
One of the best days of the year at McKale Center has nothing to do with basketball. It is the day that the UA honors Wildcats athletes who earn a degree. Last week there were 113 of them. Three stood out:
1. Larry Demic.The UA’s first NBA lottery pick — No. 9 overall to the Knicks in 1979 — is 60 now. Since leaving basketball, he has worked for Lanier Worldwide and Konica Minolta in the greater Los Angeles area. He earned a degree in Global and Intercultural Understanding.
Demic was so good as a UA senior in 1978-79, averaging 19.3 points and 10.3 rebounds per game, that after a streak in which he scored 38 points against UCLA and 36 against Washington State, a clever newspaper copy editor wrote a headline saying the outcome of those games was “Aca-DEMIC.”
Last week it was all about academics for the 6-foot-9-inch power forward from Gary, Indiana.
“I went to Indiana to recruit Larry in the mid-’70s and right away I knew the top schools had missed on him,” said former UA assistant coachJerry Holmes. “I just loved him. He was a great kid with this big laugh. His personality was infectious.”
Despite sitting on the bench for most of his first three seasons at ֱ — most prospects of his stature today would transfer rather than stick it out — Demic was invited to a pair of postseason All-Star games in 1979, which were the “draft combine” workouts of the day.
“I went to Hawaii with Larry to one of those All-Star Games and I told him he had to work his butt off to impress all the NBA people,” Holmes remembers. “The afternoon before the game, many of the NBA coaches were sitting on the patio at a beach-side bar, enjoying the late afternoon. I look up and there’s Larry, running sprints on the beach, back and forth, back and forth, unaware all the scouts were watching him. Let’s just say that made an impression.”
2. Alyssa Thompson.Few ֱ athletes had a better prep career than Thompson did at Salpointe Catholic. As a senior in 2013, she won state championships in the long jump, triple jump, 100 hurdles and 300 hurdles.
After finishing third in the Pac-12 heptathlon, Thompson graduated last week with a perfect 4.0 GPA for her UA career. Not a single B. She plans to enroll in medical school at the UA.
Thompson’s perspective on being an athlete at ֱ hits at the core of the debate whether student-athletes should be compensated: “We are the talent, the entertainment, the role models and the faces of the university,” she said.
Wouldn’t it be nice if, someday, the NCAA created legislation that would permit Thompson and her athletic department peers to be paid to endorse a ֱ credit union, or a car dealership, rather than have all of that money go into the pockets of coaches already being paid millions of dollars?
3. Fullback-linebackerJamadre Harris-Cobbwas one of the most high-profile recruits in theRich Rodriguezyears, a four-star recruit from Los Angeles. He struggled to get on the field; over four seasons, his only statistics were two pass receptions. He did not make a tackle.
Harris-Cobb and his prep teammate,Marquis Ware, who left the football team in 2016, were generally labeled as busts.
But Thursday morning, Harris-Cobb beamed as he walked across the stage at McKale Center and received his diploma from football coachKevin Sumlin. Harris-Cobb graduated in four years. That goes far beyond tackles, yards gained and recruiting rankings.