Sunday Notebook: Pac-12 foes trump Arizona in bad schedule department
- Updated
Star sports columnist Greg Hansen offers his opinion on recent sports news.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Just when I thought it wasn’t possible to put together a more dismal nonconference home basketball schedule than Arizona in 2016-17, the Pac-12 followed suit.
Doesn’t anybody care what the ticket-buying fans think any more?
After more schedules were announced last week, look at this list of nonconference home games in the Pac-12:
Utah — Coppin State, UC Riverside, Butler, Montana State, Utah Valley, Prairie View A&M, Concordia. Comment: Ugh.
Colorado — Sacramento State, Wofford, Colorado State, Xavier, Fort Hays State, Eastern Washington. Comment: Ugh times two, although Xavier is a rare quality opponent.
UCLA — Pacific, Cal State Northridge, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, Michigan, Western Michigan, Long Beach State, San Diego. Comment: Pacific coach Damon Stoudamire’s first game as a head coach will be as a victim-in-waiting at Pauley Pavilion.
Arizona State — Central Arkansas, New Mexico State, UNLV, Citadel, Cal Poly, Portland State, Creighton. Comment: Typical ASU list of cupcakes, especially since Creighton’s days as a mini-power are over.
Arizona — UC Irvine, Texas Southern, Sacred Heart, New Mexico, Cal State Bakersfield, Northern Colorado, Grand Canyon. Comment: Arizona’s worst home schedule since 1983-84.
Bonus bad schedule: Arizona women’s basketball: Alcorn State, North Texas, Florida Atlantic, San Diego, Grambling, Utah State, Portland State. Comment: That might be the worst Power 5 home nonconference schedule in women’s hoops. The Wildcats play a road game at Kansas, which sounds good on paper, but the Jayhawks went 0-18 in the Big 12 last year. Dreadful.
The Pac-12 has so many losers on the composite nonconference home schedule that it’s difficult to imagine there is a bigger loser. But there is. It’s the guy down the street who bought season tickets and got stuck with seven blowouts.
College coaches and athletic directors use the “no one will play us on our home court” excuse, but that’s a thin and misleading half-truth. The schools allow ESPN and other broadcast carriers to dictate their nonconference schedules in faraway, neutral settings, many of which don’t fill half the seats.
Until fans speak up and stay away, don’t expect much to change.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
- Updated
Tucson’s big four athletes of the week:
1. Bernard Lagat. His come-from-nowhere final 200 meters to win the U.S. Olympic Trials 5,000 meters stirred memories of Billy Mills’ epic finish to win the 1964 Tokyo Olympics gold medal at 10,000 meters. The 41-year-old Tucsonan had a doubly good week when he learned his younger sister, Violah Lagat, made the Kenyan Olympic team in the 1,500 meters.
2. Nick Quintana. The incoming UA shortstop eschewed the Boston Red Sox’ bonus offer and will play for the Wildcats. Incredibly, only three of the first 328 players drafted did not sign and become pros. Quintana, an 11th-round pick, was one of those three. The last UA baseball player to bypass a sizable bonus offer was catcher Nick Hundley, drafted in the fifth round by the Marlins in 2002. He is now in his eighth year in the big leagues.
3. Joe Lohmeier. One of the city’s top prospects while at Sahuaro High School in the 1990s, Lohmeier was a linebacker and special teams player at Arizona. He has distinguished himself in life after football. He is the vice president worldwide of Avaya, an international computer software firm. Lohmeier has moved to Prescott and on Saturday opened a state-of-the-art, 7,500-square foot bar/restaurant on historic Whiskey Row. Lohmeier calls it a “Johnny Cash tribute bar/music venue and Arizona history steakhouse.” Its name: Far From Folsom.
