Obstacles: Old nemesis Herb Sendek showed up with his new team, and threw out an assortment of zone defenses at the Wildcats, along with scoring whiz Jared Brownridge. Trier did not make the trip to Las Vegas, missing game No. 5.
What happened: The Wildcats made Brownridge arguably work harder for his 25 points (he was 8 for 19 from the field) than the 44 he scored against them last season, while Simmons had 14 points on 5-for-7 shooting and Markkanen had 16 points and nine rebounds.
Final score: Arizona 69, Santa Clara 61
Miller said it: “It was good for (Markkanen) to experience guarding a team like that and on offense playing against a zone for 40 minutes. It took us a while, took him a while, to figure out how he can get a shot.”
