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Chip Hale would be perfect choice as Wildcats' next coach

In the space of two days earlier this month, Rice and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ State hired men with no (or almost no) coaching experience to be their baseball coaches.

The Sun Devils hired their 1999 Pac-10 Player of the Year Willie Bloomquist, a 14-year major-leaguer, off the administrative staff of the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Diamondbacks. “I am a Sun Devil man,’’ Bloomquist said in a press conference.

Rice hired its 1992-95 All-American Jose Cruz Jr., a former ESPN and MLB Networks analyst, to coach the Owls. Why mention Rice? The Owls have had a superior baseball program to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ the last 25 years, playing in seven College World Series and winning the 2003 national title.

Cruz was serving his first year as a coach at any level, as the Detroit Tigers assistant hitting coach. He was on the same staff as Tigers third base coach Chip Hale, who would like to be the next head coach at his alma mater, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥.

´¡´Ú³Ù±ð°ùÌýJay Johnson made a quick exit last week, more than doubling his $540,000 base salary to become LSU’s baseball coach — inappropriately interviewing for the job before the Wildcats played in the CWS, according to The Advocate newspaper of Baton Rouge — UA athletic director Dave Heeke began his sixth coaching search of the 2020-21 school year.

This type of transition and unsettling movement is unprecedented, both at UA and in the Pac-12. Until this academic year, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ had not lost more than two head coaches in the same academic year since the 1971-72 season, when baseball coach Frank Sancet retired, tennis coach Dave Snyder accepted a similar job with the Texas Longhorns, and basketball coach Bruce Larson was fired.

No Pac-12 school has lost its basketball, baseball and football coaches in the same school year since the league expanded to 10 in 1978. Yet ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ also lost its cross country, softball and soccer coaches.

Heeke, who tried to keep Johnson by offering him a deal that would’ve made him the Pac-12’s highest paid baseball coach, at close to $1 million annually with a lucrative deferred compensation package, immediately left town to find a baseball coach.

This is Heeke’s search. He’s a baseball man, a former Albion College catcher whose sons played baseball at Central Michigan. He cannot waste time because the core of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s roster has immediate access to the NCAA’s readily available Transfer Portal. Those Wildcats with remaining eligibility have surely learned how easily they can accompany Johnson to LSU, or, if the expected departure of pitching coach Nate Yeskie to Texas A&M is realized, to play for the Aggies.

There’s almost no way to stop the exodus or to expect Heeke’s choice to inherit much more than a rebuilding situation.

I doubt Chip Hale is Heeke’s No. 1 target because Heeke was not in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ when Hale put together an unprecedented Wildcat baseball career in which he became (and remains) No. 1 in school history in career hits, runs, total bases and games played.

Heeke surely doesn’t know that in 1987, as a double major in finance and real estate, Hale was named the Pac-10's Tom Hansen Medal Winner, as the UA’s top male scholar-athlete of the 1986-87 season, an award won by some of the greatest names in Wildcat history: Chuck Cecil,ÌýJohn Fina,ÌýMartin Keino,ÌýJoe Salave’a,ÌýRyk Neethling,ÌýLawi Lalang,ÌýGeorge DiCarlo,ÌýChanning FryeÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýAbdi Abdirahman.

The son of a school administrator from the Bay Area, Hale was such a superior student that he received a congressional appointment to enroll at the Naval Academy in 1983. He chose to play baseball at ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ instead.

If new Sun Devil coach Willie Bloomberg says “I am a Sun Devil man,’’ Chip Hale can say “I’m a Wildcat man,’’ with twice the authority. He helped ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ win the 1986 national championship, coached the ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Sidewinders to the 2006 PCL championship with the top winning percentage in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ minor league baseball history, married Sabino High grad Judy Schlossberg and has lived in ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ for almost 40 years.

