The Star's longtime columnist on Arizona's history of Pac-12 coaches of the year, how Augie Busch's replacement at UA swim coach should have an easier go of it in Big 12, Pima hoops' recruitment of a Majerley, Dave Heeke's next college sports move, and houses divided when it comes to football recruiting.
Numbers speak loudly in defense of Shields' marvelous UA tennis run
To fully appreciate what it took Clancy Shields to again become the Pac-12 Men’s Tennis Coach of the Year, the numbers speak loudly.
According to the media guides of Stanford, USC and UCLA, Arizona had the following career records against those national powers when Shields was hired away from Utah State in 2016:
• Dating to 1936, USC led Arizona 101-1
People are also reading…
• Dating to 1967, UCLA led Arizona 70-0
• Dating to 1973, Stanford led Arizona 68-2
(Arizona's records only go back to 2000.)
Shields opened 0-19 in Pac-12 competition his first three seasons. To soften the blow, he scheduled nonconference matches against Mesa Community College, Arizona Christian University, Grand Canyon and NAU.
Shields finally beat USC and UCLA in 2021. He knocked off Stanford a year later. Now he has gone 8-2 against those three tennis giants the last three seasons, with three Pac-12 regular-season championships.
After beating No. 20 Stanford for the Pac-12 tournament title last week, he tweeted: “The heartbeat of a champion beats in every underdog.’’
Arizona is no longer an underdog in men’s tennis. The Wildcats not only tied for the Pac-12 regular season title and won the conference tournament in 2024, they beat No. 3 Texas, No. 11 Illinois, No. 12 Texas A&M, No. 15 Michigan State and No. 24 Baylor.
Shields has been voted Pac-12 Coach of the Year in 2019, 2021 and 2024. As the Pac-12 enters its final month of competition — 46 years in the books — it’s impressive to learn that he is one of just nine UA coaches to be Pac-10/12 coach of the year three times or more. The roll call:
• Men’s basketball, 11: Lute Olson (7) 1986, 1988, 1989, 1993, 1994, 1998, 2003; Sean Miller (3), 2011, 2014, 2017; Tommy Lloyd (1), 2022
• Softball, 11: Mike Candrea (11), 1987, 1988, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2007, 2017
• Women’s swimming, 9: Frank Busch (8), 1991, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008; Dick Jochums, (1), 1988
• Men’s cross country, 7: Dave Murray (7), 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1994, 1999
• Gymnastics: 6: Jim Gault (5), 1989, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996; Bill Ryden (1), 2002
• Baseball, 5: Jerry Kindall (3), 1980, 1989, 1992; Andy Lopez (1), 2012; Jay Johnson (1), 2021
• Women’s golf, 5: Kim Haddow (1), 1992; Rick LaRose (1), 1998; Todd McCorkle (1), 2000; Laura Ianello (2), 2010, 2019
• Men’s tennis, 5: Ted Kissel (1), 1981; Tad Berkowitz (1), 2009; Shields (3), 2019, 2021, 2024
• Men’s golf, 4: Rick LaRose (3), 1987, 1991, 2004; Jim Anderson (1), 2021
• Men’s swimming, 3: Busch (3), 1993, 2001, 2008
• Football, 2: Dick Tomey (1), 1992; Rich Rodriguez (1), 2014
• Track and Field, 1: Fred Harvey (1), 2011
• Volleyball, 1: Dave Rubio (1), 2000
• Soccer, 1: Dan Tobias (1), 2004
• Women’s basketball, 1: Joan Bonvicini (1), 1998
Four observations: (1), Only women’s tennis has not produced a Pac-12 coach of the year over the 1978-2024 period. (2), Women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes, who rebuilt from ashes and reached the Final Four championship game in five years, has not been the league’s coach of the year; (3) Candrea and Busch, both with 11 Coach of the Year awards, do not lead the league in that period. Stanford men’s swimming coach Skip Kenney won the award 20 times. (4), Kissel, the first UA men’s tennis coach to become a Pac-10 coach of the year (1981), was probably the most low-key hire of any of the UA’s 26 coaches of the year. Kissel was the tennis coach at Tucson High School before being hired by the UA in 1980. He subsequently left Tucson to become athletic director at Dayton for 17 years.
