INGLEWOOD — The scene Friday night at Intuit Dome might as well have been a salute to a better time in college basketball and its drift toward coast-to-coast conferences. Consider: Regional rivals and their fan bases coming together to try to outplay and outshout each other. Regardless of the result, you walk away feeling better about the sport.

This time it was UCLA and Arizona, with their shared history in the Pac-10 and then Pac-12, facing each other in a nonconference game as part of the Basketball Hall of Fame series. An added bonus was a tribute to an outsized individual who straddled both camps – the late Bill Walton, Bruin for life and a Wildcat dad, his progeny Luke playing four years in Tucson for Lute Olson.

And may we remind everybody that one of the loudest, most strident vo

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