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ASU Baseball: Arizona Daily Star columnist Greg Hansen, Sun Devil baseball coach Tracy Smith engage in Twitter spat

It's a saga now.

By Nick Krueger and Justin Emerson

There is some interesting back and forth going on right now between ASU baseball coach Tracy Smith and Arizona Daily Star sports columnist Greg Hansen.

Saturday night, the Daily Star published a piece by Hansen criticizing the way Smith went about tweeting the final few seconds of Arizona's loss to USC on a last second field goal attempt.

Tuesday afternoon, Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson addressed Smith's tweets in his weekly radio appearance on Bickley and Marotta on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM. Here is what Anderson told the station according to this article:

"I'm aware of it," Anderson said. "Do I condone it? Tracy is one who is rooting for his fellow coach. And certainly the thought that if Arizona loses a game, now we're closer to them was on his mind.

"I think that if he had to do it over again, he might be a little more sensitive to the fact that some people are way oversensitive. Particularly, if you're in a coach's position, you have to be cautious about that. We've talked about it and I think he will be more cautious about his tweeting moving forward."

Now Tuesday night, a new development. Smith tweeted at Hansen this afternoon, Hansen tweeted back and Smith recently responded.

Our take: Should Smith have tweeted about Arizona's missed kick? Probably not. As a college coach, he knows better than most what a student-athlete is going through when he lets his team and his school down.

Is it worth a column? Probably not. Smith's tweet wasn't mean-spirited, just trying to appeal to his new school and follower base while jumping in on a rivalry of which he is now apart.

Hopefully cooler heads will prevail in the end.

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