Big 12 should be inviting to next UA swimming coach
Arizona’s swimming program used to be so elite that in 2004, South Africa's gold medal-winning 4x100 freestyle relay team at the Athens, Greece, Olympic games was an all-UA foursome: Ryk Neethling, Roland Schoeman, Darian Townsend and Lyndon Ferns.
Time changes. Now, 20 years later, Arizona’s men’s swimming team has had just one men’s individual winner — Brooks Fail — in the last six Pac-12 tournaments (relays and diving not included). That’s one guy in 78 events.
Beyond that, the once swimming-poor ASU Sun Devils not only won the 2024 men’s national championship, but they have swept the once-mighty Wildcats in their last six dual meets. The scores hurt. In order, from 2018-24, they were:
• 203-94, ASU
• 160-140, ASU
• 202-92, ASU
• 195-103, ASU
• 223-58, ASU
• 227-73, ASU
Almost no swimming coach at any school, not even Augie Busch, son of Arizona coaching icon Frank Busch, could survive those results.
The UA ended Augie Busch’s seven-year run as the UA’s men’s and women’s swimming coach on Friday. It’s not all on Augie. His predecessors, Rick DeMont and Eric Hansen, were unable to sustain Frank Busch’s two decades of excellence when he left the program in 2011 to become director of the USA Olympics national teams.
It has been 13 years since Arizona last seriously contended for the NCAA championship, something Frank Busch did almost routinely from 1995-2011. What’s next?
Swimming in the Big 12 is nowhere near as difficult and competitive as in the Pac-12, which includes national powers Stanford, Cal, ASU and USC. Arizona’s next coach should get the luxury of some break-in time.
Though ASU goes with Arizona to the Big 12, of the returning Big 12 teams, BYU (35th) was the only men’s program to finish in the NCAA’s Top 40 last month. Of the women’s teams, Kansas (32nd), Cincinnati (38th) and Houston (40th) were the only teams to score in the NCAA finals. However, the UA women’s team failed to score at the national finals.
Augie Busch was a pillar of the UA’s run to the 2008 men’s and women’s national championships, a global recruiter who helped put the Wildcats at the level of superpowers such as Stanford, Cal, Auburn, Michigan and Texas. But now, 16 years later, the Wildcats will be starting over much the way a young Frank Busch did when he left Cincinnati to become Arizona’s coach in 1989.
Short stuff: Pima AD/coach Jacome's double-duty not uncommon; Heeke's next college sports move
• It was a busy week for Pima College men’s basketball coach Brian Peabody. He coordinated the 26th annual Dick McConnell Coaching Awards banquet at mid-week. Sahuaro’s Jim Henry, the state Class 4A runner-up, won the big school’s trophy as top coach of 2023-24. The Gregory Scholl’s Craig Everson won the small-school’s award, leading the Hawks to a third state championship in seven years. After that, Peabody, ever a fierce recruiter, signed Central Michigan shooting guard Max Majerle for the 2024-25 season. Sound familiar? The son of Phoenix Suns legend Dan Majerle played the last two seasons with CMU, his father’s alma mater. Max sat out the 2023-24 season with an injury and will have one season of eligibility at Pima. He was an all-state guard at Arcadia High School in Phoenix. Peabody got to know Dan Majerle through his former PCC assistant coach Chris Crevelone, who was on Majerle’s staff at GCU during a period that Majerle recruited Pima guard Rashad Smith. ...
• Former Arizona athletic director Dave Heeke has been decompressing in Florida in recent weeks, hoping to return to college athletics in some capacity. Perhaps he could be a consultant for a search firm, as former UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero is for DHR-Global, a firm that also employs ex-Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson. Heeke’s front office staff at Arizona has been reduced by new AD Desireé Reed-Francois. Chief of staff Krystal Swindlehurst parted ways with the UA three weeks ago. Last week, Brent Blaylock, Heeke’s senior associate AD for administration and institutional control, accepted a similar job at the sinking ship that is Oregon State’s athletic department. Blaylock seemed something like a babysitter at the UA, charged with day-to-day observations of the UA men’s basketball team after it came under investigation by the FBI and NCAA. That’s a $225,000 salary that could be used toward more useful assignments during the UA’s financial crisis. ...
