james s. wood / arizona daily star 2007

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UA senior swimmer Albert Subirats is possibly the No. 1 male athlete currently enrolled at the school. If not him, who? Subirats won two NCAA titles on the same day last season — only the second swimmer in history to do so — and last week was superb as the Wildcats rolled over No. 1 Texas, winning events in the backstroke, freestyle and butterfly (plus two relay championships). He was then named the NCAA swimmer of the week for the second time this season.

Subirats is mostly unrecognized in Tucson but he is a national celebrity in Venezuela. A television crew from his native country was in Tucson last week, taping a feature on him.

The Wildcats, who are sure to rise to the nation's No. 1 dual-meet ranking when the poll is released this week, have finished in the nation's top 10 every year since 1998.

They've got a core of eight or nine swimmers, including Cory Chitwood and Darian Townsend, that is as good or better than any team in the country. Realistically, the NCAA title might require diving points and a bit more depth than Arizona has. But even a pessimistic outlook has the UA finishing no worse than No. 3 nationally.

In the last two weekends Frank Busch's men's team swept Texas, Cal and Stanford, all ranked in the top five. That's unprecedented at the UA. And Busch has already signed the nation's No. 1 men's recruiting class, just in time for the opening of the remodeled Hillenbrand Aquatic Center next season. The Wildcats swim at Arizona State next weekend.

Of the friends and former colleagues to return to Tucson for former UA football coach Larry Smith's memorial service, one of those we least expected to see was Gary Parrish. He was a sometime-starter tight end, 1984-85, who now lives in Maui, Hawaii, where he and his wife, Audrey, own a cleaning business and have six children.

Parrish flew to Tucson, he said, because "Coach Smith was truly a father figure to those players, like me, who grew up without a father."

Parrish is best remembered for a 1984 game at USC in which he appeared to catch a winning touchdown pass late in a 17-14 game. But referees, without the benefit of replay TV, ruled that Parrish dropped the ball after being hit. USC won 17-14.

"Coach Smith was so firm, confident, and never to be crossed," said Parrish, "yet at the same time, so caring, compassionate, personal and merciful. He knew when not to jump on a player."

Bingo.

College football is a sport in which far too many bully-type coaches holler and scream for no useful purpose.

Perhaps that's why Smith's former players such as early 1980s backup tailback Phil Freeman, now an investment analyst in Tampa, Fla., flew to Tucson for the service. He treated them like men, not football players.

Sabino High and UA grad Nate Tyler, who won the prestigious 2007 Arizona Amateur, turned pro after receiving his UA degree in December. It didn't take him long to find success. Tyler won last week's Adams Tour event in Houston, earning $5,000 after prevailing in a three-man playoff. Tyler also learned he is the 2007 winner of the Arizona Golf Association's Billy Mayfair award, for the lowest stroke average over a year's play (66.5). He is considering playing on the Canadian Tour or the Hooters Tour as he prepares for the fall PGA Tour Qualifying School. … Tucsonan Cory Crowell, the 1974 City Amateur champion who has won the U.S. Seniors Amputee Championship twice, registered the ninth hole-in-one of his distinguished career last week. His 5-wood on the No. 4 hole at El Rio, 205 yards, hopped into the cup. Crowell's left leg was amputated 22 years ago (he suffers from vasculitis, a condition that restricts blood flow to the extremities). At 54, Crowell, a retired railroad engineer from Rincon High School, shot a 68 that day at El Rio. … All reserved and general admission tickets for Mike Candrea's USA Olympic softball team's Feb. 19 game against Arizona are sold out. The 6 p.m. game at Hillenbrand Stadium is Arizona's home debut this season. Only a few standing-room only tickets, available that night, remain. A crowd in excess of 3,000 is expected to see a probable pitching matchup between Jennie Finch and Taryne Mowatt.

