JAMES GREGG / arizona daily star 2007

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In the last six months, Palo Verde High School receiver/defensive back Adam Hall has surely emerged as one of the top five Tucson football recruits of the last 30 years. He joins Sahuaro's Rodney Peete, Amphi's Michael Bates, Sunnyside's Freddie Sims and Salpointe's Kris O'Dowd.

Peete and O'Dowd chose USC. Bates played two seasons at Arizona. Sims played two years at Oklahoma.

Keeping Hall in Tucson becomes the most visible recruiting battle of the Mike Stoops period.

On Tuesday, Cal coach Jeff Tedford and Bears assistant coach Ron Gould, a Santa Rita High School grad, visited Hall here. He was in Berkeley for the Big Game, Cal vs. Stanford, in late November.

Next weekend, Hall is scheduled to be the personal visitor of Oregon head coach-in-waiting Chip Kelly; the Ducks have just two recruits lined up for visits: Hall and Long Beach defensive lineman Iuta Tepa. So Hall will get Oregon's most concentrated best shot.

Last week, UO head coach Mike Bellotti visited Tepa in Long Beach. Tepa told reporters that Bellotti "showed me all of his bowl rings'' and talked at length about the UO's unique relationship with Nike.

Stoops can counter with the UA's momentum, a promising future and the chance to stay home. There's a lot to be said for that.

Both Cal and Oregon are chasing another elite, Hall-type athlete: Chandler High's Markus Wheaton. He has narrowed his choices to Cal, Oregon and UCLA, so those schools have a backup plan if Hall goes elsewhere.

Not so for Arizona. Losing Hall wouldn't cripple the Wildcats — receivers and secondary players are the easiest to find in recruiting — but it has become such a high-profile chase that it transcends the roster and becomes a notable public relations issue.

The Pima County Sports and Tourism Authority's plan to get a Japanese team to fill-in for the Chicago White Sox is a long, long, long shot, based ultimately on taxpayer help. The timing couldn't be worse in that regard. And it probably can't be just any Japanese team, but the mighty Yomiuri Giants — the Yankees of Japan — a franchise that would attract a significant number of Asian baseball fans and attendant Pacific Rim tourism. We can hope, can't we?

One part of the PCSTA proposal won't work. It won't be able to attract another minor-league team to Tucson. That's because the Pacific Coast League won't be adding a franchise (it has an even-number of teams) and it would cost at least $13 million to buy a PCL team and move it to Tucson Electric Park. No way.

Nor does Tucson work for the Class A California League or the Class AA Texas League. The geography doesn't work. So it appears to be the Yomiuri Giants or nothing.

The White Sox have relocated to a high-roll facility with the Dodgers in Glendale. But because that facility isn't quite ready for use, they will stage their annual Fantasy Camp at Kino Sports Complex and Tucson Electric Park Jan. 18-24. Not that Tucson is totally unpopular in Chicago; the camp, which costs $3,300 each, is sold out.

Mike Candrea returns to regular season duty Monday, opening practice as the Arizona softball team works toward a Feb. 6 opener against Kansas. It's likely that sophomore Lindsey Sisk, 10-3 last season with a 1.62 ERA, will be Arizona's opening day pitcher. She would oppose KU senior Valerie George, 18-10 a year ago. George pitched Sabino High School to the 2005 state championship. … When Rich Ellerson filled his coaching staff at Army last week he made sure his old mentor from Salpointe Catholic, Bill Tripp, was at his side. Tripp will coach the offensive line at West Point; he was Ellerson's position coach at Salpointe in 1971-72 and a former head coach at CDO, Salpointe and Sahuarita high schools before leaving Tucson to coach for former UA lineman Jerry Davitch at Idaho in 1977. … It was a productive start to the pro golf season for Tucson's Jake Rogers, Nate Tyler, Ben Kern, Brian Kontak and Brian Prouty in last week's Gateway Tour kickoff event in Phoenix. All were in the top 11; Rogers was third overall to earn $8,566 after a second-round 63, the tournament's best round. It costs each player $10,000 to enter the eight-event Gateway Tour winter series. … Here's the best perspective yet on how point guard Brandon Jennings might have fit in at the UA: His Italian pro team, Lottomatica, played point guard Mustafa Shakur's Spanish team, Tau Ceramica on Thursday in Spain. Shakur played seven minutes and scored three points. Jennings played 30 minutes and scored 13. But Shakur's team won 103-96. Jennings is generally considered a mid- first-round draft pick in June.

