Saturday, June 20, 2015

Where are they now?: 2002-2003 Arizona Wildcats men's basketball

That old Anaheim curse was in full effect for this team

With Andre Iguodala winning the NBA Finals MVP this week, let's find out where some other guys that were on the 2002-03 team are now.

That team went 28-4 overall, falling in the Elite Eight to the Kansas Jayhawks by a score of 78-75. That game was played in Anaheim, which 100% explains why the one-seed Arizona team failed to reach the Final Four that season. Of course, Arizona was sort of fortunate to get that far in the first place, after taking two overtimes to down Gonzaga in the round of 32.

Jason Gardner was the only player to start every game that season, and led the team with 14.8 points per game. Iguodala played in all 32 games, but started just four of them.

Let's take a look at what the guys on that team are doing now:

Jason Gardner

Gardner is now the head basketball coach of the IUPUI Jaguars. This last season was his first as the head man at IUPUI, and led the team to a 10-21 overall record, 6-10 in the Summit League.

After that 2003 season, Gardner went undrafted, and ended up playing professionally overseas until 2011, when he entered the college coaching ranks as an assistant at Loyola.

Channing Frye

In 75 games played for the Orlando Magic this season, Frye averaged 7.3 points per game, while getting 24.9 minutes. His minutes were up from his career average, but his ppg, rpg and blocks were all down. His three-point percentage was slightly better though, as he hit on 39.3% of his long-range attempts.

Salim Stoudamire

Stoudamire has not played professionally anywhere since 2013, when he played for the Guaros de Lara in Venezuela. After getting picked in the 2005 Draft by the Atlanta Hawks, Stoudamire played in the NBA for three years, then spent some time in the D-League.

Salim himself seems to be out of the news lately, but one of his cousins is becoming one of the top high school players in Oregon.

Rick Anderson

Luke Walton

Of course, Luke Walton is currently on the assistant coaching staff for the Golden State Warriors. This was his first year on an NBA bench, after spending part of the 2011 lockout on Josh Pastner's Memphis staff. Maybe he'll get a shot as a head coach in the NBA eventually, but he seems pretty content with being on Steve Kerr's staff for now.

Hassan Adams

It's never good when you get googled and the first thing that comes up is "What Went Wrong?". Hassan Adams played in three games for the Jobstreet.com Singapore Slingers in 2014, where he averaged 11 points in 19 minutes per games. He was then released on August 11th because he "struggled with his fitness and health once he began training with the team." Sounds about right.

Andre Iguodala

Even though he did not start a single game this year until Game Four of the NBA Finals, Iguodala averaged nearly 27 minutes per game in the regular season. His scoring (7.8 ppg) fell way off from his career total of 14 points per game, but in the playoffs, it came back up to 10.4 in the 21 postseason contests. It's possible that Andre could end up having the best post-Arizona career of anyone, and a Finals MVP only helps that case.

Isaiah Fox

I like the idea of Fox stealing a bagel and candy bar worth $2.58 from campus in 2003, and facing up to a $2,500 fine and six months of jail for it. He only ended up paying a $90 fine, but still. Fox did help Arizona's APR this year, after finishing his degree in 2013-14.

Chris Rodgers

Rodgers changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Awwel in 2013, and played on a Nogales team that season. The same Nogales team saw Kevin Parrom come through it this yearAccording to this, Parrom has moved on from that team.

It's interesting to see that players from one team are still playing at various levels, and are now coaching at various levels as well. A lot of different characters made up that team, but it was still a great one, even if it came up just shy of making the Final Four.



from Arizona Desert Swarm - All Posts http://ift.tt/1GdHxmb
via IFTTT

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home