Rod Allen is in his second season at Sabino, but his coaching résumé goes back to Jerry Kindall's first year at the University of Arizona. "I've still got something to offer," he says.

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Two years into the job, Rod Allen is still considered the "new'' baseball coach at No. 1-ranked Sabino High School. New.

That description makes Allen laugh.

You must understand that he coached on Jerry Kindall's first Arizona Wildcats staff in 1973. You might remember that Allen was the head coach at Palo Verde High School when future major-leaguer Jack Howell played for the Titans, and an assistant coach at Rincon when future All-Star catcher Tom Pagnozzi was a kid.

Howell is now 46, Pagnozzi 45. New?

"I'm old-school,'' Allen, 57, says chuckling. "I'm grounded. I'm not here to make a name for myself. I'm here to give back. I've still got something to offer.''

Allen has been around Tucson long enough that he got out of high school coaching for 12 years, putting the final touches on a 30-year teaching career in which he worked with physically challenged kids with every conceivable handicap from blindness to Down syndrome.

After that, baseball is merely a game.

"Not much bothers me anymore,'' Allen was saying before the state's top-ranked 4A-I team tied rival Sahuaro 8-8 Thursday afternoon, the Kino Region championship game that was suspended by darkness and is to be completed today. "I love what I'm doing, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make this a great experience for the young men on this team.''

So far it is working. The Sabercats are 22-5-1, ranked No.1 by the state coaches association and barreling into the playoffs with a purpose.

A year ago, the grand East Side rivalry — Sabino vs. Sahuaro — produced a classic finish. Sabino entered the state playoffs on a 16-game winning streak, and either by pure coincidence or some great fate, found itself matched against Sahuaro in a first-round game.

The 16-game winning streak went poof. It was Mark Chandler's resourceful Sahuaro club, not Sabino, that bolted all the way into the 4A-I state title game while the Sabercats went home for the summer, stunned.

A lot of coaches would not have handled that exit with much grace. Instead, Allen was an example of dignity.

"It's about the process, not the results,'' he says now. "When that game ended, it ended, period. I told the kids not to look back. I told them we had a great season (20-3), and that's all that counted.''

Typically, after the Sabercats failed to close out Sahuaro on Thursday, blowing a lead in the seventh inning and again in the eighth, Allen was upbeat.

"This is what high school baseball is all about,'' he said. "To be continued.''

A high school coach, any sport, usually gets one crack at a state championship, if that. That is how difficult and fickle coaching can be.

Thus, Allen considers himself and the Sabercats fortunate to be back, knocking on the door a year later, title aspirations in tow.

In a city long blessed with traditional baseball powers from Sahuaro and Sunnyside to CDO and Catalina Foothills — Tucson teams have won 12 state baseball championships the last 25 years — Sabino appears good enough to win this year's 4A-I title. The kick is: So does Sahuaro.

"Rod's a thoughtful guy who has handled the situation well,'' says Jaime Ledesma, a Sabino assistant coach who has worked in various prep baseball roles for years. "We've got talent, but so do a lot of teams. It's funny, we were on a roll last year but we ran into that great Sahuaro pitcher, Pat McCoy. He beat us twice late in the year. In a single-elimination playoff sport, that's all it takes.''

Sabino has been building for this season for years. It is not often that any high school baseball team can deploy three elite-level players such as Travis Jones, Jake Hanson and Justin Zumwalde. Jones and Hanson have signed Division I baseball scholarships. Zumwalde is a powerful first baseman who had a serious knee injury a few years ago. But now, Allen says, Zumwalde is "well known to all the pro scouts.''

Beyond that it takes some luck.

For example, starting pitcher Ethan Learned sat out for three years, choosing to be a drummer in a local band. He returned to baseball this year and has been "nails,'' according to Ledesma.

There's also senior outfielder Eric O'Brien, who did not play in 2007 because of personal issues but has returned and emerged as a .400 hitter and, says Ledesma, "a spark plug.''

Allen's work on third baseman Jerome Curtis has also flourished. On the bench at the beginning of the year, Curtis has become a mainstay. He hit a two-run single and a long home run on Thursday that kept the Sabercats from losing.

"When I got this job,'' Allen says, "I took a look at this group and saw something different, something special. You don't often get a cycle of talented ballplayers like we've got this year.

"The other side of it is that, with our success, the bull's-eye on us keeps getting bigger and bigger. Everybody gives us their best shot. I like it that way. I hope the kids enjoy it as much as I do.''