In this decade, 2000-08, Arizona has had a Pac-10-low 14 players drafted by the NFL. (Even Wazzu has more, 15). Worse, nine of those Wildcats were selected in the sixth and seventh rounds. USC has had 45 drafted in that period, followed by Cal at 28. The Wildcats will probably add just two to that total this spring: tackle Eben Britton in the second or third round and receiver-returner Mike Thomas in the late rounds. The three most likely draftees returning on Arizona's roster are receiver Delashaun Dean, tight end Rob Gronkowski and cornerback Devin Ross. Ross and Gronkowski could be first-round selections. Thomas' chances to make an NFL roster are good. He was a better college player than ex-Wildcat Syndric Steptoe, a smaller receiver-returner who caught 19 passes for the Cleveland Browns this year. … Dropped from the 40-man roster by the New York Yankees last week to make room for free agent Mark Teixeira, CDO grad and Arizona's career home run leader Shelley Duncan isn't free of his Yankee chains yet. Unless Duncan is claimed on waivers, he will remain property of the Yankees. … Tucson Olympians Lacey Nymeyer and Matt Grevers begin a six-event Grand Prix American swimming series next weekend in Los Angeles, competing for prize money for the first time. Sahuaro High School senior Caitlin Leverenz also is entered in the Grand Prix series, which is America's premier swimming competition in 2009. … Catalina Foothills High School state championship soccer goalie Michael D'Arrigo was one of 72 elite players invited to last week's mega-camp for the U.S. Under-18 national team in Los Angeles. D'Arrigo is attempting to choose from scholarship offers from, among others, UNLV, Cal-Poly, San Diego and George Mason.

Former UA point guard Brenda Pantoja, 1992-96, part of Joan Bonvicini's strong UA teams, was back at McKale Center last week at the UA-Stanford women's game. But this time Pantoja was working the game as a referee. Living in her hometown, Los Angeles, Pantoja, has become one of the Pac-10's top women's hoops officials. … Tucson postal service employee Bob Scofield officiated the four-overtime NAU-Portland State game last week in Flagstaff and got a lot of airtime on ESPN replays. Scofield is the topic of a feature in the January issue of Referee magazine, which details his unprecedented selection as a referee for both the men's and women's NCAA tournament in 2008. … At the Las Vegas Bowl, Arizona's 1980-83 Hall of Fame linebacker Ricky Hunley told me he might return to coaching in 2009 but only for the right fit. That "right fit'' is likely to be in the NFL if Leslie Frazier, who has interviewed for head coaching positions with the Denver Broncos and Detroit Lions, becomes a head coach. Frazier and Hunley were together on the Cincinnati Bengals staff through 2007. Nor would it be a surprise if UCLA's Rick Neuheisel offers Hunley, who lives in Los Angeles, a coaching position.

I wrote last week, wishful thinking, that Steve Kerr would be my first choice to coach Arizona's basketball team. Obviously, it's not going to happen.

Kerr insists his priority is to spend time with his three teenage children rather than live the 24/7 life of a college basketball coach. So the timing is all wrong, and, besides, he has another year on his contract as GM of the Phoenix Suns.

But it's not a stretch. Kerr is so good with people — which translates to teaching, coaching and recruiting — that his lack of coaching experience would be almost no factor. You hire two veteran assistant coaches and a capable recruiter. It's not that hard. Kerr has the presence, command and instincts to be a head coach in the NBA or in college basketball today. He's a sharp dude; his 17 years as an NBA player weren't spent ogling movie stars in the front-row seats.

It would take an owner or athletic director with the intuition of Jerry Colangelo to hire Kerr as a coach. Remember: Colangelo saw leadership, baseball knowledge and communication skills in Diamondbacks broadcaster Bob Brenly in 2001 when he promoted Brenly from the D-backs broadcast team to the managerial job. Brenly's coaching experience was limited to three years as a base coach. Yet the D-backs won the World Series in Brenly's first year.

The regret about bad timing and Kerr's unavailability is that this is probably a one-time opportunity for him to coach his alma mater when it needs him most.