Arizona’s first exhibition game against College of Idaho last week was a house of horrors. The Wildcats went without a suspended Allonzo Trier (unknown reasons) and Chance Comanche (academics), and then lost forward Ray Smith when he went down with a knee injury.
There was a little more positivity to come out of Sunday’s second exhibition against Chico State, namely that the Wildcats could bring back Comanche into the mix when they travel to Hawaii for the season opener against Michigan State on Friday night.
But the sadness of the Ray Smith saga still loomed over Sunday’s affair.
Last week, Smith announced on Twitter that, after tearing an ACL for the third time in three years, he would be retiring from basketball. As a result of his injuries, he never played a regular-season game for the Wildcats, instead only participating in two Red-Blue scrimmages and part of one exhibition game.
He also missed his senior season at Las Vegas High School.
Smith will still be around the team — although, UA coach Sean Miller said, he won’t travel to Hawaii this week. In Smith’s announcement note on Twitter, he wrote that “my run in basketball has been great” and that “my father once told me that just because someone is a good basketball player doesn’t make them a good person.”
Before Sunday’s game, Smith was hanging around Arizona’s team managers as the players were in the locker room, he took some underhanded half-court shots and even took a few photos with some nearby fans. During the shoot-around, he repeatedly passed UA forward Lauri Markkanen the ball and chatted and smiled the whole time.
The best moment came during Arizona’s intro video, where Smith replaced Miller at the very end to say “This is … Arizona.”
Smith is only 19 years old, but seems to be able to handle himself like someone much older than that.
Still…
“He’s a phenomenal kid,” Miller said. “But make no mistake, he’s hurting.”
Miller went on.
“This is something you don’t see very often,” Miller said. “In the 25 years I’ve been involved in college basketball, no players I’ve been around have gone through such hardship and injuries that he’s had.
Kadeem Allen, Arizona’s lone senior, said “it’s not fair” that Smith has to go through what he has been.
“He never got to play college basketball,” Allen said. “It’s not fair when a guy worked that hard to get that.”
