When Fox Sports 1 asked Sean Elliott if he would like to be the analyst for Sunday’s Arizona-Oregon State game, it would’ve been easy for him to say “are you nuts?”
Elliott worked Saturday night’s Spurs-Timberwolves game in Minneapolis. He’ll fly to Portland on Sunday morning and drive 90 miles to Corvallis. He’ll return to Portland late Sunday night and fly coast-to-coast Monday for the Spurs’ game against the Wizards on Tuesday in Washington.
This will be Elliott’s first visit to old Gill Coliseum since Dec. 23, 1988, when he scored 21 points and had 11 rebounds in his senior season in UA’s 73-69 win, part of a perfect 10-0 career against the Beavers.
Elliott, who has been the San Antonio TV/radio analyst for 12 years, was on the scene, hands dirty, when Arizona overhauled OSU to become the Pac-12’s leading basketball program.
How have times changed? The Beavers sold out three of those four games against Arizona at Gill (10,400) during Elliott’s career, and had 7,114 at the other. Now OSU sells out Gill Coliseum once a decade, and only against rival Oregon.
Against the Beavers, Elliott was part of two of the most memorable games of the Lute Olson era. The first was the “McMiracle” game at McKale Center, in January 1986, when Craig McMillan scored at the buzzer on a length-of-the-floor pass from Steve Kerr, winning 63-62, the impetus for Arizona’s first Pac-10 championship.
The second was during Elliott’s junior year, at Gill Coliseum, when Kerr had his “Perfect Game.” Kerr was 7 for 7 from the floor that night, including 5 for 5 from three-point range and 2 for 2 from the foul line, as Arizona won 70-48.
Elliott has made his mark as a broadcaster in San Antonio (he also spent two years working at ESPN). It doesn’t appear he’ll be available to the Pac-12 Networks anytime soon.
Mike Kickirillo, Spurs Sports & Entertainment’s director of broadcasting, told the San Antonio Express-News that “we call Sean ‘The Mayor.’ I can’t recall him denying an autograph or photo request. He’s always accessible.”
The Spurs are so popular in Texas that they’ve ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the NBA in ratings 12 out of the last 13 seasons.
Elliott is married to Claudia Zapata, a high-profile dietitian and nutritionist, a Georgetown grad who wrote a newspaper column for 12 years in San Antonio. His first child, Jordyn Elliott, is a soccer standout in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Jordyn scored 35 goals for Pine Crest High School in her freshman and sophomore seasons. She lives with Elliott’s first wife, Akiko Rose, a former UA cheerleader.
Life is also good for Sean’s brother, Noel Elliott, who donated his kidney to his brother in 2000. Noel owns the Finish Line Home Inspection company in Tucson and has had three children since donating his kidney to Sean in San Antonio 15 years ago.
