The Arizona Wildcats will take the floor in a few hours against the Memphis Tigers in first-round NCAA action. The 5th-seeded Cats are favored over a young Tigers team coached by former Arizona player and assistant coach Josh Pastner, a bright, precocious (two college degrees in three years) guy who…
And we also are well aware that all segments of society, especially the poor, the infirm and those trying to get an education, will be adversely affected by the pending cuts.That said, a quote in today’s Arizona Republic by State Senator Linda Lopez, a Tucson (gasp) Democrat, stopped us short.”If…
We settled in yesterday for an annual ritual–watching the NCAA March Madness Selection Show at a Scottsdale bar, Zipps Sports Grill up on East Greenway Parkway. It’s always a hoot to see guys armed with schooners of brewskies trying to keep up with the match-ups as they flash on the…
Arizona’s 77-75 overtime loss to Washington in the Pac-10 tournament finals on Saturday afternoon was intensely fought, and ended dramatically when tough little guard Isaiah Thomas hit a fadeaway jumper at the buzzer that was one of ESPN’s top ten plays of the day. The Wildcats seemingly had the game…
While reporting our recent story, “Good Neighbor,” (here it is), we requested the personnel file from the City of Peoria for fire captain Robert Brewster, the un-charged alleged mastermind of the December 2003 fire that destroyed the nearly completed residence of Peoria residents Mike and Betty Johnson. So, yesterday, a…
This edition of the Arizona Wildcats is unlikely to get too deep into the upcoming NCAA tournament–inexperience at the point guard position and other shortcomings surely will spell their doom, hopefully in the second weekend, not the first. But it’s an interesting and very watchable team, with all manner of…
Just last week, Arizona State laid a hurtin’ on the Oregon Ducks over in Tempe, and the rematch looked favorable for the Sun Devils in the first round of the Pac-10 men’s basketball tournament in Los Angeles. Not nearly enough horses to compete night after night in a top-drawer Division…
Winkler and his wife Mary have a spread at the base of the forbidding Peloncillo Mountains on the Arizona/New Mexico line, about 20 miles north of the Mexico border. It’s a few miles from where Geronimo, the Indian warrior, surrendered in 1886. He is a retired Superior Court judge who…
We first heard about the Lisa Randall case about six months before we broke the story of her unfortunate prosecution here in “Phantom Murder,” published last July.It took awhile to wrap our head around the unusually tragic and complex facts that had landed the Peoria grandmother and veteran day-care operator…
We hadn’t used that headline even once during this men’s college basketball season. But the improbable happened, and both the Arizona Wildcats and the ASU Sun Devils won their weekend games against the Oregon schools fairly easily to close out the regular season in fine fashion. For the Devils, the…
You may remember the name Rachel Alexander, a former “special assistant”deputy county attorney under Andrew Peyton Thomas, her kindred ideological spirit Alexander now finds her law license in serious jeopardy with the State Bar of Arizona, which recently filed a complaint against her, Thomas, and that ubiquitous loser of a…
This story is about firefighters who morphed into arsonists, an insurance company that wasn’t a “good neighbor,” and a Peoria couple whose dream house was reduced to rubble. It is an ongoing saga in which just about everyone involved, even arson victims Betty and Mike Johnson, have something to answer…
We first met Mike Bibby when he was a high-school junior at Phoenix Shadow Mountain High, one of the most highly recruited players in the nation. He was the son of onetime NBA player (and coach) Henry Bibby, with whom he was not close at the time. Bibby was a…
The University of Arizona Wildcats journeyed to Los Angeles last weekend knowing that one win, especially over the UCLA Bruins, practically would clinch the Pac-10 regular season title. ASU, riding a precious one-game winning streak, simply wanted to keep the alleged momentum going. But both teams came back (on the same…
We knew it was bound to happen, that the Arizona Wildcats weren’t going to run the table in the Pac-10 Conference. But last night’s 65-58 loss in Los Angeles to USC still came as something of a disappointment. The Trojans did a great job of bottling up Wildcats star…
The jury has rendered its verdict in the high-profile murder case of former Glendale resident Faleh Almaleki, accused in the so-called “honor killing” of his oldest child, 20-year-old Noor. Guilty of second-degree murder in the October 2009 hit-and-run in a Peoria parking lot.Guilty of aggravated assault–Almaleki also ran down Amal…
When the Washington State Cougars rushed down the court down by two points with seconds to go on Saturday afternoon, just about everyone in the Wells Fargo Arena probably shared a similar thought: Oh, shit! The Arizona State Sun Devils had lost eleven Pac-10 Conference games in a row, many of…
The jury at the “honor killing” trial of Faleh Almaleki still hasn’t decided which degree of homicide to impose in the closely watched case. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Roland Steinle sent the panel home for the long weekend after several hours of deliberation yesterday.It isn’t scheduled to report back…
In the world of standing headlines, the above one is getting quite very tiresome for Arizona State men’s basketball fans. The Sun Devils lost last night 79-62 to the formidable Washington Huskies at Wells Fargo Arena in a game they never were in once it really got going midway through…
First, we note that the lowly Cleveland Cavs somehow beat the two-time defending NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers last night in what has to rank as the sports upset of this new year. A real stunner. ASU coach Herb Sendek needs help from the basketball gods For the ASU Sun…
Maricopa County jurors went home yesterday without reaching a verdict in the “honor killing” case of Glendale man Faleh Almaleki, who stands accused of killing his daughter Noor and seriously injuring a former family friend. Defense attorneys for Almaleki did not argue during the trial that he is innocent of…
Faleh Almaleki’s attorney had but three words to say when the Maricopa County Superior Court judge asked him to call his first witness late this morning. “The defense rests,” assistant public defender Jeffrey Kirchler muttered. It meant that Almaleki, the 50-year-old Glendale man accused of murdering his daughter Noor and severely…
