Citizen Staff Writer
The Bounce

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Had USC basketball coach Tim Floyd accepted the offer to jump to Arizona, it would have been a rarity.

Not many head coaches move from Pac-10 school to Pac-10 school, and Floyd won’t be one of them after deciding to stay with the Trojans.

In the history of the league, there have been only four head basketball coaches to jump within the conference. Just one of those went directly from one school to the other – Marv Harshman, who went from Washington State to Washington after the 1971 season.

The other two-timers are:

• Mike Montgomery. He spent 18 seasons at Stanford, from 1986 to 2004 before trying his hand at the NBA. He returned to college coaching last season, taking over at Cal and directing the Bears to the NCAA Tournament.

• George Raveling. He coached Washington State from 1972 to 1983 before replacing Lute Olson at Iowa. Raveling returned to the Pac-10 in 1987, coaching USC for seven seasons.

• Forrest Twogood. He led Idaho from 1937 to 1941 when the league was the Pacific Coast Conference. He coached at USC from 1951 to 1966.

UA track hosting Shootout

Citizen Staff Report

Decathlon and heptathlon events continue Friday in the annual Jim Click Shootout track and field event at Roy P. Drachman Stadium.

The Shootout started Thursday. Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m., Arizona will host the regular team competition with a new format.

The Pac-10, represented by the Wildcats and Washington, will be matched against the Big 12′s Kansas and Nebraska and the Big Ten’s Penn State and Wisconsin.

Defending NCAA outdoor high jump champion Liz Patterson leads Arizona, which has already qualified 11 athletes in two meets for this year’s NCAA Championships.

The Wildcat women are No. 22 in the nation and the men are unranked.

UA qualifiers include LaTisha Holden (100-meter hurdles), Dahlys Marshall (100m hurdles), Abdi Hassan (1500-meters), Maggie Callahan (300-meter steeplechase), Irine Lagat (5000-meter run), Nick Mossberg (pole vault), Dutch Perryman (pole vault), Tomaz Bogovic (hammer throw), Tyler Johnson (hammer throw), Taylor Freeman (discus throw) and Korion Morris (shot put).

Five Wildcats earned All-America honors at last month’s NCAA Indoor Championships. All, including Patterson, will make their outdoor debuts Saturday.

The others are the husband-and-wife weight throw team of Zack and Nicole Lloyd, weight thrower Megan Howard and pole vaulter Gabriella Ducios, the 2007 Pac-10 outdoor champion, who redshirted last year.

• UA’s top indoor marks, 7C

Tough task for UA women

Citizen Staff Report

The Arizona women’s tennis team will face the most challenging road test of the year when it travels to the Bay Area to play No. 10 Stanford at 2:30 p.m. Friday and No. 8 California at 1 p.m. Saturday.

The Wildcats are 10-5 and 1-2 in Pac-10 play.

Senior Danielle Steinberg leads the Cats with an 11-3 record at the No. 1 position. The top record belongs to freshman Sarah Landsman with a combined 14-1 record.

Citizen Staff Writer
GIMINO COLUMN

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood is a big boy. He knows how the game is played. He knows how we keep score.

I’m sure he has the hate mail to back all this up.

Livengood is fully aware he ultimately will be judged by the company he keeps.

In other words, the coaches he hires.

“We put our professional life on the line all the time in the hiring process, especially in the high-profile sports,” Livengood told me in August 2006. “They have to make it.”

Darn his luck, it doesn’t help his current dilemma that he once went off the reservation and hired football coach John Mackovic – a disaster. He has had only one at-bat since then, replacing Mackovic with Mike Stoops – a passing grade.

Now, Livengood’s first full-scale search for a basketball coach is going as swimmingly as a bowling ball in a lake.

At this point, Livengood isn’t just hoping a new basketball coach makes it; he first has to make the dang hire.

Time to put Plan G into effect.

USC coach Tim Floyd did hold a news conference Thursday, but it wasn’t in Tucson and it wasn’t to say he would love to be the next Arizona basketball coach.

Floyd is staying put at USC, and it sure does look as if Livengood just went down swinging in the bottom of the ninth with the UA basketball program stranded at second base.

It appears to be – and I will stress appears because nobody has had a strong handle on the behind-the-scenes machinations – that Floyd was the last candidate in Livengood’s comfort zone.

Floyd was an established coach who had earned his recruiting stripes and had posted reasonable success, especially considering his host of rebuilding projects.

Floyd was far from the perfect candidate – c’mon, you had to be worried about alleged recruiting improprieties at USC – but you could have made a case he would have worked out just fine here.

Instead, Arizona gets rejected again. This time, by a good-but-not-great coach at a good-but-not-great program.

Shades of the Houston game, it’s as if coaches across the country are lining up to step on Arizona’s face.

You better hope Livengood can rally as well as Chase Budinger.

How far does Livengood have to stretch to find the next guy?

Just on Thursday, Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl signed an extension at Tennessee. Butler’s rising star Brad Stevens also signed an extension.

Georgia hired Mark Fox from Nevada.

Washington State’s bright, young Tony Bennett might have been very appealing to Arizona right about now . . . but Virginia lured him away earlier this week.

What’s the fallback plan? Floyd on Thursday, when asked what Arizona had told him during his visit to Tucson a day earlier, said: “They just told me that they would like to have me as their coach yesterday morning.”

It’s a couple of mornings later, and, at the least, Arizona’s lack of a new head coach is embarrassing.

At worst, the new coach could end up hamstrung by the public knowledge that he wasn’t on the initial short list of candidates. That will hurt public perception, and it certainly won’t help when he hits the recruiting trail.

Arizona’s coaching search might have spun off the track when Kentucky threw everybody a curveball by firing Billy Gillispie after two seasons.

Those Wildcats then tossed an unprecedented $4 million per year at Memphis coach John Calipari, who otherwise might have been listening to an Arizona pitch.

If that’s just a case of bad timing, well, too bad.

University president Robert Shelton has been immersed in the hiring process, but whatever happened or will happen, it all stops at Livengood’s door.

