The Weekly Wildcat

The Weekly Wildcat
June 13, 2006

(The Weekly Wildcat will appear each week on Tuesdays as part of a running series, updating Wildcats supporters on the sports happenings at the University of Arizona)

It’s been an interesting week in Wildcat World. Our school announced that it will induct 10 individuals and the 2006 softball team into its Sports Hall of Fame in November. Individual honorees are:

Lauren Bauer, softball, 1997-2001
Mike Bibby, men’s basketball, 1996-1998
Andrea Neary-Dutoit, track and field, 1997-2001
Denali Knapp-Garcia, swimming and diving, 1997-2001
Jason Wilbur “Red” Greer, football/baseball, 1931-1934
Kristi Gunning, gymnastics, 1990-1994
Toni Mascarenas, softball, 1997-2001
Harry Messick, baseball, 1954-1958
Patrick Nduwimana, track and field, 1997-2001
Dennis Northcutt, football, 1997-2001

Without taking anything away from the honorees, I do want to point out that this list is reflective of the sad state of affairs our football program was in during the John Mackovic Era. Lets hope Mike Stoops and company can continue to turn things around so future induction classes include long lists of Arizona football players who graduated to the NFL and helped lead us to several New Year’s Day bowl games.

Speaking of the gridiron, the first wave of college football preview magazines has hit the newsstands and so far Arizona is getting a little love from prognosticators. Athlon has the Cats ranked 40th nationally while The Sporting News ranks us a respectable 44th. Each has us finishing 6th in conference play with swing games against BYU, at Washington State, Oregon State and Arizona State. A final record ranging between 8-4 and 5-7 seems to be the general consensus. This year I’ll be traveling to the LSU game, visiting Tucson for the USC game and will attend the road game at UCLA. I can’t wait until it all gets started.

Congratulations to our softball team for winning their seventh National Championship. That’s six more then our men’s basketball and baseball teams and seven more than our football team. Ouch!

Lute Olson says Mustafa Shakur’s return to our basketball team stands at 50% with this upcoming Sunday being the final day Shakur can pull his name out of the NBA Draft. Let’s hope Shakur does the smart thing and returns to Tucson for his final season and puts forth a senior campaign worthy of this onetime budding high school All-American. If he does, the NBA will welcome him with open arms in 2007 and he won’t have to try so desperately to prove himself in next year’s Orlando Pre-Draft Workout session.

Visit my site each Tuesday for the latest edition of The Weekly Wildcat. Until then, Bear Down!