Arizona Basketball: Pac-12 Media Day brings clarity about the season

Pac-12 Media Day for basketball is a wrap. Arizona Basketball fans would be interested in what went down.

Pac-12 Media Day took place on Tuesday, October 8th in San Fransisco at the Pac-12 Network offices. Arizona Basketball, for the first time, brought freshmen Josh Green and Nico Mannion. The main conversation was about California Governor Gavin Newsom and his signing of the Fair Pay to Play Act.

Washington State has a new coach, former University of San Fransisco head coach Kyle Smith. Smith thought it was a good idea, “I think it’s a great opportunity. “In theory it’s great if the players can — their likenesses, their images, but there’s obviously going to be unintended consequences of — probably put a better package together in Seattle with Amazon,” said Smith.

But others including Pac-12 commissioner  Larry Scott was leery. Basically, California is forcing the NCAA’s hand in paying players or getting them more benefits for working so hard forgoing income on the pro level.

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Scott advised that there will be 220 Pac12 basketball games on television on the following networks: ESPN, Fox, CBS, ABC, and the Pac- 12 Networks. He also announced that the Pac-12 is moving to a 20-game league schedule in 2021. When asked if that would allow Arizona and UCLA/USC to play twice during the season, he had this to say:

"Yeah, so that’s one of the motivations is to have less misses between conference schools with a 20-game schedule as opposed to an 18-game schedule. And we’re trying to figure out — there still will be a couple of misses."

Another announcement involving Arizona Basketball is The Al Attles Classic which will take place on December 21st. The Classic, a new one-day quadruple-header played in the new Chase Center, the Golden State Warriors arena. The event will include three Pac-12 teams and will honor the legend and recent Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Al Attles. Attles No.16 was retired by the Golden State Warriors. Warrior GM Bob Meyers spoke about it.

The Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley joked about his teams’ ability to rebound, so we will see if that’s a problem for the Sun Devils this season. His point guard Rob Edwards spoke with length with us about team chemistry and James Harden coming to campus to play with them.

We asked Miller about possibly playing zone defense this season bringing up the fact that Colorado head coach Tad Boyle said he was going to play more zone. What do you think the answer was? Yep, he said emphatically, “No.” But that this team is picking up on his defensive scheme. He’s also very happy with the loyal fans that follow his program.

We also asked Miller about Dylan Smith, who returned to the Wildcats this season, fans seem to not understand what he brings to the team, but the coach does. We couldn’t hold back, because we are so excited about it, we also had to ask coach Miller about Stanley Johnson and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson together again in Toronto playing for the NBA Champions. Lastly, we spoke to Josh Green about the Red and Blue game and more, here is the interview:

And last but not least, Arizona Basketball was assigned a candy for dessert after our media lunch, what do you think of their selection?

Shout out from the Wildcats on the rooftop of the Pac-12 headquarter in San Fransisco:

Most of the Pac-12 teams have 5-8 new freshman or graduate transfers on their team. Most of the coaches spoke about how their teams are learning from their coaches. There are a few new coaches in the conference including Cal (Mark Fox), Washington State (Kyle Smith) and an extremely funny Mick Cronin (UCLA). We predict Arizona is underrated at No. 4 and look forward to watching the team prove the Pac-12 coaches wrong. Well, that’s a wrap from San Fransisco.