Arizona's Tommy Lloyd takes high road after Arizona State walks off court
After Bobby Hurley ranted in his postgame press conference, Tommy Lloyd took a different approach.
Arizona's fourth-year head coach praised Hurley and Arizona State after the Wildcats left Tempe with a hard-fought 81-72 victory on Saturday.
The men's basketball rivalry game turned ugly in the final minute after Arizona State's BJ Freeman headbutted Arizona's Caleb Love. Both players were ejected and Hurley elected to pull his team off the floor and not shake hands with Arizona players or coaches after the game.
Love scored 27 points and Jaden Bradley added 14 for Arizona (15-6, 9-1), who is all alone in second place in the Big 12.
Here's what Lloyd had to say after the game:
Lloyd On ASU Not Shaking Hands
"That could be a good decision. If things got chippy, you know what I mean, that could be a good decision. I'm not going to question their decision to do that. I'm not going to hold it against anybody. We obviously didn't want anything else to escalate and I totally understand why that was done."
LLoyd: 'It's An Emotional Game'
"I didn't see what happened. There obviously was an altercation between Caleb [Love] and number 10 [BJ Freeman]. Obviously Caleb reacted. It sounds like he got headbutted. I haven't seen the video so I don't know one way or another what to say. Obviously it's disappointing, probably on all sides. We want to be a program that when the tough things happen, we want to respond with class. And I don't know if we did or didn't."
"Just a tough moment in an emotional game. I've got a lot of respect for for Bobby (Hurley) and Arizona State, and his guys played their asses off today. I mean they hit some great shots. It was a back and forth game and we were just able to make a run at the right time."
Lloyd: 'We Like Playing These Guys'
"It was great. It was fun. It's a fun environment and you wish everybody could kind of experience it when you're sitting in that frying pan a little bit. But like I said, we like playing these guys because it's fun and it's great for the state of Arizona."
LLoyd On Love's Big Game
"We all know Caleb's a good player. I know he's not going to probably play like that every single day, but when he does play like that it doesn't surprise me."
Lloyd: 'I Have No Issues With Arizona State'
"I think these games are going to be high emotion games. I think what's interesting is you look at these rosters, the percentage of players that are from the state is probably not very high. But you still feel the effort and the energy translate through the fan bases into this game. ... I have no issues with Arizona State or Arizona State people. A lot of them I'm friends with. It's just, hey, you chose different paths and I guess for these two hours people pick sides. But other than that I'm all for the state of Arizona, all around."
