Seen and heard in Las Vegas: On Godfrey's ineligibility, Lloyd-Few stories and Hall of Famers

Nothing changed. Well, it did, but it didn’t.

Godfrey lost another battle before Monday’s game, with a Texas district court judge excluding him and others who had jumped into a Texas five-for-five lawsuit from a ruling that granted original plaintiffs a temporary restraining order to play.

Godfrey had jumped into the Texas case after his Georgia case stalled, with the NCAA having received a stay last month that overruled a preliminary injunction he received in that state.

So he's still ineligible. And it’s unclear where he might go next, just as it is for Gonzaga’s Chauncey Wiggins, who followed the same path as Godfrey and also was forced to sit out Monday’s doubleheader at T-Mobile Arena when the Zags beat Purdue.

“We’re well-educated now on the American justice system,” said Gonzaga coach Mark Few, after his Bulldogs beat Purdue 78-72 Monday. “And you know what? We wake up every day. These guys are practicing with us. They’ve been wonderful teammates. They’re all graduate students. They’re doing a great job in class. They’re very, very good players.

“They’re the the exact type of people we want in college basketball. The NCAA screwed up on this deal. They did. They brought up us coaches. We told them that ‘No, this isn't the right time.’ ”

Few said he’s been involved with the Protect College Sports Act, which could codify the eligibility status of high school class of 2022 players such as Godfrey and Wiggins, saying that “you've just got to be fair and let these 22s in until you're on the right side of it.”

Few, Lloyd share stories

Before working TNT’s broadcast of the Las Vegas Hall of Fame event Monday for TNT, veteran college basketball reporter/analyst Andy Katz sat down with Tommy Lloyd and Mark Few for a little chat at Mandalay Bay.

Of course, it was not a difficult task. Lloyd and Few have long been good friends, having worked together at Gonzaga for two decades and keeping close ties even after Lloyd took over the Wildcats before the 2021-22 season.

Also, both coaches are affable, quality-of-life guys who love talking about families and off-court experiences maybe more than basketball itself.

“What I always try to do when I’m asked to do these things is I want the people in the audience to feel like they’re just listening to us talk,” Katz said during the UA-Stanford women’s basketball game. “Those two guys are some of the easiest people to deal with when they’re talking about themselves and their relationships, peers and friends. It’s just so easy to talk about their origin story . how their relationship blossomed and how they share some of the same values.”

The event with the coaches was titled “Off the Record” and held Sunday night in the upscale Vinyl Room at Mandalay Bay, containing many of the stories that have been told about Lloyd and Few before.

Some of it revolved around how Lloyd basically barged his way onto the Gonzaga staff after Few took over from Dan Monson in 1999 — in part because, Monson has said, he had promised Lloyd a graduate job of some sort and talked Few into honoring the deal.

“I said to Tommy, ‘Do you think you were too aggressive or annoying?’ ” Katz said. “He said, ‘I don’t know. Maybe a little of both, but it worked.’ He was sort of hanging around, hanging around. He had that relationship with Monson, but he wasn’t officially on the staff; then he sort of slid these plays on the desk to get Mark’s attention.”

The rest is well-told history. Lloyd spent another 20 seasons as an official staffer at Gonzaga before Arizona hired him to replace Sean Miller in 2021. When that happened, as Lloyd has said before, he told Katz that he went into the Gonzaga weight room to tell Few during a workout — and Few put the move in perspective.

“Mark said to him, ‘Can you believe that the Gonzaga assistant is getting the Arizona job?’ ” Katz said.

Three Wildcats on Naismith list

At this point, it’s probably no surprise that Arizona had three of the 50 players named to the Naismith Trophy’s preseason watch list before Monday’s games began.

Motiejus Krivas, Ivan Kharchenkov and Caleb Holt, after all, are projected as lottery picks in CBS Sports’ latest mock 2027 NBA Draft, while Krivas has also been named a preseason AP All-American and the Big 12 preseason Player of the Year.

Kharchenkov was named a preseason All-Big 12 pick and put on the watch list for the Julius Erving Award for the best small forward in college basketball, while Holt already has three gold medals from playing for USA Basketball in FIBA events and was named to the Jerry West Award watch list for top shooting guard.

The Wildcats will face a number of other players on the Naismith watch list this season, including one of their own former players, forward Paulius Murauskas of ASU. This month alone, they’ll face Tahaad Pettiford of Auburn in addition to Braylon Mullins and Silas Demary of UConn.

Hall of Famers

Fittingly for a Basketball Hall of Fame-branded event, two Hall of Famers were in the stands for the women’s opener between Arizona and Stanford: Tara Van DerVeer and Becky Hammon.

VanDerveer, the legendary former coach at Stanford, was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.

Hammon, who was inducted in 2023, became the first full-time female assistant coach in a major U.S. men's sports league when she joined the Spurs’ staff in 2014 and spent seven seasons with the Spurs. She is now head coach of the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces.

One of Hammon’s fellow class of 2023 inductees, legendary former Purdue coach Gene Keady, was announced during the Purdue-Gonzaga game Monday evening, saying thank you to fans cheering him.

And on the sidelines coaching against Keady’s old team was Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who was inducted in August as a member of the class of 2026.

Conference (tournament) realignment

During halftime of a women’s basketball game between a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference that is located about 30 miles from the Pacific Ocean (Stanford) and another Western team that now plays for the heartland-rooted Big 12 (Arizona), officials held a press conference to unveil the logo of the Big Ten Tournament … which will soon be held at the exact same arena where Western teams played in eight Pac-12 Tournaments through 2024.

Got all that?

Because of their move from the Pac-12 to the Big 12 in 2024, Arizona plays its men’s and women’s tournaments in Kansas City. Stanford and the other ACC women’s teams will play their tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina, while the ACC men’s teams are headed for Greensboro, N.C.

Better memory

After playing for Florida in the season opener at T-Mobile Arena last season, when Arizona beat the defending national champion Gators 93-87, Gonzaga transfer Xaivian Lee had a better experience this time.

He had 18 points while hitting 3 of 4 3-pointers and picked up three rebounds in the Zags' 78-72 win over Purdue in the opening game of the men's doubleheader Monday evening.

“It's kind of poetic,” Lee said. “Definitely exciting to come out of here with a win.”

Walton honored

As it did last season when UA and UCLA met in Los Angeles, the Basketball Hall of Fame honored the late Bill Walton.

This time, Walton’s wife, Lori, and two family members were introduced while accepting a donation to Walton’s foundation, while video tributes were shown and trivia questions were given during a second-half timeout.

One asked which of four phrases was a famous in-game call of Walton's. The answer, of course, was “throw it down, big man!”

New look on Trop

A block away from T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas was reinventing itself again.

On the southeast corner of Tropicana Avenue and Las Vegas Boulevard, the new A’s ballpark is rising out of the ashes of the demolished Tropicana Hotel. So far, significant foundation work has been completed, and three steel arches are already in the air to frame what will eventually be an overlapping shell similar to the Sydney Opera House.

Upgrade ahead 

The Hall of Fame Las Vegas took the opportunity to remind fans that it will be held at Allegiant Stadium on Nov. 12, 2027. The doubleheader will include previously announced matchups between Arizona against Duke and Indiana against Kansas.