To say that Tucson is a Basketball Town is a 13 on the logarithmic cliché scale that only goes up to 10.24. (math nerds will love that.) It’s been more than 40 years since Lute Olson arrived in the desert and turned the University of Arizona Wildcats into a perennial national power. This year’s Wildcat team started the season with 23 straight wins.
Rabid locals think that this could be the Wildcat team to be the first one in a quarter-century to reach the Final Four and perhaps even be the second team in school history to win a national title. But, if they do manage to win that championship, it will just be the second one brought back to Tucson within a month.
A couple weeks back, the Pima College women’s basketball team won its first-ever national championship, closing out the season with an 18-game winning streak in the process. It was an especially sweet moment for long-time Coach Todd Holthaus, who had built Pima into its own version of a national powerhouse, but had had to step away from the program last summer due to health concerns.
Something of a gentle giant beloved by his players, Iowa native Holthaus played for Grand Canyon University before settling in Tucson. He won 160 games as the coach at Flowing Wells High and then spent two years as an assistant to UA Women’s Coach Joan Bonvicini, before taking the coaching position at Pima.
He quickly established a successful recruiting strategy and has stuck with it over the years. He recruits the best local players and also has a pipeline to the Navajo Reservation, from where he has gotten several great players over the years. The top local recruits for next year are Kayla Tuakalau from Amphi High and America Cazares from Pueblo.
Last year, the Pima women made a surprise appearance in the National Championship game. Down by seven in the final minute of the semifinal game, they got a rare four-point play from Mattanaya Vital and came back to win. The next day, they fell to Johnson County (Kansas) Community College. They finished second in the nation and, with a solid core of returners including two All-Conference players in post player Sours-Miller and point guard Nelson back, there was some light talk about maybe getting back there.
They would again have to run the gantlet that is the Arizona Community College Athletic Conference (ACCAC), one of the toughest junior college conferences in the nation. Holthaus also insists on a brutal nonconference schedule, one pretty much guaranteed to produce a few losses along the way, but also one that leaves his players battle-tested heading into the playoffs.
This year, the Aztecs got the No. 4 seed in the National Tournament, which was held in Hickory, North Carolina. In their final five games of the championship season, they won by 7, 7, 13, 1 and 6 points. That’s grit.
In the semifinal game, they faced the same Johnson County team that had beaten them in last year’s championship game. Johnson County went into the game 34-0 and ranked Number One in the country. Pima was down five with a minute left, but scored the final 6 points and won the game. In the championship game, the Aztecs trailed for almost all of the first three-and-a-half quarters. They caught up with about five minutes to go in the game and then, behind the scoring of Sours-Miller and Nelson, pulled ahead to stay. Nelson was named the Tournament’s Outstanding Player.
This was the final season for Pima assistant coach Jim Rosborough, who was for years the top assistant for the aforementioned Lute Olson. And now, in his farewell season, Rosborough goes out a national champion.
One of Holthaus’ other assistants, Pete Fajardo, is a local wise-cracking legend. Known for going to midnight showings of “Blazing Saddles” and talking along, getting every single word right, Fajardo is also an outstanding coach, having taken both the Sahuaro boys and Salpointe girls deep into the state playoffs.
(I texted Pete right after the win in the championship game and told him that he looked just like himself on the broadcast of the game that I had watched. He responded with, “I was hoping that I looked more like Alan Swann in ‘Captain From Tortuga.’” That’s one of the funniest texts I’ve ever received in my life and would be considered hilarious by any of the handful of people who have ever seen the brilliant film, “My Favorite Year.”)
The women aren’t the only winners on the westside campus. Last year, Pima’s men, coached by Hall of Famer Brian Peabody, had a breakout year. Led by former Marana High star Wes Ball, the Aztecs took a 34-0 record into the National semifinals. A bad shooting day derailed their title hopes and they had to come back the next day to play in a game for 3rd place. They won and finished a dazzling (and quite frustrating) 35-1. This year, they lost by one point in the National quarterfinals, got dropped into the Consolation bracket, won that bracket, and again finished the year with a 35-1 mark.
Holthaus knows that winning a national championship might make recruiting a bit easier, but it also puts a big target on Pima’s back. He wouldn’t have it any other way.