• New Pima College athletic director Ken Jacome does double-duty now. He is the head coach of the Aztecs’ highly successful baseball program, 44-14, waiting to play in the Region I championship series starting Thursday. Jacome isn’t the only ACCAC athletic director who doubles as a head coach. Ex-Arizona Wildcat baseball standout Rob Shabansky is the AD and baseball coach at Gateway Community College; South Mountain CC athletic director Todd Eastin has also been his school’s baseball coach for 21 years. ...
• Jeremy Harden, a former Tucson High and Pima College basketball player who for 12 years has climbed through the coaching ranks in college basketball, last week was hired to be an assistant coach under Kyle Smith at Stanford. Harden was on Smith’s Washington State staff this year when the Cougars swept Arizona, including a win at McKale Center made memorable when Jeremy proposed to his fiance, Megan, on the A at center court immediately after the game. ...
• Former Salpointe Catholic High School all-state basketball player Majok Deng has been invited to the Olympic basketball trials for Sudan, along with ex-UA basketball player Emmanuel Akot, who finished his college career at Boise State and Western Kentucky. Deng, an all-state player at Salpointe who played three seasons at Pepperdine, led Colorado School of Mines to a 24-9 record and the NCAA Division II Tournament last season. He led Mines with a 17.4 average.
My two cents: Football recruiting not always all in the family
Last week, I was fortunate to meet former ASU cornerback Mike Haynes, a Pro Football Hall of Famer, and listened as he articulated what it has been like for his son, UA sophomore receiver Rex Haynes, to play for the rival Arizona Wildcats.
“He really enjoys it here,’’ said Haynes. “It’s a good school, a good place for him. As a younger man, I never thought I’d say that.’’
Haynes, a College Football Hall of Famer and two-time consensus All-American (he's also in the Pro Football Hall) who played for Frank Kush’s Sun Devils from 1972-75, no longer talks with emotion about losing to Jim Young’s Wildcats 10-0 in 1974.
“I hated Arizona; we all did,’’ Hayes said with a laugh. “But when I got to the NFL, it changed. I appreciated their accomplishments.’’ Haynes even played with Arizona Hall of Fame linebacker Ricky Hunley while with the Raiders. “We all got along,’’ he remembers.
That came to mind last week when ex-Salpointe offensive tackle Bruno Fina announced he was leaving his final two seasons of eligibility at UCLA to enter the transfer portal. Speculation is that he will return to Tucson to play at the alma mater of his father, John Fina, a 1991 All-Pac-10 tackle who played 11 NFL seasons.
Bruno, who started 13 games at UCLA last season, is a legacy recruit like few others. But it doesn’t mean he’ll follow in his father’s footsteps.
The top prep QB in Tucson history, Sahuaro’s Rodney Peete, chose to attend USC in the mid-’80s even though his father, Willie Peete, had been a starting UA football end from 1956-59 and an assistant coach at Arizona from 1971-83. Skip Peete, Willie’s oldest son, was a UA receiver from 1981-82. Yet Rodney chose to play elsewhere.
At about the same time, the UA’s popular linebackers coach, Tom Roggeman, watched his two Parade All-American sons leave Tucson to play elsewhere. Sahuaro’s Rock Roggeman chose to play at Notre Dame, and Salpointe’s Buck Roggeman chose Stanford.
Arizona has had many father-son football combos — Scott and Larry McKee; Lance and Billy Prickett; Charles and Brandon Nash; Chester and Keyan Burnett; Hillard and Bob Crum; David and Trevor Wood; John Black and John R. Black; Brian and J.T. Hand — but as Mike Haynes has come to learn, there is no sure thing in football recruiting.
Contact sports columnist Greg Hansen at GHansenAZStar@gmail.com. On X(Twitter): @ghansen711