It’s his contract that is up on June 30, 2010, when he will be 65. He said recently he wouldn’t mind going longer than that – if Shelton and the Board of Regents were willing.

Unless Livengood comes up with a great save, chasing away the swelling dark clouds, that won’t be much of a decision.

Anthony Gimino’s e-mail: agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

AND THE NEXT COACH IS . . .

Some names that UA fans have thrown around as the possible next coach now that Tim Floyd turned down the Wildcats:

Randy Bennett, Saint Mary’s

Jamie Dixon, Pittsburgh

Scott Drew, Baylor

Mark Few, Gonzaga

Lon Kruger, UNLV

Sean Miller, Xavier

Reggie Theus, not coaching

Citizen Staff Writer
GIMINO COLUMN

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

I wonder if Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood regrets ever uttering the words “win the press conference.”

He said that back on Dec. 1, talking about the kind of basketball coach who would make a good fit at Arizona. Has to have a track record. Has to have had recent success.

And then he added:

“We also need to win the press conference – however you phrase that, or however you put that, or however you interpret that.”

That line has gotten miles of mileage, artificially setting a standard of expectations that Arizona apparently won’t be able to meet. That doesn’t mean UA won’t hire a fine college basketball coach, it just means it’s hard to win the press conference with, say, Tim Floyd.

Just so we’re clear, let’s interpret. Winning the press conference: Hiring a coach of such unassailable superiority that the masses couldn’t help but stand and applaud and thank the basketball gods for their good fortune.

Winning the press conference is what Kentucky did Wednesday with John Calipari.

Winning the press conference is what Arizona could have done with Calipari or Rick Pitino or Tom Izzo or Jamie Dixon.

Perhaps those were pipe dreams all along, out of reach because of money or location or because those guys already have really good jobs. Or maybe because Arizona Basketball isn’t the evergreen garden-spot destination that lives in fans’ minds.

The point is, it will be hard for Livengood to live up to his words. He should never have said them.

But, at the end of the day, they will be just that – words.

At this point, no matter who Livengood and school president Robert Shelton have picked, it will be impossible to sell that coach as the school’s first, second, third, fourth or (insert your own number here) choice.

Nobody will buy it.

Doesn’t mean it will be a bad hire.

There are more than five or 10 or three dozen good college basketball coaches in the world. Sometimes you can even find a good one doing radio broadcasts for Arizona State.

You can hire a good – no, great – coach while losing the press conference.

For more on this, see: Carroll, Pete.

Yeah, we’re mixing sports here, and Carroll might be a glorious exception, but he was way down on the list when USC, having fired Paul Hackett, went looking for a football coach after the 2000 season.

USC had pursued Mike Riley, Dennis Erickson and Mike Bellotti, among others, getting only a pile of rejection letters.

After the Trojans selected Carroll – who had twice been fired from NFL teams and who had never been a college head coach – USC received more than 2,500 calls, faxes and e-mails of criticism, according to the Orange County Register.

USC did not, in any way, win the press conference that day.

Since then, it has won a lot of Pac-10 championships.

If it is indeed Floyd – and a Tucson Citizen source said he was in Tucson on Wednesday meeting with UA officials – it won’t be the first time he was somebody’s fall-back pick.

He once said he was about the fifth choice at Idaho, which gave Floyd his head coaching start in 1986.

He once said he was about the fifth choice at Iowa State, where he won 81 games in four seasons and went to the 1997 Sweet 16.

He was USC’s second choice to replace Henry Bibby, who was fired early in the 2004-05 season. The Trojans originally went with Rick Majerus, who had the job for five days before changing his mind.

USC hired Floyd in January 2005 while interim coach Jim Saia finished out the season.

“I fully understand why Rick Majerus was the first choice; he’s a phenomenal basketball coach,” Floyd said at his introductory press conference.

“I thought about it and had to deal with it in my own ego. The best way I could put it in perspective is that I think if my wife was really choosing I don’t think that I would have been her first choice, either.”

Anyway, Floyd ended up being a much better choice than Majerus.

Arizona won’t land any of its dreamboat picks, but it’s funny that when Calipari left for Kentucky, Floyd’s name instantly popped up as a leading candidate at Memphis.

Floyd, apparently, could win the press conference in Memphis.

Could he do the same in Tucson?

As soon as Thursday, you might get to be the judge – even if winning the press conference isn’t much of a measuring stick.

Anthony Gimino’s e-mail: agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

‘We also need to win the press conference – however you phrase that, or however you put that, or however you interpret that.’

JIM LIVENGOOD,

UA athletic director, on Dec. 1

Citizen Staff Writer
ARIZONA SOFTBALL

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

One inning. That was about all Jen Martinez wanted. One inning in an Arizona Wildcat uniform.

That would be her reward for an amazing journey that has taken her to three colleges and through more than one crisis of confidence. At one point, discouraged and beaten down emotionally, she nearly walked away from the game.

One inning.

When she walked on at Arizona in the fall of 2007, even that seemed out of reach.

“She couldn’t throw a damn strike,” UA coach Mike Candrea said.

And now?

“She has come from nowhere,” Candrea said.

This kind of story usually doesn’t happen in major college softball. It certainly doesn’t happen at Arizona. The Wildcats have had an uninterrupted stream of All-American pitchers for nearly two decades.

They don’t need any walk-on pitchers, thank you, other than to throw some batting practice.

But this season is unlike any other in Arizona history, with the Wildcats caught in an uncomfortable valley between former ace Taryne Mowatt and future ace Kenzie Fowler.

Sophomore pitcher Lindsey Sisk has struggled. Junior Sarah Akamine, an infielder converted to full-time pitching duties, has struggled. The team ERA of 2.78 is an all-time high for the program.

Hold the All-American awards, but Martinez, a senior who had an unsightly season ERA of 5.56 the last time she pitched in Division I softball, is Arizona’s best pitcher.

“I feel like I’m part of something bigger than I have ever imagined in softball,” she said.

