The first day of Spring -- 2023

Let's play ball!

Around five o'clock this afternoon, the first moments of spring will flip over onto all the calendars in Arizona.

The winter months for Arizonans will pass on, leaving in its wake a few days of agony for Wildcat sports fans who have endured a tough few months -- including the sudden departure of the Arizona Men's basketball team from the 2023 NCAA Tournament, the Big Dance, which turned into nothing more than a heart-breaking three-minute song for the Wildcat players, the Wildcat fans and the coaches in the first round as the two-seeded Wildcats lose their opener to 15-seeded Princeton, 59-55, on Thursday, February 16., and finish with a 28-7 overall record.

We also said goodbye to the Lady Wildcats in the second round of the NCAA Women's Basketball tournament on Sunday, February 19, as they finished 22-10 after a 77-64 loss to Maryland. They certainly battled the Terrapins and held a one-point lead at the half, but a cold-shooting nine-point third quarter left the Wildcats down 61-42 with 10 minutes remaining. The deficit was just too much to overcome for Cate Reese, who scored a team-high 19 points, and for her teammates, who gave their all from the opening tip at McKale Center last November til the final ticks in College Park, Maryland.

So, we (Arizona fans) turn to baseball, softball, and all our favorite Wildcat athletes who compete in all the spring sports. We hope for some warmer weather. Soon the Arizona sun is bound to come out. 

The Arizona baseball team enters this week with a 12-6 overall record and a Pac-12 Conference record of 3-3, while the Lady Cats are 20-9 and 3-3 in Pac-12 play.

It is hard to believe spring training will end up north, and the 2023 professional baseball season begins on March 30 as all 30 teams are scheduled to play.

  

I can't find the words...

A Wildcat fan in shock

Arizona is out in Round 1 of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament

The question is, what do I do now?

Princeton 59 Arizona 55

I yell, and I scream about the East Coast bias.

I no longer have a leg to stand on.

-- Arizona finishes the season 28-7. Arizona State wins its play-in game by 25.

-- Azuolas Tubelis played 37 minutes, scored 22 points, and hauled in five rebounds.

-- Oumar Ballo played 28 minutes, scored 13 points, and grabbed 12 rebounds with one hand.

-- Arizona scored 31 points in the first half and 24 points in the second half.

-- I love my Wildcats. I love telling stories. But today, I just can't put a story together. I'm still searching for a coherent sentence!

From the desk of Pigpen Price

 

Before I go on: Remember I'm an Arizona Wildcat fan

My prediction for the NCAA Men's Final Four

My champion to win it all (think... 1997)

from Bookemdanosports

My Final Four:

Arizona, Purdue, Houston, Kansas

Semi winners:

Houston over Kansas

Arizona over Purdue

And the cap on the 2023 season should be labeled: The final Wildcat Revenge

The score in the final: Arizona 77, Houston 71

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I love my Arizona Wildcats!

Another month: same batting king for 60-and-over TOTS

Tucson Old Timers (TOTS)

60-and-over baseball

February/2023 batting/pitching stats

Once again, the 60-and-over Tucson Old Timers had trouble with the "weather bug' in February as only eight games were played, just like in January -- 16 games played over a span of 58 days.

And one of those in February turned out to be one of those kiss-your-sister games -- a tie, no winner or loser.

The man that keeps filling the stat sheet and remains the leader of the pack is lefty Joe Opocensky, who led all players in February with a .714 batting average with 20 hits in 28 official at-bats. Joe also drove in 16 runs to lead that category and tied for the most runs scored with Ken Nebesny and John Cooke with 10.

Besides Opocensky, eight players finished with 10 hits or more in February. Tim Tolson (16 for 27, a .593 batting average), Ray Garcia (14 for 27, a .519 average), John Mathews (13 for 27, a .591 average), Bob Daliege (11 for 28, a .393 average), John Beady (11 for 13, a hefty .846 clip), Mike Dawson (11 for 25, a .440 average), Spiro Roberts (11 for 17, a .647 average) and Bobby Long (10 for 19, a .526 average).

Other notable hitters included Cooke, who played in just six games and went 9 for 20, while Ron Ryan went 8 for 22 in six games, Gary Cuttler, 8 for 17 in five games, Mark Rupert, 9 for 28 in eight games; Randy Livingston banged out 8 hits in 11 at-bats in three games, a healthy .727 clip, and Nebesny finished with 8 hits in 28 at-bats in seven games. 