4. Matt Korcheck. The former UA and Sabino High School basketball player is in the middle of his rookie season of Australian rules football. He is playing for the Northern Blues in the Victorian Football League, which is the equivalent of a Triple A baseball team in the Pacific Coast League. Korcheck, who had never played Australian rules football at this time last year, was recently sent down by the parent Carlton FC to the VFL’s development league. He previously played every match for the Northern Blues’ senior team.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Incoming UA freshman power forward Lauri Markkanen scored 18 points and had eight rebounds, both team highs, in the FIBA U20 European Championship on Saturday in Helsinki, his hometown. The Finns lost to Israel and play Spain today. After the European finals, Markkanen will train with the Finland national team for about three weeks before enrolling at Arizona.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Shooting guard Dylan Smith, a transfer from UNC-Asheville, moved to Tucson last week and has begun training with the UA basketball team. He might be the outside shooter the UA has been searching for since Salim Stoudamire left school in 2005. Smith made 320 of 500 three-point shots in one of his first (lengthy) workouts on campus; he will redshirt in 2016-17.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
UA sophomore center Chance Comanche’s trip to Australia as part of a mixed Pac-12 squad wasn’t a breakout performance. Coach Mike Montgomery gave Comanche just 25 total minutes in two games against Australia’s Olympic team; he scored two points. He played the fewest minutes and scored the fewest points on the team. You wonder if Monty was able to fully evaluate Comanche in just four practices before traveling to Australia. UA senior combo guard Kadeem Allen led the Pac-12 in scoring (24) and minutes (49).
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Had to laugh that the Pac-12 attempted cost-cutting measures by having TV broadcasters Don MacLean and Roxy Bernstein call the games from the Pac-12 studios in San Francisco, reacting to a TV monitor from Australia. League commissioner Larry Scott has rarely cut corners, using private jets and town cars when he travels around the conference. The league is often so excessive in its spending that when UA football coach Rich Rodriguez and players Nate Phillips and Sani Fuimaono attended Pac-12 football Media Days last week in Los Angeles, they chartered a private jet. There are three direct flights from Tucson to Los Angeles every day on Southwest Airlines alone. But there is some financial sanity: Single game tickets for the UA-ASU Territorial Cup football game (Nov. 25) went on sale Saturday. They range from $10 to $215. Yes, $10. Get ’em while they last.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
ASU football coach Todd Graham spoke eagerly of the “reinvention” of Sun Devil Stadium during Pac-12 Media Days last week. ASU is spending $268 million and has cut capacity from about 74,000 to 56,232. That’s almost exactly the capacity of Arizona Stadium, although when Arizona begins the “reinvention” of Arizona Stadium in a few years, it’s likely capacity will be reduced to about 48,000. The downsizing of stadiums is a reflection on the times; younger people aren’t as interested in college football as they were 20 and 30 years ago. Late starting times peel away thousands of potential ticket-buyers. In 1989, the Arizona-ASU game in Tempe drew 74,926. That seems like eons ago.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
The Pac-12 last week said game officials will make players tuck in jerseys at all times, making it a point of emphasis. What is this, the NFL? Isn’t football meant to be a dirty, grimy game, with players rolling around in the mud and dirt? Not necessarily. ASU plans to lay the sod of the new stadium this week; it will be one of just four natural surfaces in the Pac-12, along with Stanford, UCLA and USC.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
The Sun Devils parted ways with men’s golf coach Tim Mickelson last week — he’s Phil’s younger brother. Part of it was about money. Isn’t it always? Mickelson’s contract expired in late June and he chose to leave rather than take ASU’s new offer. Golf coaches in the Pac-12 aren’t part of the big money train. No UA golf coach in history has had a base salary of $100,000 or more. Oregon’s Casey Martin, at $170,000, and Washington’s Matt Thurmond ($210,000) are believed to be the highest-paid golf coaches in the league.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Jalen Harris, son of Desert Swarm and Tucson High linebacker Sean Harris, a third-team AP All-American in 1993, last week said Arizona is one of his final six recruiting choices, with ASU, Oregon State, Oregon, Colorado and Washington State. Harris is a 6-foot-3, 210-pound outside linebacker who plays at Mesa Desert Ridge. His uncle, Lamar Harris, played at Tucson High and was a starting tight end at Arizona in the early 1990s.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