One inning has turned into 62 1/2 for Martinez. Her ERA is a team-low 2.46. She is the only UA pitcher who is striking out more than one batter an inning. She is the only one allowing less than a hit per inning.

“We started throwing her a little bit, and she has gotten better and better,” Candrea said. “She has worked really hard and gained kind of a new life.”

Martinez has been preparing for this all her softball life.

Her first pitching coach was former UA All-American Susie Parra, and her travel ball coach was another Candrea disciple, former team manager Kurt Ludwigsen. Each helped direct Martinez to Arizona.

“From my very first pitching lesson, I was brought up the Arizona way,” Martinez said.

And that means, from Parra to Ludwigsen to Candrea, she has heard a million times: “It’s the process, not the outcome . . . it’s the process, not the outcome . . .”

Martinez wasn’t heavily recruited out of La Habra (Calif.) High School, signing with Long Beach State. She spent two seasons there, going 2-10 as a sophomore with a 5.56 ERA.

“It wasn’t anything what I was expecting it to be,” she said. “I don’t want to say too much about it, but the coach wore me down mentally to the point where I basically wanted to quit softball.”

Instead, she landed at Division II Cal State Dominguez Hills, where, through attrition, she ended up being the only pitcher. She pitched more than 235 innings, which was good for the softball soul, if not for the arm. It was the process.

“I needed the pitching time to grow and mature on the mound,” she said.

At this point, Parra and Ludwigsen suggested that Martinez walk on at Arizona, and they lobbied Candrea on her behalf.

“She needed to fall back in love with the game,” Ludwigsen said of Martinez’s career after Long Beach State. “The environment I knew she deserved would come from Coach (Candrea).”

It’s true, she admits, that she could hardly throw a strike when she arrived at UA.

Arizona was practicing bunt defense, and her job was to groove pitches down the middle for the hitters.

“I couldn’t find the strike zone, and then I was in my own head,” Martinez said.

Said Candrea: “When she got here, she was in awe, in awe to a point where she had convinced herself she didn’t belong here. That was kind of the feeling I got.”

The 2008 season was a wash. Martinez redshirted while UA had an interim pitching coach after the departure of Nancy Evans.

She took a confidence-building step last summer with Ludwigsen’s NorCal Assault travel team, competing in the women’s division of the Canada Cup against Olympic teams from Australia, Canada and the Czech Republic.

Then UA hired Teresa Wilson, an accomplished head coach, as its pitching coach last fall.

“When she first came here, I talked to her and said, ‘I don’t have a whole lot of time to change, could we please work with what we have?’ ” Martinez said.

“I felt like I was afraid to change. I was afraid to put my pitching in her hands.”

And then, remembering it’s always about the process, she decided to do just that — put her pitching in Wilson’s hands.

Martinez has responded to a few new tweaks and suggestions. She has the best change-up on the staff, a must-have pitch at this level.

More and more, Candrea has taken to bringing in Martinez in the middle innings and let her try to finish the game.

Martinez will get more chances this weekend as No. 9 Arizona (31-7) takes a key Pac-10 road trip to Washington and UCLA.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t even tell you how much this is a dream come true,” Martinez said.

“I have basically exceeded expectations for myself far beyond what I could ever imagine. I’m getting great coaching, and I love the girls on my team.

“It took a long time to get here, but I would not change anything about the journey I took. Arizona is the perfect fit for me.”

Citizen Staff Writer
The Bounce

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Former Arizona associate head basketball coach Mike Dunlap, who left Tucson on Tuesday, was hired by Oregon on Wednesday.

Dunlap will serve in the same role for the Ducks as he did at Arizona last season – associate head coach.

Dunlap, who made $375,000 in his one season with the Wildcats, will receive a pay bump at Oregon. He will earn $400,000 in each of the next two seasons, plus incentives, and will receive a $300,000 signing bonus, according to the Eugene Register-Guard.

Dunlap, 51, could have been UA’s interim head coach last season, but declined the opportunity following Lute Olson’s retirement in late October. Dunlap has said he wanted to be the full-time head coach, not the interim.

He remained associate head coach when UA elevated Russ Pennell to interim.

Pennell gave Dunlap almost unprecedented responsibilities for an assistant coach – such as leading the huddles during timeouts and freely making substitutions.

Dunlap, known as an excellent strategist, also installed a 1-1-3 zone defense and worked hard behind the scenes in one-on-one instruction with the Wildcats.

“With all the one-on-ones, they felt they were getting absolute attention,” Dunlap said last month.

Oregon was 8-23 last season, finishing last in the Pac-10 with a 2-16 mark. The Ducks return the bulk of a young team.

“I was satisfied, after doing much research into the matter, that Mike Dunlap will help our basketball team be competitive in the Pac-10 once again,” Oregon athletic director Pat Kilkenny said in a news release.

Citizen Staff Writer
GIMINO COLUMN

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

The rumors are still flying, but the stakes have changed.

Arizona might be willing and able to offer a package reasonably north of $2 million per season for a new basketball coach. That’s mighty fine coin, even for the best of the best.

Or it was about 48 hours ago.

Kentucky jettisoned Billy Gillispie after two seasons, and then, in true college basketball blue-blooded fashion, opened the vault for Memphis coach John Calipari.

“Market value is market value,” Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood said in February. “It goes up some days and very seldom does it go down.”

Not even in these trying economic times.

There will come a point when coaches’ salaries reach a breaking point, but that day is not today. Calipari will reportedly earn $35 million for eight seasons at Kentucky, making him the highest paid coach in college athletics.

“That’s a whole different monster,” outgoing Arizona interim basketball coach Russ Pennell said of Calipari’s new salary. “They’re talking about Monopoly money.”

Arizona might not have much choice but to print some of that itself.

Livengood and school president Robert Shelton can’t afford not to start tossing some around.

The biggest mistake Arizona could make is to not stretch its budget to the limit to try to hook the biggest fish. That is Louisville coach Rick Pitino, who would be a 100 percent lock to do great things at Arizona.