Hale played for Jerry Kindall and is endorsed to be ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥'s next baseball coach by a roll call of many of the top names in UA baseball history: Terry Francona,ÌýJerry Stitt,ÌýEddie Leon,ÌýNyal Leslie,ÌýSteve Strong,ÌýJim Wing, among others.

Hale won a World Series as the bench coach of the 2019 Washington Nationals. He was the manager of the Diamondbacks. He was the manager of the Class A Missoula Osprey and Class AA El Paso Diablos. His network of pro baseball scouts and coaches would be a huge asset in recruiting.

Recruiting? Can you imagine Chip Hale’s first conversation with UA freshman All-American Jacob Berry, who must surely be considering a transfer to LSU? Hale has developed professional ballplayers for 25 years.

Isn’t that what the college prospects are looking for? An MLB training grounds? That’s what Hale and his staff would provide.

Oregon State has been the top baseball program in the Pac-12 for almost 20 years. Two years ago, the three-time CWS champion Beavers hired their former star catcher Mitch Canham to be the Beavers’ head coach.

Canham, a career minor-league coach, is Chip Hale with much less experience.

Canham had never recruited a soul before OSU hired him. He soon hired Grand Canyon University pitching coach Rich Dorman to be OSU’s pitching coach, local junior-college head coach Ryan Gipson to be a recruiter/coach and former Beaver and MLB infielder Darwin Barney to be his lead assistant. Barney had never coached a day in college baseball.

Given the instability of college sports rosters as driven by the Transfer Portal, there doesn’t seem to be a quick fix to the issues created by Johnson’s exit to LSU. Hale would give ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ a strong 10-year run and infuse the program with Wildcat blood and support. He wouldn’t be looking to jump to LSU or Texas or Florida.

As for people skills, after the Sidewinders won the 2006 Triple-A baseball championship, I asked Sidewinders owner Jay Zucker what Hale was like to work with.

“You don’t often find someone as easy to work with,’’ Zucker told me. “He knows people as well as he knows baseball.’’

If Heeke can find and hire someone more willing, able and qualified to be ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s baseball coach it’ll have to be a combination of Tommy Lasorda and Terry Francona.

Sabino’s Tod Brown becomes head coach at New Mexico

Tod Brown flew to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ in the spring of 2015, hoping to be interviewed by ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ AD Greg Byrne to replace Andy Lopez as ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s next baseball coach.

The Sabino High School grad, the UA’s leading pitcher on its NCAA Regional finals team of 1993, Brown had spent eight years as head coach at North Dakota State. At that time his résumé — he earlier was a UA graduate assistant and spent eight years on the Bowling Green staff — probably didn’t merit serious consideration.

But Byrne didn’t blow Brown off. Instead, the two met at length and discussed what Brown must do to get a major-college head coaching job.

Earlier this month, after 14 years at NDSU, coaching the Bison to a school-record 43 wins and the third round of the NCAA Regionals at Stanford, Brown was ready. At 49, he was hired as the baseball coach of the New Mexico Lobos.

In his introductory press conference, Brown spoke about how he played for Jerry Kindall, coached with Jerry Stitt and had initially been recruited by New Mexico coach Rich Alday, who then was a legendary coaching figure at Pima Community College.

“Twenty-two years ago, my wife and I packed up for the Midwest to learn how to coach,’’ Brown said. “We learned a lot. It put me in position to take this job, to be successful at this job and learn how to navigate this business and get back closer to home.’’

ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ has been good to the Lobos baseball program and Brown will surely make the six-hour recruiting trip from Albuquerque to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ in an attempt to sign those like ex-Lobo Luis Gonzalez of Catalina Foothills High School, an outfielder who is now playing for the Chicago White Sox, or former Sabino pitcher Jamie Vermilyea, who pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays, or Sahuaro’s Mike Brownstein, an infielder who was the MWC’s 2009 Player of the Year.

Brown signed a five-year, $825,000 base contract with the Lobos and didn’t leave NDSU on bad terms. He fulfilled his four-year contract that expired at the end of this season.

