Over the Memorial Day weekend I found a poetic beauty between the convergence of two sports storylines.

Lient to the left and the win-run is aboard for the Wildcats.

The first was Arizona's dramatic win Saturday night in the last ever

pack 12 baseball game.

Lying, left field, base hit charging as wells. Here comes Corona. Throw it to play.

Safe and Arizona wins! The second was much more sobering news that arrived hours later on Monday.

Our colleague and everyone's friend, Bill Walton, has died at the age of 71 from cancer. We talk a lot about unicorns in sports.

This man was a unicorn. Most people smile, Bill Beaned as joyful,

irreverent, grateful, kind, and delightful a person as there ever was.

It must have been heartening for Bill Walton to see an epic swan song for the conference he'd arguably

been the biggest fan and advocate of.

He was a two-time NBA champion, but Walton's life in sports was bookended by the

Pact 12. He won two NCAA titles as a young man at UCLA, and spent his final years as a broadcaster

primarily covering what he called the Conference of Champions.

And it's our turn, it's our turn to shine, it's our turn to take that ball and to throw it down and to come and make that ball an extension of our

mind and then at the end of the day we lie down in bed and we think man if I only could have elbowed Ernie can't one more time I would

have felt better about today. In the wake of his passing, that connection to UCLA and the PAC 12 has been front of mind for me, as I said, on around the horn on Monday.

He came from an era in which the college experience as a human was really something that we valued

in this country and it seemed that it changed who he was as a man, it changed what he understood

about the world and he took that sort of student of life approach to everything that he did.

Finally some inspiration.

Someone here who can shine the light, someone who can appreciate the beauty of a

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