Not to say the more-accomplished Pitino is entirely driven by money – I don’t think he is – but how does he look at Calipari’s new deal and not say, “Give me some.” It might not be about money, but it certainly might be all about ego.

The same is true for any of the other big names out there.

It was reported in Memphis on Tuesday that Calipari told friends Arizona had offered him a “blank check” to be its head coach.

True?

Who knows?

I hope it is.

I never got a chance to ask Livengood, who did not return a message left for him Tuesday afternoon. He is usually great at that sort of thing, so the good news is he must have been really, really busy dealing with, oh, only the most important athletic department decision of the past quarter century.

If it takes money to get it done, then spend away.

Even his detractors would have to admit that Livengood has been fiscally responsible, keeping his program in the black and not taking any state money to run the athletic department.

This is no time for fiscal conservatism, though.

Think of it this way:

Does Alabama regret giving football coach Nick Saban $4 million per year two seasons ago?

Absolutely not.

But the Crimson Tide sure does regret wasting a combined eight seasons with unproven guys like Mike DuBose and Mike Shula. Each could barely eke out a winning record.

Alabama found its way because it spent money. Just as Kentucky did Tuesday.

Did Calipari’s move put Pitino out of Arizona’s price range? Pitino makes $2.3 million per year.

Heck, is he even interested?

I’ve heard a thousand different things – and so have you if you’ve spent would-be productive work hours on fan message boards – very little of which you can take to the bank.

OK, none of it.

Including this farfetched tidbit: A Phoenix source told the Citizen on Tuesday night, through somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, that Pitino and Arizona had reached an agreement.

Hard to believe, but I’ve been wrong before.

Anyway, it was Livengood himself who set the standard back in the fall when he said it was important for the new coach to “win the press conference.” There aren’t many coaches who could do that simply by showing up.

A young up-and-comer might work out just fine, but it’s not a chance Arizona basketball wants to take. Maybe that’s why this is taking so long – because the Cats are still trying to work something out with the A-list talent.

Meanwhile, the silence is unnerving.

While the Cats fiddle, Kentucky has a new head basketball coach. Alabama does, too. Same for Virginia.

None of it makes it look like Arizona – which has had more than five months to think about it, make third-party contact and arrange back-room deals – is on the right path.

Buy, hey, this is what Livengood wanted. He dropped the cone of silence on this search from the start, so congrats to him for his success in this area.

“I asked Jim who the next coach was going to be,” Pennell said, “and he wouldn’t tell me.”

It might still work out all right, and Arizona might yet win the press conference.

Unfortunately for Arizona, given the developments at Kentucky, the price of achieving that likely just went up.

Anthony Gimino’s e-mail:

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

38-12

NCAA Tournament record of Louisville coach Rick Pitino, whose winning percentage (.745) is fifth among active coaches behind Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski (.763, 71-22), Florida’s Billy Donovan (.759, 22-7), Michigan State’s Tom Izzo (.750, 30-10) and North Carolina’s Roy Williams (.746, 53-18)

Citizen Staff Writer

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Russ Pennell wants to be a head coach again.

His wild ride of a season in the spotlight as the interim head coach of Arizona is over. He’ll be in the UA history books with a 21-14 record and a Sweet 16 appearance next to his name.

“I really enjoyed this year,” Pennell said after a 103-64 loss to Louisville on Friday night.

“I will make a bold statement right now. I will be coaching somewhere next year.”

He paused.

“It might be my daughter’s eighth-grade team.”

He joked, but he did say “absolutely” when asked if he wanted to be a college head coach next season.

“It’s a lot of fun. It’s a big undertaking, a big task, but I would welcome that,” he said.

Pennell, who added that staying on as a UA assistant wasn’t on his “list of things to do,” will soon clear out his office so the incoming coaching staff will be able to move right in once hired.

Until then, he will stay around McKale Center. He said he still will be holding players accountable for going to class and doing the other things they need to be doing.

“Like all of our coaches told these guys, we’ll be by their sides the rest of their life,” Pennell said. “We certainly won’t interfere with what goes on next, but they know they can pick up a phone and talk to us at any time.”

Pennell, who doesn’t have an agent – “my wife,” he joked – reiterated what he has said all along. He won’t take just any head coaching job. He’ll be picky. He also would consider a return to announcing.

“It has to be the right fit for myself and my family, where we’d like to live and where I’d like to work, somewhere we could put down roots,” he said of a coaching job.

Pennell and his wife, Julie, have two daughters – Morgan, 12, and Emily, 9.

First on his to-do list after the team returns to Tucson is go to Phoenix for Emily’s gymnastics meet Sunday.

Sometime later, he will reflect on guiding one of the nation’s top programs and leading the Wildcats to their 25th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.

“I think if someone had said back in October we’d have 21 wins and a Sweet 16, we’d probably all said, ‘Sign us up for that,’ ” Pennell said.

“All I’m going to say is I’m going to feel really good about 2008-2009. Whether we stay in Tucson or no matter where we end up, I hope I can come back and be welcomed. That would be a nice thing.”

Citizen Staff Writer
NCAA EXTRA

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Louisville’s best player could have been an Arizona Wildcat.

The Arizona coaches had to make a decision about five years ago. Did they want to more strongly pursue Mario Chalmers from Alaska or Terrence Williams from Seattle?

“We had (point guard) Mustafa Shakur at the time,” former UA assistant Rodney Tention said Thursday. “And the decision was, who do we bring in to play next to Mustafa?”

Arizona went full on after Chalmers. He signed with Kansas.

“Lute Olson really wanted Mario Chalmers, and when Chalmers committed to Kansas, they told me they really wanted me,” Williams said Thursday in the Louisville locker room before practice.

“I was like, ‘Nah, I’m not like a second-tier player. So I committed to Louisville. My whole thing with Lute Olson was that I didn’t know how much longer he was going to coach there.

“I didn’t want to go there and have him leave the next year. But it was very serious between Arizona and here.”

