Tommy Lloyd's former coach and longtime mentor pays him a visit in Pullman

PULLMAN, Wash. — Because UA coach Tommy Lloyd spent 22 years up the road from Washington State at Gonzaga, the Zags’ influence on his coaching style has been an obvious point of discussion.

But another major influence sat in the first row of seats behind the Wildcats’ bench at Beasley Coliseum, surrounded by a few friends who wore the yellow-and-black of … the Walla Walla Community College Warriors.

“Tommy’s probably never told you this, but we had a 7-footer (Ryan Chilton) when he played for us,” said Jeff Reinland, the longtime Walla Walla CC coach who had Lloyd there and at Kelso (Washington) High School. “We did a lot of high-low with him and Tommy, a lot of two-man stuff. Tommy was on the outside, but he could post too.”

Now Lloyd runs his own high-low offense with Azuolas Tubelis and Oumar Ballo, while also deploying screens with the same sort of heavy frequency that Reinland uses.

“Lots of similarities,” Reinland said before Thursday’s game. “Lots of big-on-little screens, so your five man is the screener for your point guard. That puts a lot of pressure on the defense. They can’t really switch it, and if they do you’ve got a mismatch. Lots of things like that.”

Reinland said he wasn’t surprised to see Lloyd take his system to the heights he has already, receiving multiple national coach-of-the-year honors last season and guiding the Wildcats to the No. 6 ranking so far this season.

Maybe that’s because there’s one other similarity between Lloyd and Reinland: Their personalities.

“Tommy was always a good player, and we made him a lot better,” Reinland said. “But the thing about Tommy that you see with his coaching — and it kind of scares me, because it reminds me of myself — is he’s just an intense competitor. You’ve got to have that along with being good.”

FS1 shift

Sometimes going with remote broadcasters this season, Fox decided less than a week before Thursday’s game to send Seattle-based veteran play-by-play announcer Rich Waltz to work Thursday’s game in person with Tucson-based former Wildcat player Matt Muehlebach.

If that was good news for viewers, it was also for the announcers themselves. Waltz said he and Muehlebach worked a game together about six years ago but not since then.

“When we saw our names on the list, we texted each other” right away, Waltz said.

While Muehlebach arrived from Tucson, where he is also an attorney, Waltz hustled up to Pullman after working San Diego State’s 85-75 win over Utah State for CBS Sports Network on Wednesday in San Diego.

Packer passes

The CBS analyst for the Wildcats’ 1997 national-championship victory, Billy Packer, died at age 82 according to a tweet from his son, Mark.

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A former standout player for Wake Forest in the early 1960s, Packer went on to offer analysis for every Final Four between 1975 and 2008.

Players vs. Cancer

With Coaches vs Cancer holding its annual awareness event — officially dubbed “Suits and Sneakers Week” — WSU coaches wore suits and also had a player warming up … while actually fighting cancer.

WSU guard Myles Rice is sitting out the season after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in September. However, Rice has been able to travel with the Cougars and even participate in warmups while undergoing chemotherapy every two weeks.

A WSU spokesman said arrangements are typically made so that Rice can get chemo treatments when the Cougars are home, enabling him to travel with them on other weeks.

Sleepy time

While Washington State represents the single-most time-consuming place to reach in the Pac-12 for Arizona, the Cougars didn’t have it easy this week either.

They had to play at Colorado on Sunday, going down to the wire in a three-point loss, then came back late that night to Pullman.

While they were able to charter, allowing the Cougar players to get to class on Monday, they didn’t get to take a full day off with no class or practice.

“It’s hard when you don’t get that one day off,” WSU coach Kyle Smith said. “We were off (of practice) Monday, but you don’t get that total day off where you’re able to kick back and watch football or whatever.

“Definitely that Sunday-night game is tough. It’s good for our TV package and our league, but it makes it tricky.”

Quotable

“Are you crazy? He can score and rebound so easily. And he’s fast.”

— Smith, speaking on his weekly radio show about what he tells NBA scouts who aren’t big on UA’s Azuolas Tubelis

Photos: No. 6 Arizona defeats Washington State, men's basketball