Dawson was the workhorse on the mound with 27 innings and a 1-2 record. Reed Palmer played in only two games but picked up two pitching victories in two tries in 12 innings of work. Once again, Opocensky's name popped up as he hurled 20 innings, finishing with a 2-1 record. Nine TOTS saw action on the mound in February.

The old-timers banged out 218 hits in the eight games at Udall Park with a club batting average of .414.

Way to go, TOTS!

Arizona beats UCLA 61-59 to grab Pac-12 Tourney title

Pac-12 Basketball Championship

Las Vegas, Nevada

Arizona 61 UCLA 59

Courtney Ramey sank a second-chance 3-pointer with 18 seconds left on the clock to give the Arizona Wildcats a 61-59 victory over UCLA to grab the championship game tonight in Las Vegas and capture the Pac-12 Basketball Tournament Conference title for the second year in a row and ninth overall.

The Wildcats needed every grueling minute by the tournament's MVP, Azuolas Tubelis, to get the job done. Tubelis (photo left) scored 19 points and grabbed 14 rebounds.

The dagger by Ramey into the heart of Bruin Country put the Wildcats up 60-59 and Tubelis added 1 of 2 free throws a few seconds later to seal the win.

Way to go, Wildcats!

I'm back in Wildcat Country

 Hi, gang! 

After a disappearing act eighty miles southeast of Tucson for nearly three months and one more hospital stay, I return to Tucson and leave the Whetstone Mountains -- the partial roaming ground, at times, back in the mid-1860s of first Chief Cochise and then Geronimo himself -- behind. I wonder how any soldier in the U.S. Calvary and any Indian warrior, for that matter, could even shoot straight with the wind constantly blowing at 30 to 40 miles an hour with a gust out of the north, south, east, or west at 50 MPH.

How could any Soldier or Brave hit anything more than five feet away?

I, of course, don't have the answers to what happened some one hundred and sixty years ago. But here in 2023, this old man with Asthma just can't handle the dust particles, or whatever, that circulate daily, and to top it off, the area is close to 3,000 feet higher in elevation than my hometown of Tucson.

I didn't know upon my arrival, but I was quickly setting myself up for failure.

And to make matters worse, I decide to get a job and write for the local newspaper. My new job is to cover 13 sports. Sounds easy enough. Heck! That's what I did for a living in 1992...some thirty years ago, at the young age of 47!

One baseball game in the twilight hours on a beautiful March evening in Sierra Vista covering 5A school, Buena High School, the wind picked up, the cold air and the dust devils raced out toward center field. Five hours later, I was in the local hospital, once again experiencing breathing treatments every hour on the hour as the nurses frantically tried to get my breathing out of the low 80 range into what is normal for most people -- the mid-90s!

Pigpen Price's favorite song is Blowin' In The Wind by Bob Dylan.

It took days and enough drugs in me that would turn a javelina into a crazed animal-form look-a-like of Chief Cochise.

Now Chief Cochise, or Geronimo and his gang could brave anything (no pun intended), but in modern-day times this old man who is closing in on 80 years of age can't stop coughing long enough to fire a pistol inside a shooting range near I-10 and Houghton Road, an hour and 10 minutes due east to Buena High School -- the home of the Colts.

There is more to the story. There always is when you are dealing with Dan "Pigpen" Price.

So, I'll make it simple. I'm back in WILDCAT country.

And my Arizona Wildcats, later today, will play against UCLA in the championship game of the 2023 Pac-12 Tournament.

By the way, I'll see a Pulmonary doctor next month and try to convince him I'm just a crazy old baseball player that doesn't have enough sense to come in out of the rain -- I mean wind and the cold and the elements in a land where Geronimo use to roam and didn't even have a doctor. So I'll frantically try to convince the doctor that I do not need to carry an apparatus with me when I head out to third base, or worse yet, take the breathing tank with me from room to room in my house.

Geronimo died at the age of 79 on February 17, 1909.

I'll be 78 on July 2, 2023.

So, I'll be cheering on my Wildcats today, sitting on my sofa. And I'll stay out of the elements.

Once again. Go, Wildcats!

The wind-blown sportswriter.

P.S. Suzy and I will buy a wind gauge and insert it in the back patio.