Tention said it never got to the point where Arizona offered a scholarship to Williams, but the Wildcats did land the Seattle player who was like a brother to Terrence – forward Marcus Williams, a friend from middle-school days.

Terrence lived with Marcus and his mother, Gayle, at times in high school.

“I don’t know how they could be more like brothers than they are,” Gayle said in a 2006 interview with the Citizen. “There was always a connection there. I feel the same way. I feel Terrence is my son as well.”

Marcus spent two seasons at Arizona before being a second-round pick in the 2007 NBA draft. He is playing for the Austin (Texas) Toros of the NBA Development League. Through a team spokesman, Marcus “respectfully declined” an interview request this week.

Marcus told the Citizen in 2006 he talked to Terrence every day.

“We see how it’s going and how we’re doing. I tell him I love him and good night. I always let him know I love him.”

They still talk every day, Terrence said, and have discussed the Arizona-Louisville matchup in Friday’s Sweet 16.

“I can’t say on camera to you guys what he said about Arizona,” Terrence said.

Few players in the country are like Terrence Williams, a do-it-all 6-foot-6 senior wing who averages 12.7 points, 8.7 rebounds and a team-high 5.0 assists. He has improved his outside shot, hitting 38.4 percent on 3-pointers this season.

“He was kind of the way he is now; he’s just a lot better at it,” Tention said, remembering Williams at Rainier Beach High School.

“He wasn’t a real good outside shooter, but he could get to the basket any time he wanted. He was a point forward, that’s what he was.”

Still is.

“The guy is a great player,” said UA sophomore Jamelle Horne. “I don’t think we have had a matchup like him.”

Citizen Staff Writer
NCAA EXTRA

Key to game may come with 8 minutes left

Pay extra attention when there are about eight minutes left in the game.

That is when Louisville’s pressure defense starts taking its toll, said Cardinals guard Edgar Sosa.

“That’s when you can see the other teams’ point guards don’t want to break the press any more. They don’t want the ball and they’re telling someone else to bring it up,” said Sosa a 6-foot-1 guard.

“Once they do that, we know we have the game because we got the ball out of the main ball-handlers’ hands.”

Cardinals forward has memory lapse

Louisville junior forward Earl Clark was asked how much he watched Arizona during the regular season. He turned to a teammate and asked: “What conference do they play in?”

“I don’t think the Pac-10 is on TV too much,” Clark added. “I didn’t get to see a lot. I saw a couple of games. I like their style of play.”

A teammate, helping out a video crew, put a microphone in front of Clark and asked what he thought of the state of Arizona.

“I don’t think I have ever been there,” he said.

He was then reminded that the Cardinals played in Glendale in December, losing to Minnesota 70-64 in University of Phoenix Stadium.

“Oh, yeah,” Clark said. “We lost, that’s why I don’t remember.”

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Citizen Staff Writer
NCAA EXTRA

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Forget, for a moment, the matchups, the history, Louisville’s full-court press, Arizona’s on-going coaching search, the possibility of the Disneyesque telling of the Wildcats’ season.

UA coaches literally want the players to stop and smell the roses (or the aroma of popcorn) when they go through Friday morning’s warm-ups at Lucas Oil Stadium.

“The air is going to smell a certain way. There is going to be a certain articulation to the entire environment,” said associate head coach Mike Dunlap.

“Basically, we’re saying, ‘Stop and have a look around.’ This is a rehearsal. That’s exactly what the military does in terms of change of environment and pressure.”

It’s all about getting comfortable.

There are plenty of adjustments to make. The shooting background is different because this is a football stadium. The court is raised above ground floor, which has a unique feel.

UA interim coach Russ Pennell was happy his team was the first to have a workout Thursday because it meant the Cats got an extra 20 minutes on the floor to stretch and soak it all in.

“It’s amazing. It’s huge,” UA freshman Kyle Fogg said of the home of the Indianapolis Colts.

“My shots were really short, but Chase (Budinger) and them kept telling me not to worry about it and that I’ll knock them down in the game.”

‘Stop and have a look around.’

MIKE DUNLAP,

associate head coach

Citizen Staff Writer
ARIZONA WILDCATS BASKETBALL

INDIANAPOLIS – The message has been the same from the start, even before Lute Olson retired: Hey, guys, this is your team.

Yeah, you, the players. Your team. Take ownership. Speak up. Have your say.

“They looked around like, ‘Is this a trick question?’ ” said Arizona interim coach Russ Pennell.

It wasn’t.

“We were thrown off, naturally, that the coaching staff actually cared what we thought,” sophomore forward Jamelle Horne said Thursday after Arizona’s shoot-around at Lucas Oil Stadium.

“They told us we have all the power.”

And it didn’t go to their heads.

The team’s two seniors – Fendi Onobun and David Bagga – each say this is the closest Arizona team of the past four seasons.

“By far,” Bagga said.

OK, the bar wasn’t set ridiculously high because the Wildcats have been known for their dysfunction, but the trust that flowed from coaches to players, and then player to player, has provided the kind of inspiration that would make Tony Robbins proud.

Will any of that buy Arizona a basket against Louisville’s pressure defense Friday night in a Sweet 16 game?

You know, maybe – in an indirect way – it can.

All that team togetherness, combined with an NCAA Tournament invitation that came as a surprise – that’s coming right from the players’ mouths – has led to a nothing-to-lose, what-me-worry attitude not seen in recent Arizona teams.

Hey, it’s a start.

“Last year, it was tight. Real tight,” Onobun said, describing the locker room atmosphere before Arizona’s first-round loss to West Virginia in the NCAA Tournament. “Everything was just really weird.”

The only thing weird about this season was that it really wasn’t weird – at least not after Russ Pennell was promoted to interim head coach after Olson’s retirement.

There hasn’t been much in-season drama, save for multiple suspensions of freshman guard Garland Judkins. We’ve seen worse. Lots worse.

In the meantime, the coaches pried leadership out of Chase Budinger, Jordan Hill and Nic Wise, juniors who often haven’t been comfortable speaking up, being the center of attention.

Budinger emerged from his shell the most, taking on the bulk of media responsibilities.

