Best Sports Team '98

Best Sports Team

UA Men's Basketball

READERS' PICK: So what if they didn't win another national championship? Since the NCAA Tournament began in 1939, only four schools have ever won back-to-back titles--so even with five starters returning, the odds were against the Cats. Still, they played brilliantly much of the year. They clinched the Pac-10 title around Christmas; they came within a bizarro shot of becoming the first team ever to run the league schedule undefeated; and they went deep into the NCAA Tournament while other favorites were dropping like flies. Most importantly, the members of the team handled themselves with class and dignity in the face of fan adulation which would have had most of us carrying a stun gun when we went outside.

READERS' POLL RUNNER-UP: Excellence should never be seen as boring. Alas, that is often the response one gets when mentioning the latest success of the UA Women's Softball Team. Tell somebody that this UA team played from January 'til June and only lost four games, and they'll more than likely shrug and say, "They did that again, huh?" The five-time national champion Cats marched through the Pac-10 schedule and won every tournament they entered, but it was only when they suffered an excruciating one-run loss in the national title game that they got any attention. Coach Mike Candrea's squad is the best team in town every year.

CLUE IN: Unfortunately in this burg, when it comes to sports coverage, 75 percent gets sucked up by the UA, 20 percent goes to (ugh!) pro teams from Phoenix, and the everyone else splits the leftover crumbs. So it wouldn't be surprising if you happened to miss reading about the most successful team in town this past year: While the Amphitheater High School Football Team came this close to pulling a major upset in the state title game, the Sahuaro Girls Basketball Team rolled all the way through to the Class 4A state championship. After suffering a mid-season loss at then-defending state champion Catalina Foothills, the Cougars crushed their cross-town rivals in the rematch, in the Flowing Wells Tournament, and in the 4A regional finals. Sahuaro went 30-1 and has All-Staters Katie Bruns and Kelliann Glowacka back for more this year.

1997 Winner: UA Men's Basketball
1996 Winner: UA Women's Softball
1995 Winner: UA Women's Softball