Hansen’s Sunday Notebook: McKale’s place in college hoops lore set, but building sure to evolve again over next 50 years

At 50, McKale Center’s merit and cache has never been greater, never held in higher esteem.

It can be seen not just from a half-century of robust crowds, but also in the love from Tucson’s basketball community, past and present.

For example, Tucson native Daniel Boice spent three years as the manager of Arizona’s women’s basketball team and two years as its video coordinator. While earning two degrees at his hometown school, Boice met and married UA track and field long-jumper Ali Rodseth of Auburn, Washington.

The Boice’s recently moved to Kentucky where Daniel became director of player development for the Kentucky Wildcats women’s basketball program. Last fall they had their first child. They named her McKale Kinley Boice. If that doesn’t show love for Tucson’s iconic basketball arena, what does?

Now the question becomes: can Arizona get another 50 years out of McKale Center?

“I think it’s a possibility,” said UA athletic director Dave Heeke. “There will surely be some repurposing and modifications over the years, but you’re probably not going to be able to tear down the shell of the building and start over, or afford to build another arena at another location.”

The reason McKale Center remains the Pac-12’s state-of-the-art basketball venue is that Arizona’s last three athletic directors – Jim Livengood, Greg Byrne and now Heeke – have been proactive in remodeling everything from locker rooms, offices, meeting rooms and spectator seating to video boards, restrooms and concession amenities.

It’s not the same arena that I first walked into 40 years ago. Not even close. To make space for the school’s growing athletic department, the UA’s football, baseball and softball teams have been relocated away from McKale.

It’s conceivable that in 20 or 30 years, Heeke’s successors will have to spend $200 million or more to re-do McKale again. It’s similar league-wide.

In 1999, Washington completely overhauled 73-year-old Hec Edmundson Pavilion and sold naming rights to Alaska Airlines. Thanks to Nike-related money, Oregon had the financial capital to abandon 84-year-old Mac Court and build an off-campus arena a decade ago. Thanks to donor support, USC built the Galen Center 15 years ago.

Stanford’s Maples Pavilion (2004), Cal’s Haas Pavilion (1998), and UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion (2012) all spent tens of millions of dollars to remodel the bones of their aging basketball arenas.

The league’s only three arenas badly in need of a facelift are Oregon State’s Gill Coliseum (built in 1949), WSU’s Beasley Coliseum (1973) and ASU’s Desert Financial Arena (1974). Those three basketball-challenged schools have chosen to spend vast sums on new football facilities in recent years.

The one unknown at Arizona is whether Heeke (or his successors) will alter the name of the school’s historic basketball arena the way UCLA did when it rebranded Pauley Pavilion and named it Pauley Pavilion presented by Wescom, which is a SoCal credit union firm.

“The name McKale won’t be removed from the title of the arena,” said Heeke. “There’s too much history involved.” But he indicated it would be possible, much like UCLA, to someday share the billing with a corporate partner.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to cover Arizona games at the nation’s two most revered college basketball arenas: Duke’s 83-year-old Cameron Indoor Arena and Kansas’ 68-year-old Phog Allen Fieldhouse.

Over the next 50 years, young McKale Boice should be able to see McKale Center mentioned in the same company.

Through almost 45 seasons of Pac-12 basketball — that’s roughly 9,500 games — only 28 players have scored 40 points or more in a game.

So when Azuolas Tubelis scored 40 against Oregon on Thursday, the odds of him doing so were roughly 0.3 percent.

As you might expect, some of the elite names of league history are in the 40 Point Club: UCLA’s Reggie Miller (twice) and Don MacLean, USC’s Harold Miner, Stanford’s Casey Jacobsen (twice), Oregon’s Luke Jackson, Oregon State’s Gary Payton (three times), Washington’s Chris Welp, WSU’s Klay Thompson (twice), ASU’s James Harden and Arizona’s Damon Stoudamire and Khalid Reeves.

There have been 40 point games by a few outliers: WSU’s Jay Locklier, Marcus Moore and Noah Williams, for example, as well as Washington’s Andrew Andrews, Stanford’s Kim Belton and ASU’s Jahii Carson.

What stands out more are the Pac-12 superstars who didn’t score 40 points in a game: Sean Elliott, Ed O’Bannon, A.C. Green, Jason Kidd, Ike Diogu, Todd Lichti and Chris Mills.

The perspective is this: since Stoudamire scored 45 in an overtime game at Stanford in 1995, Arizona had gone 954 games until Tubelis hit the Ducks for 40 on Thursday. For the UA’s next 40-point game? If the numbers are any indication, check back about 2051.