“As a staff, we’ve been trying to empower him,” Pennell said.

“You can put a guy on the spot. You can be done with practice and get in the huddle and say, ‘Chase, what do you have for us?’

“He better come with something or they are going to make fun of him in the locker room. You kind of sometimes put him on the spot like that, but he’s stepped forward.”

If Budinger has a message for the team before Friday’s game, it should be this: stay loose.

Arizona is playing with house money, and it knows it. The Wildcats weren’t supposed to be here. Louisville was. Let the Cardinals worry.

Nothing to lose.

And if this is the day the Arizona basketball season ends, it will end in grand style. In a football stadium on a raised court. In a great basketball city. After a surprising run to the Sweet 16.

It could be a fitting conclusion to 25 consecutive seasons in the NCAA Tournament.

These Wildcats, no matter the outcome, have secured a place in fans’ hearts, first by deciding to pull together and then by going on a Sweet 16 run.

Face it, though. Arizona played a couple of teams it could handle, Utah and Cleveland State, in their first two NCAA Tournament games. UA, at its best, was better than those two opponents at their best.

Thing is, if the Wildcats play their best against Louisville, they could still lose. But at least they would have a chance.

What more can you ask for?

Bagga took a look around the locker room after Thursday’s practice and remarked about the loose atmosphere. He then mentioned becoming roommates with Hill several weeks ago.

“We had an hour-and-a-half talk on Saturday night. Just about life, about his family, about my family, about how he has grown up as a person,” Bagga said.

“Neither of us wanted to go to sleep because we just wanted to continue talking. Just the camaraderie of this group is so special. When we all look back at this, that is what everyone is going to remember about this team.”

Their team. The one they took ownership of a long time ago.

Anthony Gimino’s e-mail: agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Cats playing with house money in Sweet 16

ANTHONY GIMINO

Citizen Staff Writer
GIMINO COLUMN

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

INDIANAPOLIS – Some- time recently, Russ Pennell was driving in the car with his younger daughter, Emily, when the subject turned to her dad’s hoarse voice.

Emily, 9, was the family member who had the toughest time with the move to Tucson last spring, when Russ was hired as an Arizona basketball assistant coach.

All she had ever known was the Phoenix area and rooting for Arizona State, where Russ was an assistant from 1998 to 2004. She had never shown much interest in basketball.

“She kind of came kicking and screaming,” Pennell’s wife, Julie, said of Emily. “She was used to hollering for ASU and not cheering for the Wildcats. We have swayed her. She was the last convert.”

She might have become a bigger convert than anyone in the family realized.

Apparently, she wasn’t daydreaming when dad – taking a break from his favorite television show, “24″ – would bring home a scouting DVD and the family of four would sit and watch together as Russ broke down a future UA opponent.

Anyway, on this particular day in the car, Emily asked her dad what was wrong with his throat.

“I’ve been yelling too much,” Russ said.

“Yelling at the players?” she asked.

“Nah, yelling at the refs.”

Emily laughed.

Then she said, “You ought to go Floyd on them.”

Pennell recounted this story for reporters Tuesday, drawing a roomfull of belly laughs.

Emily indeed has been paying attention to her dad’s profession, smartly referencing USC coach Tim Floyd’s meltdown – two technicals and an ejection in the final minute at Arizona State on Feb. 15.

Russ resumed the conversation, saying, “Don’t you think you’d be a little embarrassed if I did that?

“No,” Emily replied. “I think that would be pretty cool.”

Pretty cool sums up the Pennell family life these days, as dad has gone from assistant coach to interim head coach to multimedia star since Arizona advanced to the Sweet 16 last weekend.

When the Pennell’s older daughter, 12-year-old Morgan, went back to school Monday, her locker was adorned with Arizona stuff, courtesy of her classmates.

“She thought that was petty cool,” Russ said.

See. Pretty cool. Again.

The stress of a basketball season, with its ups and downs and endless commentary from the peanut gallery, can take its toll on a family as well as the coach, but the Pennells seem to be coping just fine.

Part of that is an enduring faith that everything always will be OK.

Remember last year’s interim head coach Kevin O’Neill? A basketball nomad, O’Neill said one thing he had learned about housing over the years was this: Rent, don’t buy.

When the Pennells moved to Tucson in the spring, they bought.

They might have to sell and move again right after the season, but they won’t have any regrets about the joy ride.

“The fun outweighs everything else,” Julie said. “I told Russ (Monday) night, I really am proud of you. What our future is, I don’t know.”

Part of the fun has been that Russ hasn’t taken himself too seriously.

He’s had what could loosely be called an entourage. Pennell’s posse.

He typically brought in friends or family members to news conferences after home games, just to have them share in the experience. For the last game, he had Emily sit right next to him at the table; she even answered a question about how her gymnastics meets were going.

For her part, Julie keeps her distance from coverage of the team and college basketball – “I’m embarrassed to say I don’t watch ESPN all that much,” she said – while taking care of the home front.

“You know what, I don’t think anybody still knows who I am. That’s fine by me. I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of wife.

“When Russ gets home, we try to not talk about (basketball) and have family time when he’s here. We really try to keep that as stress-free as possible.

“Morgan is a seventh-grader, and when we first moved here, I don’t think anyone knew who her dad was for a long time. She kept that under wraps for a while.

“You just try to live life as normal as possible.”

Morgan just wrapped up her basketball season. Emily practices gymnastics from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. four days a week.

When he can, Russ will leave UA and pick her up from class on the East Side, saving Julie a 90-minute round trip from the family’s Oro Valley home.

“That is a treat for Emily,” Julie said.

“They can just chat about their day. I know Russ enjoys it, and she does, too.”

Pretty cool. Just some quality father-daughter time. A dab of normalcy amid a crazy five months.

Until someone says, “You ought to go Floyd on them.”

Anthony Gimino’s e-mail: agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Pennells show that family circle really matters

Gimino

Continued from 1C

Citizen Staff Writer
NCAA EXTRA

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Consider it a test case of loyalty. Do you root for a friend or against your rival school?

