Hansen’s Sunday Notebook: Ranking the top 10 college hoops games in McKale’s 50-year run

Fifty years. More than 1,000 college basketball games. How do you possibly pick the No. 1 game ever played at McKale Center?

On a national scale, none was bigger than the first of 10 NCAA Tournaments staged at McKale. In March 1974, UCLA’s John Wooden brought the seven-time defending national champion Bruins to Tucson for a Sweet 16 game against Dayton.

After three hours, through three overtimes, the No. 1 Bruins finally subdued Dayton 111-100. Bill Walton — yes, that Bill Walton — scored 27 points and grabbed 19 rebounds. Of the 51 NCAA Tournament games since played at McKale, Wooden and the Bruins were a tough act to follow.

But when McKale Center celebrates its 50th anniversary on Wednesday, memories won’t be about Wooden and Walton, they’ll be about a half-century of unforgettable Arizona games. Here’s one man’s Top 10:

1. The Record Breaker: In anticipation of a special day, Sean Elliott shaved his head the morning of the long-awaited February 1989 showdown against UCLA. The hometown hero needed 34 points to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar‘’s Pac-10 career record of 2,324 points. Elliott scored 35. The No.2 Wildcats not only beat UCLA 102-64, it was the most-lopsided defeat in Bruins history.

2. The Streak Breaker: In January 1992, UCLA returned to Tucson ranked No. 2, believing Arizona’s 71-game winning streak at McKale was breakable. It was. The Bruins won 89-87 on Darrick Martin‘s short jumper with 0.3 seconds remaining. “It’s terrible that we lost the Streak,’’ said UA guard Matt Othick. “But that was one great game.’’

3. Tucson meets Steve Kerr: In January 1983, Steve Kerr was an unknown reserve freshman guard on Lute Olson’s first team. Kerr unfortunately moved into public consciousness two days before a game against ASU. His father, Malcolm Kerr, president of American University in Beirut, Lebanon, had been assassinated 48 hours before the Wildcats were to meet the Sun Devils, winners of nine straight against Arizona. Before the game, Kerr and thousands of fans wept during a moment of silence for his late father. With 12:59 remaining in the first half, Kerr was inserted into the game. The first time he touched the ball, he swished a 20-jumper. Everything then changed for the UA basketball program. Arizona won 71-49 as Kerr had a break-out game with 12 points and the Wildcats ended ASU’s domination and went on to beat ASU in 16 of the next 17 meetings..

4. The McClutch Game: In January 1986, Oregon State was the reigning power in Pac-10 basketball, having won four league titles the previous five seasons. The Beavers led Olson’s third UA team 62-61 with 3.2 seconds left in overtime. That’s when Kerr threw a 94-foot pass — a play called the “Home Run’’ — that was deflected by UA center Anthony Cook into the hands of Craig McMillan. At the buzzer, McMillan scored on a layup. Fans rushed the court, mobbing McMillan, who Kerr described to me that night as “McClutch.’’ Arizona won 63-32 and went on to win its first Pac-10 title and replace the Beavers as the league’s top program.

5. The Duke double-double: In February 1991, Arizona beat No. 6 Duke in double overtime 103-96, keeping a 60-game McKale Center streak alive as UA guard Matt Muehlebach stole the ball from Duke’s Bobby Hurley in the final ticks of regulation and the first overtime.

6. The Anniversary Game: In January 1998, a few days before the 25th anniversary of McKale, Arizona’s women’s basketball team faced its most imposing challenge: Stanford. The Cardinal had a 48-0 streak against Pac-10 opponents and a 22-0 streak against Arizona. But UA guard Reshea Bristol took a pass from future UA coach Adia Barnes with two seconds to play and swished a 3-pointer to stun Stanford, 91-90. It triggered the UA to its first-ever Sweet 16 season.

7. The Sweep: In January 1979, No. 6 UCLA and Pac-10 leader USC arrived at McKale for a two-game weekend set. Arizona stunned the Bruins 70-69 and followed with a 74-72 upset over the Trojans, prompting a court-rushing celebration like few in school history as guard Joe Nehls scored 31 points.

8. The Block: In February 2011, the 22-4 Wildcats all but clinched Sean Miller‘s first league championship as center Derrick Williams blocked Washington’s Darnell Gant shot with one second remaining, batting it into the Zona Zoo to preserve an 87-86 victory. The “White Out’’ crowd reacted with such energy that Miller said “I thought the roof was going come off.’’

9. Aari’s Legacy Shot: In February 2020, facing No. 4 Stanford, which had built a 33-1 record over Arizona in 17 seasons, UA guard Aari McDonald rushed through traffic to score at the bucket with six seconds remaining in overtime for an epic 73-72 victory. The second-largest crowd to see a UA women’s regular season home game, 7,838, celebrated Arizona’s first-ever victory over a team ranked in the top five.

10. The Legend Builder: Three weeks after McKale Center’s debut, February 1973, Arizona faced feared WAC rivals Utah and BYU in a now-historic back-to-back, Friday-Saturday showdown. After beating Utah 101-95 in three overtimes on Friday, the Wildcats stunned league-leader BYU 100-94 on Saturday as Coniel Norman scored 38 points. Word of McKale’s homecourt advantage spread, gaining momentum, a celebrated tradition that turns 50 on Wednesday.

If you’ve got a game to add to my list, please let me know at [email protected].

