Reunion in corn country
November 29th, 2007, 5:52 pm · 1 Comment · posted by Mark Heller
Fresh off a pasting of Florida Gulf Coast, Arizona State next heads to Lincoln, Neb., where it will play Nebraska on Sunday. A real road game.
They’ll be greeted by a couple old friends: Doc Sadler and Tony Benford.
Veteran Sun Devil fans might remember Sadler as an assistant under Bill Frieder in the mid-1990s.
Sadler is Nebraska’s second-year coach, having led the Huskers to a 17-14 record in 2006-07, the third-best finish by a first-year coach in school history.
Sadler spent three years building Texas-El Paso into a Western Athletic Conference power before heading to Lincoln. He won 27 games in his first season at El Paso as the school went to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years.
Sadler: Looks the same, doesn’t he?
And who should appear on his staff but former Sun Devils assistant Tony Benford.
Benford was an assistant under Rob Evans from 1999-2006 and was the team’s associate head coach for those final two years.
Benford coached Ike Diogu and Eddie House in Tempe, and recruited that Jeff Pendergraph guy.
Benford spent eight seasons at ASU.
I missed it at the time, but Sports Illustrated writer Seth Davis made note of both Pendergraph and Sunday’s opposing big man, Nebraska’s Aleks Maric, as among the country’s under-the-radar players to watch.
Maric, incidentally, is coming off a 30-point, nine-rebound game against Indiana-Purdue Fort Wayne.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Eddie House wasn’t recruited by Tony Benford. He was already here when Evans and his staff arrived. I believe he played two years under Evans, the first on the Bobby Lazor, Mike Batiste-led team and the second when he won Pac 10 POY.