Greg Hansen: What to expect in the Pac-12 basketball season

The cover page of ASU’s athletic website insists, in bold letters: PROTECT OUR HOUSE, Jan. 19, 2013.

Greg Hansen: Wildcats will have Sun Devils seeing red

In 1989, moments before kickoff at Sun Devil Stadium, Arizona State’s charged from its locker room in uniforms much different than those it wore during pre-game drills.

Greg Hansen: Grogginess nothing new to football

In Jim Krohn’s quarterbacking days, first at Amphitheater High School and later as the Arizona Wildcats’ starter, 1978 and 1979, he estimates he suffered “eight or 10 concussions.”

Greg Hansen: Conquistadores making impact for 50 years

Even today, 50 years later, you can run your finger down the long-ago records of the exemplary Arizona Wildcats golf program, 1935-2012, and not find a single entry of the 1962 Wildcats, as if they didn’t exist.

Greg Hansen: Tucsonan has lived 'pretty amazing story'

You could write a long story, maybe a book, about the baseball career of Glenn Ezell. No, forget that. It should be a movie. “Bull Durham II” and maybe “III.”

Greg Hansen: Wildcats to debut designer helmets

Retired Tucson pharmacist Joe M. Mendez is a 92-year-old season ticket-holder who paid 10 cents for a Knothole Club ticket at the 1937 Arizona-Oregon football game.

Greg Hansen: UA football's spread era different from Desert Swarm

My recollection of the Orange Bowl is decades old now, gathering dust, but two things remain forever frozen from the game played 20 years ago this weekend.

Greg Hansen: Coaches' families can bring peace among tumult

In the post-game mob scene at Arizona Stadium, as Matt Scott conducted the band in “Bear Down, Arizona,” Raquel Rodriguez found her father in the crowd, took a running start and jumped into his arms, an embrace that probably meant as much to Rich Rodriguez as hanging 59 points on the Oklahom…

Greg Hansen: Local baseball tryout camp opens eyes

On an otherwise quiet Saturday at Pima College, scouts from the Yankees, White Sox, Reds, Diamondbacks, Astros and Giants, and about 25 college coaches filled the third base dugout before the sun had a chance to clear the morning clouds.

Olympics: Tucson native Leverenz has come a long way

Frank Busch’s named popped up on my cell phone Tuesday at 1:12 p.m.

Arizona Wildcats track: Barrett leaves for Olympics today

To celebrate Brigetta Barrett’s departure to the London Olympics, UA track coach Sheldon Blockburger ordered a red, white and blue cake, appropriately decorated with the five Olympic rings and, yes, a high jump pit.

Bill Mehle's life defined by more than games won, lost

Bill Mehle was 18 when he received his first paycheck from the Boston Red Sox. It was 1950, and he played for the Wilson Tobacconists of the Class D Coastal Plains League.

Arizona Wildcats baseball: Heyer's 17-hitter a thing of beauty

One spring day in 1957, short on pitching, UA coach Frank Sancet let Ajo right-hander Burdette Morago pitch his way into trouble — and out of trouble — and back into trouble against the Wisconsin Badgers.

Arizona Wildcats track: UA's Sambu an overnight sensation

Rather than be part of his high school’s sports programs, Stephen Sambu cleaned windows at the school. “That was the punishment,” he says now. “If you don’t run, you clean the windows.”

Greg Hansen: College Football Hall of Fame the toughest hall to join

I run my finger down the ballot, 76 names, and do not find a single player unworthy of selection to the College Football Hall of Fame. I would vote for all 76.

Pima Aztecs softball: Witnessing the birth of a rivalry

In the State of Softball, which is an accurate description of Arizona and especially Tucson over the last 25 years, there are two people who can create such a stir that a game almost stops when the players, coaches and fans turn their heads upon hearing “Hey, isn’t that Mike Candrea?”

Arizona Wildcats basketball: Korcheck will add to UA's production from Tucsonans

If anyone is still looking for an explanation why Sean Miller examined the Maryland coaching vacancy (and its fertile recruiting turf) last year, these figures just became available:

Tucson Padres: Coaches make up quite a subplot

Steve Webber will wear jersey No. 27 for the Tucson Padres this year, which is about one numeral for every baseball team he has played for or coached since he left tiny Van Buren High School of Keosauqua, Iowa, in 1966.

Arizona Wildcats softball: Stress is one of biggest coaching hazards

In my first year of high school, our baseball team played at Worthington Field. Our football team played at the Worthington Park complex. My first high school PE teacher was “Coach Worthington.”

Golf: Rocco Bene an all-star in local golf circles

In the prime of his life, Rocco Bene sold $117,000 worth of tickets to the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championships. That's a dollar sign followed by six digits. Another year it was $108,000.

Greg Hansen: UA swim team thriving under new coach

Stanford has won 30 consecutive Pac-12 men's swimming championships and is so overpowering at the Avery Aquatic Center that it is might be the most imposing road venue in the league, any sport, any gender.

Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Looking in wrong place

Linda Hatfield, chairwoman of the Pima Area Labor Federation, proposed that the Randolph Golf Complex should be sold to commercial developers to help balance the city budget and avoid further layoffs.

Greg Hansen: Stanford-Arizona game reminiscent of good old days

In the final moments of Arizona's video introductions, a red neon sign at the McKale Center ticket office flashes SOLD OUT.

