Jay Bilas’ workload is going a different direction this week.
That’s because ESPN is throwing him in with Bill Walton and Dave Pasch on the broadcast of Thursday’s Arizona-Colorado game.
“For me, it’s been an extraordinary week of preparation,” Bilas said. “I’ve been listening to a lot of Grateful Dead, burning incense and tie-dying my clothing in my backyard. So I think I’ll look good, smell good and I’ll be totally prepared if there’s any sort of reference to the Dead.”
While it might appear there could be a game within a game Thursday – who, after all, gets control of the microphone? – but Bilas is prepared for that, too.
“I’ve worked in three-man booth for a lot of years with Bill Raftery and Sean McDonough, so I’m used to not saying anything for long stretches of time,” Bilas said, on an ESPN conference call today. “I don’t anticipate it’ll be a problem at all.
Walton “has been working with essentially a mime in Dave Pasch, who speaks as often as Marcel Marceau. It’ll probably be just Walton speaking. Pasch and I will say hello and goodbye at the end.”
While it will be Bilas’ first college broadcast with Walton, Bilas said he actually worked with Walton on a pair of broadcasts featuring LeBron James with St. Vincent-St. Mary High School, against Oak Hill and Mater Dei.
On a serious note, Bilas said he did watch Arizona's loss to Oregon State and has seen a lot of UA games, and remains impressed.
“They’re obviously really good,” Bilas said. “They didn’t play as well on the defensive end against Oregon State, didn’t get stops in a possession game, but offensively they were pretty good.
“They’re not a team that scores easily and in a half court game you gotta get stops. And on the road, those games comes down to posessions. They’re not going to blow a lot of teams out even though they’re very talented. They’re not a great shooting team. But I like Arizona a lot I think they’re very good.”
Former UA coach Fred Snowden will be the school's representative in this year's Pac-12 Hall of Honor inductees.
Stanley Johnson was named to the Wooden Award 25-man midseason watch list. Stanford's Chasson Randle and Utah's Delon Wright are the only other Pac-12 players on the list.
Arizona's Brandon Ashley and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson had been on the 50-player preseason watch list, along with Josh Scott of Colorado and Joseph Young of Oregon.
The Republic's Doug Haller looked at how bad UA's second-half defense at Oregon State really was.
Utah, meanwhile, has had no such defensive trouble.
Rebounding has been a problem for Colorado.
It'll be Kevon Looney and the UCLA big men against USC's dynamic guards tonight at the Galen Center (7 p.m. MST, ESPN2). But overall, there's not a lot of positive buzz over either program right now.
Anthony Brown is bringing a combination of experience and versatility to Stanford, which will face Cal tonight (9 p.m., ESPNU).
Previously injured guard Jabari Bird of Cal is hoping to make a difference in the game.