Most college football coaching staffs kick back and get some rare time to relax in the week or two after national signing day, which was last Wednesday. But one of the reasons UA coach Jedd Fisch has recruited so well the last two seasons is that he and his staff are grinders, far different than the staffs of his predecessors Kevin Sumlin and Rich Rodriguez. At Thursday’s Oregon-Arizona basketball game at McKale Center, Arizona defensive coordinator Johnny Nansen and defensive analyst Beyah Rasool were with Salpointe Catholic football coach Eric Rogers, which is a strong signal that Arizona will give an A-plus effort to recruit Salpointe five-star edge rusher prospect Elijah Rushing in the Class of 2024. That’s not the effort given when Arizona lost Salpointe’s Bijan Robinson to Texas and Lathan Ransom to Ohio State three years ago. Rushing has been offered scholarships from 2022 playoff teams Georgia, Michigan and Ohio State, as well as Pac-12 opponents Oregon, USC, UCLA and ASU. ……

Duane Akina’s return to Arizona as the UA’s senior defensive analyst may not restrict him from on-field coaching, as has been the case with “analysts” since those positions were created in the last decade. The NCAA is studying legislation that would allow analysts to coach, which is one of Akina’s many strengths. The former UA, Stanford and Texas secondary coach is a mentor and communicator like few in the business. Analysts are no longer viewed as beginners or retreads in college football. USC’s defensive analyst Clancy Pendergast, for example, was Cal and USC’s defensive coordinator in recent years, after stints as a full-time coach with the NFL’s Cowboys, Chiefs, Cardinals and 49ers. One of ASU’s defensive analysts is Marvin Lewis, long-time head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals. Alabama’s Nick Saban has employed analysts like ex-UA head coach Mike Stoops and ex-USC head coach Steve Sarkisian. …

The Dallas Cowboys last week fired running backs coach Skip Peete, a former receiver at Arizona and Sahuaro High School. Peete isn’t likely to be unemployed long. Peete, 60, son of former Arizona receiver/linebacker and long-time assistant coach Willie Peete and brother to longtime NFL QB (and fellow Sahuaro alumnus) Rodney Peete, has been an assistant coach for the Raiders, Bears, Rams and Cowboys since 1998. …. Harrison Beemiller was one of Tucson’s leading high school football players of the last decade, helping coach Matt Johnson’s Ironwood Ridge cubs of 2014 and 2015 to an 18-5 record while making 97 tackles and also gaining 1,199 yards as a receiver and rusher. Now he’s making football his occupation. After starting at linebacker for NAU from 2019-21 and serving as a graduate assistant coach in 2022, Beemiller has been hired to be NAU’s secondary coach for 2023.

After playing in the last four PGA Tour events, earning $47,220, former UA and Salpointe Catholic golfer Trevor Werbylo did not qualify for the field at this week’s Waste Management Phoenix Open. Werbylo will be one of about 150 golfers at the Phoenix Open Monday-qualifier. Only three Monday golfers will get a spot in Phoenix’s $20 million event.

Arizona grad Ricky Barnes, 41, who won the 2002 U.S. Amateur while a Wildcat All-American, received a sponsor’s exemption into the Phoenix Open. He has not played in a PGA Tour event since October. ….

Arizona men’s golf coach Jim Anderson, who piloted his team to the 2021 Pac-12 championship, could be back in the title hunt this spring based on results from last week’s Arizona Thunderbirds Invitational at the Tucson Country Club. Arizona finished three strokes back of 11th-ranked Texas A&M but that’s misleading. Arizona’ s roster is so deep that two players who didn’t make the starting five for the week – Cal McCoy, 13-under par, and Johnny Walker, 12-under par – finished No. 2 and No. 3 in the individual standings. Had they been in the UA’s lineup – chosen each tournament by a team qualifying event – the Wildcats would’ve been 51-under-par and beat A&M by 13 strokes. Arizona won’t play at Tucson Country Club again until 2024. The TCC will close on June 1 for six months to re-do its irrigation system while building new (longer) tees to better fit elite college golfers and make other on-course changes as Arizona’s $14.5 million clubhouse will be built. ….

More golf: The WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play championship – which essentially replaced the Match Play championships in Tucson of 2006-14, is now paying $20 million in prize money. At the last match play event on Dove Mountain, golfers played for a $9 million purse. How times change. This year’s match play event in Austin. Texas, is expected to be the last under the PGA Tour umbrella and is expected to be replaced by a regular stroke-play PGA Tour event in Houston in 2024.

As the cap to a historic week of college basketball in Tucson, former UA coach Fred Snowden (1972-1982) was honored Friday night at The Loft Cinema in a two-hour presentation staged by the African-American Museum of Southern Arizona.

Snowden, who died of a heart attack in 1994 at 57, was represented by his daughter, Stacey Snowden, on a night assistant coach Jerry Holmes and 11 former Snowden basketball players attended the ceremony: Eric Money, John Belobraydic, Bob Aleska, Donald Mellon, Charlie Miller, Steve Kanner, Harvey Thompson, Joe Nehls, Gary Harrison, Herman Harris and the event host, Bob Elliott.

Arizona basketball coach Tommy Lloyd and staffers Steve Robinson and Jason Gardner and Wildcat senior guard Cedric Henderson also attended.

Stacey Snowden presented a video that quoted from her father’s’ ‘My Manuscript” which has never been published, a document that explains what Fred Snowden referred to as “graphic racism” he faced growing up in Alabama and Detroit.

Fred Snowden was a big personality, both in Tucson and Detroit and later while working as an executive for Baskin Robbins in Los Angeles. Videos showed him with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Nelson Mandela and Al Gore, among others.

Charlie Miller, a center on Snowden’s last three Arizona teams who went on to become a lifelong educator and sports administrator in Tucson, wept when he talked about how Snowden shaped his life beyond basketball.

“I got a summer job my junior year working at the mines,” Miller said. “When coach Snowden found out he called me into his office and told me he had arranged for me to work at Hughes Aircraft (now Raytheon). He told me he wanted to get me into something that prepared me for life when basketball stops.

“It’s not the points you score on the court,” he said. “It’s the points you score off the court.”