Greg Hansen: Aztecs finding their spirit

Late Saturday afternoon, when almost no one except a few hundred people in the Aztecs' gym were paying attention, Pima stunned ACCAC powerhouse Cochise College 104-91. And it wasn't a fluke.

Greg Hansen: Rebuilding always a slow task

In the transition from old coach to new coach, Arizona lost six players, and the translation is that the Wildcats lost again to Arizona State on Sunday night.

Hansen's Sunday Notebook: Dykes' job is half filled

Upon Sonny Dykes' departure to Louisiana Tech, Mike Stoops quickly posted an opening for a co-offensive coordinator, which wasn't unexpected.

Greg Hansen: Blowout in Tempe had feel of Lute's days

Kevin O'Neill and Russ Pennell couldn't beat the Sun Devils, not in five games, never able to figure out Herb Sendek's "Hoosiers"-era zone defense. Sean Miller finally cracked the code.

Greg Hansen: Coaching paths cross over more than a good dribbler

Rihards Kuksiks is the Pac-10's most feared three-point shooter. Do you know who recruited him to Arizona State? UA associate head coach Archie Miller.

Greg Hansen: Best buy could be to pay less

Since Pop McKale's retirement in 1957, Arizona's five full-time athletic directors have included the school's boxing coach/PE teacher, the football coach at New Mexico, a former basketball coach at Michigan and sitting athletic directors at Houston and Washington State.

Greg Hansen: Rare air for Panthers

Amphi appears to be onto something so special that it has a chance to win its first basketball state championship in 71 years of existence. In his third season as Amphi's head coach, Ben Hurley has implemented a dribble-drive offense that has become the rage, invented by once-obscure junior-…

Greg Hansen: Introducing … a UA team that merits respect

EUGENE, Ore. -After a classic pre-tipoff tribute to Lute Olson on Saturday at Mac Court, public address announcer Don Essig asked the crowd to welcome Arizona's new head coach "Russ. … John … Miller."

Greg Hansen's Sunday Notebook: UA All-American's son pouring in threes for San Diego high school

Don't look now but a three-point shooting star with UA and NBA genes has moved onto college basketball's recruiting radar. Last name rhymes with legend.

Cats steeling themselves for one last Big Mac attack

EUGENE, Ore. - This unholy place, Mac Court, was already 52 and in a famously bad mood when Arizona played its first basketball game here on Jan. 12, 1979. It didn't take long to loathe its existence.

Inexperience shows in close loss

CORVALLIS - Arizona lost a game that seemed almost impossible to lose, 67-64, and by the time Miller left the arena his voice was strained.

Hansen: UA football ticket cost going up

Had Arizona whipped Nebraska in the Holiday Bowl, or even lost in a stirring finish, it was conceivable that the 2010 Wildcats could've drawn in excess of 400,000 fans for the first time and virtually sold out Arizona Stadium.

Match Play a challenge in '10, not a problem

The distressed PGA Tour launched its 2010 schedule last week with a South Korean sponsor, a 27-man field minus Phil Mickelson, and Yogi Berra trotted out to entertain the media at the sponsor-starved Bob Hope Classic.

Cats display snippets of progress; 8-8 not so bad

McKale Center is no longer the basketball fortress of the previous 25 years, no longer a sold-out showplace of Top 25 basketball, but on Sunday afternoon the Wildcats all but shouted an advance warning. Something like: IT WON'T BE MUCH LONGER.

Interim AD moves in

sunday notebook

Beating UA at McKale easier task these days

Washington State's Ken Bone is the 55th Pac-10 head coach to sit on the visitors' bench at McKale Center and on Friday night he became just the 32nd to win a game there.

Good times had by all in bowls

The Pac-10 granted Arizona $1.1 million in Holiday Bowl expenses, ranging from $30,000 for new helmets to about $175,000 to lodge the band, cheerleaders and twirlers at the Sheraton at Symphony Hall.

No. 1 on list of embarrassments

In the days leading to the Fiasco Bowl, Nebraska coach Bo Pelini did three things that would lead to the single most embarrassing football game in UA history.

Greg Hansen's 2009 Top 100

1. Russ Pennell. Interim UA head basketball coach experienced the sweetness of the NCAA tournament.

Pickup-driving coach gave UA a touch of class

In his provocative season as Arizona's basketball coach, Russ Pennell grew a beard, commuted to work in a pickup truck and hired his dad to help him figure it all out.

Bowl loss will make Cats reset their focus

If you want a happy ending to Arizona's football season, I'll give you one:

Startled Cats never had chance vs. Big Red

On a night the UA football program would've been happy had ESPN lost its audio and video feeds, a night the Wildcats played their worst game of the Mike Stoops years, the Holiday Bowl came off as a game between the Big 12 and the Little One.

As in glory days, Huskers are good but boring team

Dear Mr. Football: What did Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne mean when he said, "People used to hate to play us?"

Memo to fans of 'outclassed' Wildcats: Be patient

Someone goofed up the pre-game protocol Monday night at McKale Center because BYU's starting lineup wasn't introduced. The Cougars weren't given a few moments for some polite applause or even some leftover boos from the WAC days.

Ex-Wildcat a wild card

Cedric Dempsey, former executive director of the NCAA and Arizona's athletic director from 1982 to 1993, says that the UA's vacant athletic directorship will appeal "to many sitting athletic directors" at BCS-type schools.