
Head coach Brian Peabody bumps fists with forward Robert Wilson at last year’s rally for the Pima men’s basketball team. The Aztecs return to the national championships after finishing second last season.
Pima College’s breakthrough as an NJCAA men’s basketball power has some storybook twists that would make for a good fiction book.
But it’s all true.
°Â³ó±ð²ÔÌýBrian Peabody coached the Aztecs to a third consecutive Region I championship Friday, it was easy to forget that he was forced out of the same job in the spring of 2004.
But that’s what happened when oafish PCC chancellor Roy Flores — long since dismissed from his job — told Peabody he could not recruit anyone except high school players from Southern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥.
So Peabody went off to coach college basketball at Western Carolina, and then returned to ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, leading Ironwood Ridge High School to the 2008 state championship.
A new PCC administration re-hired Peabody in 2013. I wondered what Peabody could’ve possibly been thinking. The Aztecs were so historically bad — 10-49 in two seasons, losing the last 18 games of 2012-13 — that it seemed like a career-ending job.
Until last week, the only PCC coach who had ever led the Aztecs to host the ACCAC/Region playoffs was Norm Patton, in 1980. Patton resigned the day after Pima was upset in those ’80 playoffs by Yavapai College.
Peabody’s second stint at Pima began ominously. He was suspended from the season opener, serving time for the previous coach,ÌýGabriel Van Guse, who had been ejected from the final game of the 2011-12 season.
League rules dictated that PCC’s coach must sit out the next year’s opener. So Peabody was not allowed in the gymnasium when Pima opened the 2013-14 season. It was not an easy reconstruction job. Pima was swept by bottom-feeding Tohono O’odham in 2015.
Now Peabody’s teams have won 79 games the last three seasons, winning three region titles, averaging a cumulative 100.2 points per game, soaring into the NJCAA national championship tournament three years in succession.
And here’s the irony: Peabody’s long-ago order to recruit ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥-only players has become the strength of the Aztecs. Empire High School’s Deion James and ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ High’s Murphy Gershman became first-team NJCAA All-Americans. This year’s star point guard,ÌýAbram Carrasco of Cholla High, seems sure to be a first-team All-American when the awards are announced in a few weeks.
The backbone of Peabody’s 26-6 team includes Salpointe product Robert Wilson, ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ High’s Jordan RobinsonÌý²¹²Ô»åÌýDavonte Eason, and Ironwood Ridge’s Cole Gerken.
The Aztecs return to the NJCAA Divison II finals March 19-23 in Danville, Illinois. Last year they were five points shy of the national championship. This year, as Peabody has shown, anything is possible.