Seen & Heard at McKale: Keshad Johnson's stock rising, Colgate coach's dental difficulty, more

NBA and college basketball analyst P.J. Carlesimo figures he’ll work about a dozen Pac-12 Networks games this season, but his presence at McKale Center on Saturday wasn’t about any of them.

He was just a dad.

The former NBA and Seton Hall coach sat in the second row of the visitors’ section wearing a maroon Colgate hat while watching his son, Kyle, play for the Raiders.

Carlesimo said beforehand he wouldn’t analyze the game as a broadcaster nor as some sort of nosy parent who might be anxious to see his son get more shots or minutes.

Carlesimo has been on the other side of those sorts of conflicts, after all, having been a longtime coach at Seton Hall, where he led the Pirates on a surprising run to the 1989 championship game that began with first- and second-round NCAA Tournament wins at McKale in 1988-89.

“I just enjoy it,” Carlesimo said. “I’ve dealt with parents so long I think I’m relatively objective as a parent. It’s impossible for parents” to be that way.

Carlesimo expressed no worries about Kyle, who is a role player for the Raiders this season, logging a total of three minutes in Saturday’s game. A close friend of Colgate point guard Braedon Smith from his Seattle hometown, Kyle Carlesimo transferred from Eastern Illinois this season and now plays under Colgate coach Matt Langel.

“It’s a great situation,” P.J. said. “Matt’s a hell of a coach and Colgate is a great school. He loves it.”

Even though P.J. lives in Seattle, he said his son’s presence at a Patriot League school in upstate New York actually fits his schedule pretty well. While he said the nonstop flight from Seattle to Tucson made catching Saturday’s game easy, Carlesimo said he often works NBA games between Thursdays and Sundays in Eastern Conference cities that are often near Patriot League schools where Kyle is playing.

“Somewhere along the line I can usually get to see him,” Carlesimo said.

Stock ticker KEY

ESPN’s decision to put UA forward Keshad Johnson into the second round of its latest mock NBA Draft last week suggests that the San Diego State transfer forward’s stock is rising among pro scouts.

Or something like that.

“I don’t know what his stock is, and I didn’t know he was a stock that was traded on the market.” Lloyd said, before acknowledging that, well, something is up. “Keshad is a good basketball player. Keshad is one of those guys whose best days are ahead of him.

“Keshad came from a really solid program and he’s really improved as a basketball player over the course of his college career. Now maybe he’s finally at a stage of his development where he’s able to kind of take advantage of the next step. Maybe a little bit of it is playing at Arizona, but maybe a lot of is just Keshad where he’s at in his career.”

Pain manager

Even in the maddening busyness of a long college basketball season, life still happens.

Langel was reminded of that Thursday, when pain drove him into a dentist’s office for a sudden appointment he had to sandwich between a home game Wednesday night against Binghamton and a 5:30 a.m. bus on Friday that began the Raiders’ trip to Tucson.

At the dentist, he found out that playing at McKale wasn’t the only adversity he was immediately facing. The coach also needed to come back for a root canal.

“Hopefully with pain management between now and then, I’ll be OK,” Langel

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Right place to be

Maybe being the coach at Colgate, of all places, means Langel will get some sort of karmic dental healing ahead. The school was, after all, named after the same family that created Colgate toothpaste.

It just took a while for the name to stick. Colgate University was founded in 1819 as the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York, then it became the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution in 1833 and then Madison University in 1846.

Finally, in 1890, the school’s trustees, faculty and students had successfully moved toward naming it after the Colgate family.

“Through their financial support, certainly, but also through their leadership, counsel, and active involvement, New York City soapmaker William Colgate and his heirs guided the development of the institution and sustained it when it could not have survived on its own,” Colgate’s historical website said.

The Colgate family was not consulted initially about the name change nor did they favor it, according to school archivist Howard Williams, but the family “assented rather than embarrass its advocates.”

So Colgate it was, and still is.

Zoo hygienists

With Colgate making its first appearance ever at McKale Center on Saturday, two students in the Zona Zoo section were apparently aware of that school history.

One arrived dressed as a white tube of toothpaste, and the other went as a blue toothbrush.

Maroon Raiders

Colgate changed its athletic nickname too, dropping the “Red” from Red Raiders in 2001 to avoid a connection to any racial stereotype. The school said the original nickname was coined in 1932 as a reference to the new maroon uniforms of its football team.

The school also replaced its Native American mascot with a grinning, gray “Raider” character who wears a maroon jersey and a maroon, colonial-era tricorn hat.

Quotable

“Honestly, I don’t notice what shoes they wear. I don’t notice if they wear a headband or not. I don’t know if they wear an arm sleeve. I just know if they wear an Arizona jersey. That’s all I pay attention to.” — UA coach Tommy Lloyd, when asked about Oumar Ballo’s new hairstyle Saturday.

The big number

0: Second-chance points for Colgate, which only collected one offensive rebound.

Photos: Arizona Wildcats stay unbeaten with 82-55 win over Colgate, college basketball