I walked into McKale Center Friday and saw a new name in the Arizona women’s basketball Ring of Honor: Kirsten Smith.

There has been no public announcement, but at the Feb. 17 Arizona-Utah game, the do-everything guard from Boise, Idaho, will join Adia Barnes, Dee Dee Wheeler, Ify Ibekwe, Davelyn Whyte and Shawntinice Polk as the sixth ex-Wildcat in the Ring of Honor. 

“We’re going to have a mini-reunion, with eight or 10 of my former (1982-86) teammates,’’ said Smith, now known as Kirsten Smith Cambron. “I’ll be coming to Tucson with my husband, our kids, their spouses and our grandkids.’’

It is a much-deserved honor for Cambron, who left Arizona in 1986 as its career leading scorer, with the highest season scoring average and as its all-time leader in assists and free-throw percentage.

Cambron, who is 5-feet 5-inches, led the UA in scoring, assists and rebounding in one season, even though she was the smallest player on the roster.

More? She sang the national anthem before one game in 1986.

It’s a credit to UA athletic director Dave Heeke and senior associate women’s AD Erica Barnes that they spent the time to research historical records to find Smith deserved Ring of Honor mention.

A new clause in the list of qualifications says that in addition to statistics and awards, an athlete that brought “recognition, distinction and honor to the sports program’’ would gain consideration. In that regard, Cambron had the whole package.

Let’s hope the administrators at UCLA and Arizona don’t give in to the TV people when UCLA leaves for the Big Ten in 2024-25 and schedule an annual UA-UCLA men’s basketball game in a made-for-TV setting at, say, Las Vegas. As the Arizona-UCLA game became the most passionate men’s basketball rivalry in the West the last 40 years, the Bruins have been ranked in the AP’s Top 25 for 38 games against Arizona. That speaks for itself. Stanford has played Arizona when ranked 19 times over that period, Oregon 12 times, Washington 10, USC 9, Cal 8, ASU 7, Utah 6, WSU and Oregon State 3 and Colorado once. If the Bruins and Wildcats can’t rotate annually, playing at McKale one season and at Pauley Pavilion the next, it would be a colossal shame. ….

A celebration of life for Tucson women’s sports pioneer Mary Hines will be held next Sunday from 1-3 p.m., at the Oro Valley Country Club. Hines, who died in November at age 93, was the first woman elected to the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame, the 1947 state tennis champion at Tucson High School. She went on to be a UA letterwinner in softball and swimming. In 1979, she was elected to the Arizona Softball Hall of Fame and in 1987 was inducted into the UA Sports Hall of Fame. Along the way she coached Catalina High School to two state volleyball championships. …

The Game of the Week involving Tucson sports teams this week is surely Saturday’s Pima College-Cochise College men’s basketball game at the Stronghold in Douglas. It’ll be a madhouse. Cochise coach Jerry Carrillo, a UA and Salpointe Catholic grad who grew up in the Salpointe neighborhood and became lifelong friends with PCC coach Brian Peabody, also a Salpointe and PCC grad, is having another epic season. Cochise is 12-0 in the wickedly difficult ACCAC, 18-2 overall, ranked No 8 in Division I NJCAA men’s basketball. Pima went into a Saturday game in second place in the ACCAC, 17-3 overall, ranked No. 13 in NJCAA Division II hoops. Sadly, the Cochise-Pima series will be reduced from home-and-home to one game each season beginning in 2023-24, when the ACCAC will eliminate home-and-home games between D-I and D-II teams and order them to play just a single game. …

The forever-rising cost of college athletics can be seen in Oregon State’s hiring of running backs coach Kenneth Bhonapha last week. The Beavers, who have the 11th smallest athletic budget in the Pac-12, will pay Bhonapha $750,000 over two seasons, plus giving him a membership to the Corvallis Country Club and a new car. Bhonapha will be merely the seventh-highest paid of OSU’s 10 assistant coaches. His hiring was announced on the same day Arizona revealed that it will raise the price of a season ticket to football, and men’s and women’s basketball by an average of 15 percent next year. In the 2022 fiscal year, Arizona had ticket revenue of about $19 million. Adding 15 percent more ticket income to that would be about $2.7 million, about enough to pay for half of a Pac-12 assistant football coaching staff.

The Saudi Arabian-backed LIV Golf tour announced last week that it is seeking 500 volunteers to help with every conceivable part of its three day event at the Gallery Golf Club, March 17-19.

Good luck with that, especially two weeks after the established PGA Tour Champions’ Cologuard Classic will be played at Tucson National.

The Tucson Conquistadors have spent more than 50 years cultivating a bountiful group of volunteers for the PGA Tour and Champions Tour events in Tucson, and have thrived doing so.

Yet it still takes the Conquistadors months to arrange for 500 (or more) volunteers.

They do so with a reputation built on goodwill and strong relationships, and that the Conquistadors are a non-profit organization that donates all profits to Southern Arizona charities. It’s a good cause.

The LIV organization is a money-grab for fabulously wealthy golfers like Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka.

There are so far no known or announced charities involved.

Perhaps the LIV Tour should offer to pay volunteers, say, $200 a day to help run their Dove Mountain event, a sum that wouldn’t be a blip on its budget.

Otherwise, I suspect they’ll have trouble getting even 100 volunteers to help the PGA Tour dropouts collect their money.