Allonzo Trier played Thursday, making his 2016-17 McKale Center debut by coming off the bench against Washington State.
Of course, this wasn’t news anymore — Trier made his season debut at UCLA last weekend and helped the Wildcats beat the Bruins by 11 points.
But his “status” was important on Thursday night against Washington State for no other reason than it was his first game at home since last March.
Trier didn’t start the game — UA coach Sean Miller said on Monday he was going to ease Trier back into the rotation, and a return to the starting lineup is likely coming soon. But when he entered the game at the 15:19 mark of the first half, the sellout crowd gave him a loud, long standing ovation.
Trier quickly made a 3-pointer for his first made shot attempt in McKale of the season to rile up the crowd some more.
It wasn’t all pretty: Later in the first half, Trier attempted a Steph Curry-range 3-pointer from well beyond the arc and missed badly. But Arizona’s fans, certainly, were happy the sophomore star was back.
A couple hours before the game, Trier tweeted out a photo of his Arizona jersey (more on that in a bit), shorts and two pairs of shoes with the caption “game day.” The tweet received more than 700 retweets and 1,500 likes.
Trier finished the night with 17 points on 6 of 12 shooting with a career-high seven assists in 25 minutes.