Former Wildcat Deandre Ayton finally being used correctly on court

Watching Phoenix Suns center Deandre Ayton in the NBA Playoffs this year is a completely different experience than watching his season playing for Sean Miller, 2017-18. The Suns do not clog the paint offensively, giving Ayton freedom to get to the basket and use his athletic ability and height to become a game-changing player. At ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, Miller’s old-style offense had both Ayton and 7-footer Dusan Ristic crowded into the paint simultaneously. That’s how 13th-seeded Buffalo eliminated ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ 89-68 in the first-round NCAA game in 2018, populating the paint area with so many defensive players that Ayton was limited to 14 points, after which Buffalo (now Alabama) head coach Nate Oats replied that stopping Ayton “wasn’t that hard.’’

Cronin expects changes in college athletics with NIL 

UCLA basketball coach Mick Cronin delivered one of the most insightful comments on the onrushing Names, Image and Likeness legislation that is about to change college sports dramatically. Cronin told the Los Angeles Times: "We just went to the Final Four. The days of players being told they have to show up an hour early for a practice because they have to do commercials for CBS and not asking any questions and just doing it for free are over. The days of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar just showing up and being thankful he’s in a UCLA uniform are over. I’m glad I’m not an athletic director trying to figure it all out.�

Key member of UA's CWS title team set for MLB debut

Nine years ago, pitcher Konner Wade was one of the central figures of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥â€™s run to the 2012 College World Series championship. He went 11-3 and beat defending champion South Carolina with a six-hitter in the first game of the title series. At long last, on Friday, Wade was recalled by the Baltimore Orioles and is expected to make his major-league debut this weekend. The Scottsdale Chaparral grad is 29. His long road to the big leagues included stops for the Tri-City Dust Devils, the Modesto Nuts, the Hartford Yard Goats, the Sugar Land Skeeters and two trips to the Mexican baseball league. Never say never, right?

Ex-Cat to compete in Olympics 

Former ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Wildcat golfer Rory Sabbatini has won six PGA Tour events in his long golf career. But at 45, Sabbatini has more to do than wait to get on the Champions Tour in 2026. He will play in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics next month, a one-man team for Slovakia. How did that happen for a golfer the UA’s Rick LaRose recruited out of South Africa 27 years ago? Sabbatini’s wife,ÌýTina, is from Slovakia and it helped Rory gain citizenship three years ago. Tina’s cousin,ÌýRastislav Antala, is the vice-president of the Slovakia Golf Association.

Tony Amato, Jay Johnson join short list of those who've left UA for a bigger name

In the last 50 years of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ sports, only eight Wildcat head coaches left their position for what would be considered a higher level college position. Soccer coach Tony Amato, now at Florida, and baseball coach Jay Johnson, now at LSU, became Nos. 7-8 this year. Here’s how the previous job jumpers fared:

• Dave Snyder, men's tennis, 1972, Texas: Was the NCAA’s winningest active tennis coach when he retired in 2000. Elected to the ITA Hall of Fame in 1988.
• Larry Smith, football, 1986, USC: Coached the Trojans to three consecutive Rose Bowls, 1987, 1988 and 1989.
• Wendy Larry, women’s basketball, 1987, Old Dominion: Coached ODU to the 1997 national championship game as well as 20 NCAA Tournaments.
• Kim Haddow, women’s golf, 1995, Florida: She was inducted into the Women’s Golf Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1998 after leading the Gators to the top 10 of two NCAA Tournaments. Left Florida after four seasons.
• Todd McCorkle, women’s golf, 2000, Georgia: Coached the Bulldogs to the 2001 NCAA title and was the 2007 SEC coach of the year before resigning for personal reasons.
• Tabitha Yim, gymnastics, 2017, Stanford: In four years at her alma mater, Yim’s team has not reached the NCAA finals and has finished seventh, seventh and third in the Pac-12 the last three full seasons.