Arizona interim basketball coach Russ Pennell spent six years as an assistant at Arizona State, and furthered his ties in Sun Devil country by running a basketball academy in Gilbert the past four years.

He said he heard recently from several of his former ASU pupils, such as Shawn Redhage, who is playing professionally in Australia, Justin Allen and Kyle Dodd.

“You know what they say?” Pennell said Tuesday.

“They say, ‘I cannot believe I’m cheering for U of A.’ But they all say, ‘As soon as you’re gone, never again.’ ”

Pennell laughed.

“There’s always that disclaimer with it,” he said. “Some of them will go as far (as) to say, ‘Well, I’m really happy for you, but I’m not happy for UA.’

“They stay true to the Sun Devils.”

Another one of Pennell’s former players, Kevin Kruger, said the Arizona-Arizona State rivalry “is not always as black and white as people think it is.”

“This is an unbelievable opportunity for him,” Kruger said of Pennell.

“Do I wish it would have been somewhere else? Maybe. I’m not going to cheer for Arizona, but I am going to cheer for him. I’m glad he’s doing well.”

Kruger said he caught about the last five minutes of Arizona’s second-round victory over Cleveland State, pulling up the game live on the Internet.

“I wanted to see his reaction at the end because I know exactly what that feeling is like,” said Kruger, who reached the second round with ASU in 2003.

“He deserves it. He really is the epitome of what you want in a college coach. You’re not going to get a lie. He’s exactly what he is, and he does exactly what he says.

“At ASU, when he talked, everyone listened. He wasn’t going to degrade you. There were no politics, no mind games.”

That is why so many former Sun Devils will tune in to watch Arizona play top-seeded Louisville on Friday. It might be through clenched teeth, but, thanks to Pennell, they’ll root for the Cats.

Citizen Staff Writer
NO. 12 ARIZONA (21-13) VS. NO. 1 LOUISVILLE (30-5) 4:07 P.M. FRIDAY, INDIANAPOLIS TV: CBS RADIO: 1290 AM, 107.5 FM

ANTHONY GIMINO

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

A Sweet 16 edition of sense and nonsense:

1. Arizona athletic director Jim Livengood still has to make the most important decision of his professional life – who will coach Arizona basketball after this season – and he sounds like he would like to stick around to see how the choice plays out.

Livengood will be 65 when his contract expires June 30, 2010, and when I talked to him last summer, I got the impression he was ready to retire. I got that impression because he said this:

“I’m not tired. I’m still energized. I’m still enthusiastic. But do I want to do this for a long time more? Absolutely not.”

Livengood struck a different tone when the Citizen sat down with him last month.

“The biggest thing right now, is I think I want to go longer. I feel good. I’m healthy. I like what I’m doing. I feel I still have a commitment to do a number of things.”

If Livengood is willing to stay, then it will be up to university president Robert Shelton and the Board of Regents to grant his wish.

2. The best thing about Chase Budinger’s two games in the NCAA Tournament?

He kept attacking the basket. He doesn’t have explosive one-on-one skills, but he’s crafty and has excellent body control. Keep driving, Chase.

3. UA associate head coach Mike Dunlap said the break after the Pac-10 Tournament allowed the Wildcats to refocus on their zone defense and being more aggressive, as they were in big nonconference victories early in the season.

“That’s who we are – taking chances,” Dunlap said. “We had wandered away from that. That happens.”

4. Utah and Cleveland State combined to shoot 11 of 55 (20 percent) from 3-point range against Arizona, which is a reflection of good defense and just plain good luck.

Sometimes, even wide-open attempts don’t fall.

Dunlap concedes that “we have to have a little bit of luck,” but adds that UA’s more frenetic pace on defense even affected those open jump shooters.

“When you’re pressing and trapping and rotating, they feel rushed, even if they look open,” Dunlap said.

5. Arizona is the biggest long shot in the Sweet 16, a nine-point underdog to Louisville, the NCAA Tournament’s overall top seed. Sounds about right.

6. Louisville is one of the nation’s finest defensive teams, allowing opponents to shoot 39.4 percent from the field and 30.5 percent from behind the 3-point arc.

If an opponent solves Louisville’s press, it then faces an active 2-3 zone loaded with elite athletes.

Here is what West Virginia coach Bob Huggins said about the Cardinals’ zone this season: “They have incredible size. They stretch from one end of the floor to the other.”

7. There was so much good guard play in the first weekend of the tournament, but it’s hard to beat UA point guard Nic Wise, who scored 50 points, had 10 assists and hit all 17 of his free throw attempts.

“Nic’s a winner,” assistant coach Reggie Geary said on the postgame radio show Sunday. “That’s his thing coming into Arizona. We knew he was a winner and could be successful at this level. Now, he’s getting some national spotlight, which is great.”

8. For as good as Wise has been playing, he’ll need to be all that and more against Louisville.

9. CBS stubbornly chose last week to cut to and from multiple fantastic finishes instead of delivering two games at once in a split screen. Bad move. With TVs as wide as basketball players are tall, there’s plenty of screen room to comfortably show us more than one game.

10. Anybody seen ASU guard James Harden?

11. If you put together a Final Four wish list of head coaches for Arizona, it very well could read like this: Louisville’s Rick Pitino, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Memphis’ John Calipari and Pittsburgh’s Jamie Dixon.

Yeah, but what if UA interim head coach Russ Pennell beats all of them – in that order – in the next couple of weeks?

It could happen.

12. Jamelle Horne is off the hook. Not only has Arizona’s Sweet 16 run made his costly last-second intentional foul against UAB irrelevant, but college basketball has a new brain-freeze moment of the season.

With his team trailing Missouri by two points with 5.5 seconds left, Marquette’s Lazar Hayward hesitated on the in-bounds pass and stepped on the end line. The Tigers got the ball back and won 83-79 in the second round.

13. UA freshman guard Kyle Fogg appeared completely unfazed in his first NCAA Tournament, playing 72 of a possible 80 minutes last week.

