ceremony, it was disclosed that Kerr’s grandparents, Stanley and Elsa Kerr, cared for nearly 10,000 Armenian orphans during and after World War I.

According to The Athletic, part of a letter written a century ago by Kerr’s grandfather is included in an upcoming documentary “Kerr: Warriors of Peace,” about the Golden State Warriors. As the preview was aired for the guests, Kerr lowered his head and wiped away tears.

Not only were Kerr’s mother, wife and two of his children in attendance, so was a classmate from Pacific Palisades High School, who described how Stanley and Elsa Kerr helped to save the lives of thousands of Armenians.

Ultimately, Kerr’s grandfather became a chemist and professor at American University in Beirut. His grandmother was the dean of women students. Their son, Malcolm, Steve’s father, was the president of the same university when he was murdered by terrorists in January 1984, Kerr’s freshman season at Arizona.

Given that history, Kerr’s perspective has always been different than most basketball players.

In the summer of 1986 while playing for Team USA at the World Championships in Spain, Kerr, his teammates and coach Lute Olson took a bus to the Rock of Gibraltar for a day of sightseeing.

I had the privilege to be on the bus that day. When it arrived at Gibraltar, a group of USA players chose to stay on the bus and nap while others toured the historic, often war-torn area.

After he realized some of his teammates stayed on the bus, Kerr returned and sternly told them they should get off the bus and learn of the great history at the Rock of Gibraltar.

All of the players got off the bus. Kerr acted as their guide,

Steve Kerr is a wonderful basketball coach and a legend in Tucson, but I’ve always thought that day as a tour guide in Gibraltar was one of his finest hours.