Daily grounds tickets for Tucson's second WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship will be available next Saturday and Sunday at the Bashas' shopping center at Tangerine Road and Dove Mountain Boulevard. Michael Garten, executive director of the event, said practice-round tickets for Feb. 18-19 are $30 and $40. Tickets for the first three days of the five-day event, Feb. 20-22, range from $50 to $60. A mobile trailer at the Bashas' center will be open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. next weekend. … La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, which begins an eight-day run Saturday at the Tucson Rodeo Grounds, will include 39 former world champions, including current World All-Around Champ Trevor Brazile. In addition, 23 Southern Arizona cowboys and cowgirls are in the field, including potential world champs Colter Todd and Cesar de la Cruz. The world's most fearsome bull, Voodoo Child, who was not successfully ridden in 2007, will also be in the Tucson rodeo. … Against Arizona today at McKale Center, ASU's James Harden has a chance to exceed the first-year production of 1991-92 ASU freshman Mario Bennett. In the '92 game in Tempe, Bennett scored 35 points and had 11 rebounds. ASU won 77-74. In Tucson, he was limited to four points and three rebounds. ASU lost 92-65. Harden had 26 points and nine rebounds in his initial game against the Wildcats.

Arizona's pitching staff is so stacked with talent that Baseball America last week selected junior right-hander Ryan Perry as a first-team preseason All-American. That might have caught even Perry by surprise.

Perry, a Marana High School product, was 0-2 with a 6.35 ERA last year (he was injured for much of the season).

Baseball America chose its All-America team with input from scouting directors of major-league teams. Indeed, Florida Marlins director of scouting Jim Fleming attended the UA's Friday scrimmage to get a look at Ryan and other UA pitchers.

Perry was overpowering in the Cape Cod summer league; his fastball regularly was clocked at 94-96 mph. He touched 98 mph on the radar guns at the Cape Cod All-Star Game.

Ranked No. 2 by Baseball America, Arizona also placed junior right-hander Preston Guilmet, 12-2 with a 1.87 ERA, on the third team. Outfielder T.J. Steele, a junior from Canyon del Oro who hit .323 last season, was similarly a third-team pre-season All-American.

Name calling between Arizona and ASU comes with the territory. Former ASU quarterback Danny White is on record as saying he cannot stand to so much as drive on the freeway through Tucson.

At the FBR Open last week, two-time Arizona All-American golfer David Berganio told Sports Illustrated that ASU is "a four-year junior college." Everybody laughed.

Perhaps to get back at Berganio, ex-Sun Devil golfer Jeff Quinney told reporters that Arizona has faded away as a golf power. "They haven't had a guy reach the (PGA) tour since Rory Sabbatini in 1998," said Quinney, who, talking in terms of full-time PGA Tour pros, is correct.

But when UA football coach Mike Stoops suggested last week that ASU is a "junior college," it was immediately flammable because, gulp, Arizona's reputation as an academic institution has suffered great damage, mainly because Stoops' football team ranks dead last in Pac-10 graduation rates.

And also because Stoops has not won enough games to speak publicly without the fear of editing.

Could Lute Olson have called ASU a junior college without being forced to issue a public apology a day later? Yes.

But the Sun Devils never much got under Olson's skin, so he had no reason to say anything about their basketball program — although he once pointed at the Wells Fargo Arena scoreboard to quiet some unruly fans.

Stoops' comments were essentially harmless and spoken in the context of football, not something important like science or the economy.

The bottom line is that there was no bigger anti-Sun Devil coach at Arizona than Larry Smith. His teams knocked ASU out of the 1983 and 1986 Rose Bowls, and gave ASU's 1986 Pac-10 championship team its only loss.

The losing ASU quarterback in those 1985 and 1986 games was Jeff Van Raaphorst. He also was the losing quarterback in a classic 1984 game in Tucson.

Van Raaphorst now lives in Phoenix and owns a bio-medical company affiliated with Medtronic. He sells spinal instruments.

Guess who Van Raaphorst hired two years ago? Corby Smith, Larry's son.