His offense comes and goes, but what Arizona mostly needs is his all-the-time defensive peskiness. Fogg had seven steals in two games.

“Kyle Fogg is a big X-factor on our team,” Geary said. “With his long arms, and his quick feet, he can do some really positive things on the defensive end.”

14. Pennell was on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption” on Monday afternoon. Tony Kornheiser asked him how he and Dunlap exist as “co-head coaches” and how that works during a game.

“Well, the best part is I get paid more than him,” Pennell joked to Kornheiser and co-host Michael Wilbon.

“Mike is an unbelievable basketball mind. . . . I just felt like it would be very foolish for me to not draw upon his wisdom. He has just been really good helping our players, especially with their development and also on the defensive end of the floor.

“There is really no confusion. There is comfort in that. We can take turns playing like you guys do – good cop, bad cop.”

15. My revised Final Four: Louisville vs. Memphis and North Carolina vs. Pitt.

16. Lute Olson’s parting gift to the UA program was last spring’s all-new coaching staff: Pennell, Dunlap and Geary.

Anthony Gimino’s e-mail

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

Citizen Staff Writer
NCAA EXTRA

Mike Dunlap could have been Arizona’s interim head coach. This could have been his basketball team.

In a very big way, it is anyway.

Russ Pennell has been the face of the program, the steady-calm voice of the Wildcats, who, to great surprise, reached the Sweet 16 after Sunday’s 71-57 victory over Cleveland State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

So, Pennell gets airtime on CBS and ESPN. Pennell is the subject of national columnists’ praise. Fans look at Pennell and wonder, “Why not him?” as UA’s next coach.

Dunlap?

He’s the guy who wouldn’t take the interim head coaching job.

No regrets about that at all, he said Sunday in a phone interview after Arizona’s victory. He said he declined on principle. He wanted a school’s full-time commitment.

After saying no, he called Pennell, who, like Dunlap, joined the team as an assistant last spring. The conversation went something like this:

Dunlap: “I don’t feel comfortable in taking the job. I have my reasons. They are going to come your way next.”

Pennell: “Can we do this thing?”

Dunlap: “Absolutely.”

The Sweet 16 is absolutely what can happen when you get two coaches who really don’t care who gets the credit.

If you’re wondering why Arizona, after a few years of selfish play, turned into a team-first unit this season, look no further than the examples of Pennell and Dunlap, who locked away their egos and just decided to get to the work of making the Wildcats better one day at a time.

Perhaps you’ve noticed. Dunlap often takes charge during timeouts, dispensing strategy in the huddles. During game action, he frequently leaves his seat on the bench, says something to Pennell . . . and the next thing you know Pennell is yelling instructions to the team.

For a head coach, interim or otherwise, to grant that kind of authority is nearly unprecedented.

“Yes, it is rare,” Dunlap said Sunday in a phone interview.

“Russ had to give me permission to do that in the huddle, and I thank him for it. But I also had 17 years of experience on the sideline in different situations, and I thought that I could be a help. But I never would have done it without Russ’ permission.

“Our relationship is a 10 on a scale of 10. He trusted me that I would never do anything to hurt him.

“He and I have been put together in a very difficult situation, and we made it work. It’s a friendship that will be for a lifetime.”

There was this postgame exchange between the two, as passed on by the Citizen’s Steve Rivera:

Dunlap came up as Pennell was doing interviews in the hallway of America Airlines Arena in Miami.

“You need to articulate your words. Stop stuttering,” Dunlap joked.

Pennell laughed.

“You should have been here a while ago when I was buttering your hind end,” he said.

Dunlap: “It would have been the first time.”

Pennell laughed again.

Truth is, there has been plenty of buttering, as Dunlap has been the mastermind behind UA’s 1-1-3 zone, which did much of its best work of the season in the NCAA Tournament.

He has been tireless behind the scenes, working with players one-on-one and quietly forging relationships that go beyond basketball. He is to Pennell what Jim Rosborough was to ex-head coach Lute Olson for so many years.

While Pennell has conceded Dunlap unusual authority, Dunlap has reciprocated the favor by not interfering publicly with Pennell’s leadership, creating a united UA front. That is why you haven’t heard much from Dunlap all season.

The open locker room policy of the NCAA Tournament has changed that. The secret is out.

It’s not that Dunlap, who is known as a brilliant tactician, dislikes or can’t handle the public part of the job; it’s just that it wasn’t his responsibility this season.

“This job required reclusiveness and quietness,” Dunlap said.

“I took on a certain role. Any kind of grandstanding or any kind of chest-beating would have hurt the leader, would have hurt the kids. It was really important to take a deep step back and get into my role.”

Dunlap coached Division II Metro State in Denver to two national titles.

He spent the past two seasons with the Denver Nuggets.

As soon as he turned down UA’s interim coaching job, he sent his wife and three children back to Denver. His oldest son, Holt, was able to jump back into his old high school for his senior year. Now he’s just a couple of months away from graduation.

“That will be a blast and he has done very well,” Dunlap said. “It has worked out.”

Dunlap knows – everyone has known – that he will head back to Denver as soon as Arizona’s season ends. He will resume his search for a Division I college head coaching job.

That also is Pennell’s goal.

Same, too, for that matter for assistant coach Reggie Geary, who has dutifully carried on with recruiting.

They have all been professionals, not letting whatever will happen after the season affect them during the season.

The wins and losses go next to Pennell’s name, but this has been a team effort.

“We’ve been successful in pushing the organization to a better place than when we found it,” Dunlap said. “The facts are on the table.”

And there’s nothing to regret about that.

Anthony Gimino’s e-mail:

agimino@tucsoncitizen.com

ANTHONY GIMINO

UP NEXT

No. 12 Arizona (21-13)

vs. No. 1 Louisville (30-5)

What: Sweet 16 (Midwest Region semifinal), NCAA Tournament

When: 4:07 p.m. Friday

Where: Indianapolis

TV: CBS

Radio: 1290 AM, 107.5 FM