In what has been an unsettling offseason at Sunnyside High School, the Blue Devils have hired freshman basketball coach Jimmy Rosthenhausler to replace Rob Harrison. Athletic director Dan Bartley also hired former Tempe Marcos de Niza football coach Roy Lopez to be Sunnyside’s new football coach. For decades, Sunnyside was one of the most stable athletic departments among Tucson’s high schools, with Richard Sanchez, Dwight Rees, Ernie Palomarez and Bobby DeBerry running first-class programs. But Lopez will be the school’s third football coach in eight months. Rosthenhausler has all the key background experience: He has been Sunnyside’s freshman coach for nine years, and has been a Blue Devils assistant baseball coach. With point guard Mikey Silva and center Santino Duarte returning for their senior seasons, the Blue Devils might be as good as any basketball team in Southern Arizona again.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Pima College All-America point guard Sydni Stallworth will fly to Niceville, Florida, this week to take part in the NJCAA All-Star Game festivities. The Palo Verde High grad is just the third Aztec to ever be invited to the All-Star weekend, joining Tia Morrison and Flowing Wells grad Abyee Maracigan, who did so twice.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Michael A. Lopez, son of former UA baseball coach Andy Lopez, and part of the 2012 College World Series championship program, is starting his own coaching career. Michael will be an assistant coach for Howard College in Big Spring, Texas, in 2016-17.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Pima College football coach Jim Monaco will stage the school’s first-ever public meet and greet fundraiser Wednesday and Thursday from 6-7:30 p.m., at Sir Veza’s restaurant adjacent to the Tucson Mall. The Western States Football League has scheduled PCC to play at NJCAA powerhouse Snow College again this year, on Oct. 15. Last year, Pima made the 662-mile drive to Ephraim, Utah, twice, the final time in the league championship game. It doesn’t seem right that Snow won’t have to drive to Tucson this season.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Twenty years ago, Tucson had five standalone golf driving ranges. Now? None.
Jack Conrad operated a large and busy driving range on River Road that has since been replaced by a subdivision of homes. There were also driving ranges on Tanque Verde Road, on West Price Road and on East 22nd Street.
The last survivor was the Practice Tee, at 4050 W. Costco Drive, near Interstate 10 and Orange Grove Road. It went out of business on July 1 as fewer and fewer golfers paid $7 or whatever to hit a bucket of balls.
Much like the diminishing play on American (and Tucson) golf courses, the old driving-range game has not been grasped by millennials.
Why? I think it’s because hitting a bucket of balls is not always fun. There is little instant gratification. It’s frustrating and, if you do it right, difficult.
If you want to hit a few practice shots, now you have to drive to an authentic golf course. You won’t have any difficulty finding a space.
More like this...
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Just when I thought it wasn’t possible to put together a more dismal nonconference home basketball schedule than Arizona in 2016-17, the Pac-12 followed suit.
Doesn’t anybody care what the ticket-buying fans think any more?
After more schedules were announced last week, look at this list of nonconference home games in the Pac-12:
Utah — Coppin State, UC Riverside, Butler, Montana State, Utah Valley, Prairie View A&M, Concordia. Comment: Ugh.
Colorado — Sacramento State, Wofford, Colorado State, Xavier, Fort Hays State, Eastern Washington. Comment: Ugh times two, although Xavier is a rare quality opponent.
UCLA — Pacific, Cal State Northridge, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, Michigan, Western Michigan, Long Beach State, San Diego. Comment: Pacific coach Damon Stoudamire’s first game as a head coach will be as a victim-in-waiting at Pauley Pavilion.
Arizona State — Central Arkansas, New Mexico State, UNLV, Citadel, Cal Poly, Portland State, Creighton. Comment: Typical ASU list of cupcakes, especially since Creighton’s days as a mini-power are over.
Arizona — UC Irvine, Texas Southern, Sacred Heart, New Mexico, Cal State Bakersfield, Northern Colorado, Grand Canyon. Comment: Arizona’s worst home schedule since 1983-84.
Bonus bad schedule: Arizona women’s basketball: Alcorn State, North Texas, Florida Atlantic, San Diego, Grambling, Utah State, Portland State. Comment: That might be the worst Power 5 home nonconference schedule in women’s hoops. The Wildcats play a road game at Kansas, which sounds good on paper, but the Jayhawks went 0-18 in the Big 12 last year. Dreadful.
The Pac-12 has so many losers on the composite nonconference home schedule that it’s difficult to imagine there is a bigger loser. But there is. It’s the guy down the street who bought season tickets and got stuck with seven blowouts.
College coaches and athletic directors use the “no one will play us on our home court” excuse, but that’s a thin and misleading half-truth. The schools allow ESPN and other broadcast carriers to dictate their nonconference schedules in faraway, neutral settings, many of which don’t fill half the seats.
Until fans speak up and stay away, don’t expect much to change.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Tucson’s big four athletes of the week:
1. Bernard Lagat. His come-from-nowhere final 200 meters to win the U.S. Olympic Trials 5,000 meters stirred memories of Billy Mills’ epic finish to win the 1964 Tokyo Olympics gold medal at 10,000 meters. The 41-year-old Tucsonan had a doubly good week when he learned his younger sister, Violah Lagat, made the Kenyan Olympic team in the 1,500 meters.
2. Nick Quintana. The incoming UA shortstop eschewed the Boston Red Sox’ bonus offer and will play for the Wildcats. Incredibly, only three of the first 328 players drafted did not sign and become pros. Quintana, an 11th-round pick, was one of those three. The last UA baseball player to bypass a sizable bonus offer was catcher Nick Hundley, drafted in the fifth round by the Marlins in 2002. He is now in his eighth year in the big leagues.
3. Joe Lohmeier. One of the city’s top prospects while at Sahuaro High School in the 1990s, Lohmeier was a linebacker and special teams player at Arizona. He has distinguished himself in life after football. He is the vice president worldwide of Avaya, an international computer software firm. Lohmeier has moved to Prescott and on Saturday opened a state-of-the-art, 7,500-square foot bar/restaurant on historic Whiskey Row. Lohmeier calls it a “Johnny Cash tribute bar/music venue and Arizona history steakhouse.” Its name: Far From Folsom.
4. Matt Korcheck. The former UA and Sabino High School basketball player is in the middle of his rookie season of Australian rules football. He is playing for the Northern Blues in the Victorian Football League, which is the equivalent of a Triple A baseball team in the Pacific Coast League. Korcheck, who had never played Australian rules football at this time last year, was recently sent down by the parent Carlton FC to the VFL’s development league. He previously played every match for the Northern Blues’ senior team.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Incoming UA freshman power forward Lauri Markkanen scored 18 points and had eight rebounds, both team highs, in the FIBA U20 European Championship on Saturday in Helsinki, his hometown. The Finns lost to Israel and play Spain today. After the European finals, Markkanen will train with the Finland national team for about three weeks before enrolling at Arizona.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Shooting guard Dylan Smith, a transfer from UNC-Asheville, moved to Tucson last week and has begun training with the UA basketball team. He might be the outside shooter the UA has been searching for since Salim Stoudamire left school in 2005. Smith made 320 of 500 three-point shots in one of his first (lengthy) workouts on campus; he will redshirt in 2016-17.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
UA sophomore center Chance Comanche’s trip to Australia as part of a mixed Pac-12 squad wasn’t a breakout performance. Coach Mike Montgomery gave Comanche just 25 total minutes in two games against Australia’s Olympic team; he scored two points. He played the fewest minutes and scored the fewest points on the team. You wonder if Monty was able to fully evaluate Comanche in just four practices before traveling to Australia. UA senior combo guard Kadeem Allen led the Pac-12 in scoring (24) and minutes (49).
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Had to laugh that the Pac-12 attempted cost-cutting measures by having TV broadcasters Don MacLean and Roxy Bernstein call the games from the Pac-12 studios in San Francisco, reacting to a TV monitor from Australia. League commissioner Larry Scott has rarely cut corners, using private jets and town cars when he travels around the conference. The league is often so excessive in its spending that when UA football coach Rich Rodriguez and players Nate Phillips and Sani Fuimaono attended Pac-12 football Media Days last week in Los Angeles, they chartered a private jet. There are three direct flights from Tucson to Los Angeles every day on Southwest Airlines alone. But there is some financial sanity: Single game tickets for the UA-ASU Territorial Cup football game (Nov. 25) went on sale Saturday. They range from $10 to $215. Yes, $10. Get ’em while they last.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
ASU football coach Todd Graham spoke eagerly of the “reinvention” of Sun Devil Stadium during Pac-12 Media Days last week. ASU is spending $268 million and has cut capacity from about 74,000 to 56,232. That’s almost exactly the capacity of Arizona Stadium, although when Arizona begins the “reinvention” of Arizona Stadium in a few years, it’s likely capacity will be reduced to about 48,000. The downsizing of stadiums is a reflection on the times; younger people aren’t as interested in college football as they were 20 and 30 years ago. Late starting times peel away thousands of potential ticket-buyers. In 1989, the Arizona-ASU game in Tempe drew 74,926. That seems like eons ago.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
The Pac-12 last week said game officials will make players tuck in jerseys at all times, making it a point of emphasis. What is this, the NFL? Isn’t football meant to be a dirty, grimy game, with players rolling around in the mud and dirt? Not necessarily. ASU plans to lay the sod of the new stadium this week; it will be one of just four natural surfaces in the Pac-12, along with Stanford, UCLA and USC.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
The Sun Devils parted ways with men’s golf coach Tim Mickelson last week — he’s Phil’s younger brother. Part of it was about money. Isn’t it always? Mickelson’s contract expired in late June and he chose to leave rather than take ASU’s new offer. Golf coaches in the Pac-12 aren’t part of the big money train. No UA golf coach in history has had a base salary of $100,000 or more. Oregon’s Casey Martin, at $170,000, and Washington’s Matt Thurmond ($210,000) are believed to be the highest-paid golf coaches in the league.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Jalen Harris, son of Desert Swarm and Tucson High linebacker Sean Harris, a third-team AP All-American in 1993, last week said Arizona is one of his final six recruiting choices, with ASU, Oregon State, Oregon, Colorado and Washington State. Harris is a 6-foot-3, 210-pound outside linebacker who plays at Mesa Desert Ridge. His uncle, Lamar Harris, played at Tucson High and was a starting tight end at Arizona in the early 1990s.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
In what has been an unsettling offseason at Sunnyside High School, the Blue Devils have hired freshman basketball coach Jimmy Rosthenhausler to replace Rob Harrison. Athletic director Dan Bartley also hired former Tempe Marcos de Niza football coach Roy Lopez to be Sunnyside’s new football coach. For decades, Sunnyside was one of the most stable athletic departments among Tucson’s high schools, with Richard Sanchez, Dwight Rees, Ernie Palomarez and Bobby DeBerry running first-class programs. But Lopez will be the school’s third football coach in eight months. Rosthenhausler has all the key background experience: He has been Sunnyside’s freshman coach for nine years, and has been a Blue Devils assistant baseball coach. With point guard Mikey Silva and center Santino Duarte returning for their senior seasons, the Blue Devils might be as good as any basketball team in Southern Arizona again.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Pima College All-America point guard Sydni Stallworth will fly to Niceville, Florida, this week to take part in the NJCAA All-Star Game festivities. The Palo Verde High grad is just the third Aztec to ever be invited to the All-Star weekend, joining Tia Morrison and Flowing Wells grad Abyee Maracigan, who did so twice.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Michael A. Lopez, son of former UA baseball coach Andy Lopez, and part of the 2012 College World Series championship program, is starting his own coaching career. Michael will be an assistant coach for Howard College in Big Spring, Texas, in 2016-17.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Pima College football coach Jim Monaco will stage the school’s first-ever public meet and greet fundraiser Wednesday and Thursday from 6-7:30 p.m., at Sir Veza’s restaurant adjacent to the Tucson Mall. The Western States Football League has scheduled PCC to play at NJCAA powerhouse Snow College again this year, on Oct. 15. Last year, Pima made the 662-mile drive to Ephraim, Utah, twice, the final time in the league championship game. It doesn’t seem right that Snow won’t have to drive to Tucson this season.
- Greg Hansen Arizona Daily Star
Twenty years ago, Tucson had five standalone golf driving ranges. Now? None.
Jack Conrad operated a large and busy driving range on River Road that has since been replaced by a subdivision of homes. There were also driving ranges on Tanque Verde Road, on West Price Road and on East 22nd Street.
The last survivor was the Practice Tee, at 4050 W. Costco Drive, near Interstate 10 and Orange Grove Road. It went out of business on July 1 as fewer and fewer golfers paid $7 or whatever to hit a bucket of balls.
Much like the diminishing play on American (and Tucson) golf courses, the old driving-range game has not been grasped by millennials.
Why? I think it’s because hitting a bucket of balls is not always fun. There is little instant gratification. It’s frustrating and, if you do it right, difficult.
If you want to hit a few practice shots, now you have to drive to an authentic golf course. You won’t have any difficulty finding a space.
More like this...
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