LOS ANGELES – Allonzo Trier’s return didn’t just help Arizona pull off one of the most riveting victories in the Wildcats’ history under coach Sean Miller on Saturday.
It also may have blown the roof off their season.
After all, if the No. 14 Wildcats can beat the third-ranked Bruins 96-85 on their home floor, before a Trier-heckling capacity crowd on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Day, what could possibly be the limit?
A Pac-12 Championship? A No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed? The Final Four? A national championship?
The word “no” isn’t a certain answer to any of those things.
Not now. Not after Arizona flashed equal doses of rebounding, defense and its own offensive firepower in slowing down UCLA’s vaunted offense enough to shock the Bruins before a televised CBS audience. Not with Trier adding a critical piece of go-to scoring, defense, passing and, maybe most of all, quality depth.
With Trier scoring 12 points in his first game following a 19-game suspension due to a positive test for a performance-enhancing drug, Arizona improved to 18-2 overall and 7-0 in the Pac-12, with the likely possibility of jumping well into the Top 10 of The Associated Press poll on Monday.
“We knew how high our ceiling was,” said UA freshman guard Kobi Simmons, who led UA in scoring with 20 points. “It was just making a statement to everybody.
“We’ve always felt like that. We’ve always felt anything’s possible. We can do anything.”
The Wildcats did a little bit of everything in 40 wildly entertaining minutes at Pauley, a game easily worthy of the many great UA-UCLA showdowns in the Lute Olson era.
UA had six players finish in double-figure scoring, with the ever-efficient Lauri Markkanen collecting 18 points on 6-for-10 shooting, Trier adding his 12 and Dusan Ristic 11 — plus 10 points from reserve center Chance Comanche in his return home to Los Angeles, and another 10 from Rawle Alkins over just 17 minutes.
While the Bruins were the nation’s offensive efficiency leader entering the game, it was the Wildcats who put up the crazy offensive numbers this time: UA shot 50 percent from the field, made 9 of 20 3-pointers and sank 19 of 21 free throws, having reached the line seven more times than the Bruins did.
While UCLA point guard Lonzo Ball grumbled quietly about how the Bruins need defense to achieve their goals, UCLA coach Steve Alford was more blunt.
“Our defensive efficiency tonight was awful,” Alford said. “We gave up 48 points in both halves so they were very efficient and hard to guard today.”
Initially, it didn’t look that way. The Wildcats’ defense was unable to set much of a tone or tempo early in the game, while UCLA started off in typical high-flying style.
Ball engineered the Bruins’ early magic, with UCLA taking an early 16-10 lead when the freshman point guard fired an almost silly three-quarter-court assist to Bryce Alford for an easy basket.
Markkanen hit a 3-pointer that cut UCLA’s lead to 16-13 entering the first media timeout, but the Bruins had made 7 of 13 shots at that point, firing up a rowdy UCLA crowd that had been throwing “P-E-D!” and “CHEAT!” chants at Trier since the Wildcats hit the floor for pregame warmups.
Wasn’t long, though, until Arizona’s defense kicked in and the Wildcats’ rebounding began to gain an edge. UA out-rebounded UCLA 42-33 overall and, most notably, had 12 offensive rebounds that led to 24 second-chance points.
That meant a missed UA shot didn’t often turn into a UCLA rebound that fired up the Bruins’ fast break, taking some fuel out of its frenetic offense. Arizona also had just seven turnovers, again limiting the opportunities the Bruins had to get out and run.
“For us, it was about taking care of the ball,” Miller said. “If you play against a team that’s as talented on offense as UCLA is, a turnover leads to some really, really great things for them. But we played with seven turnovers. So part of our defense was good offense.”
Defensively, Miller said, it was about trying to get back and set things up. As has been the case with most UCLA opponents during the Bruins’ 19-2 season so far, failing to get back defensively for UA “meant a lot of bad things happened,” Miller said.
For a while in the second half, the bad things started to build with the Wildcats. They led by 11 at halftime and up to 14 early in the second half, but their lead was cut down to just four, 74-70, with 9:05 left in the game.
That’s pretty much the same point in the game that the Wildcats have begun to melt down defensively many times this season, including in their previous three games. UA even let USC cut a 23-point lead all the way down to three in its 73-66 win at USC just two days earlier.
But two days earlier, of course, UA didn’t have Trier. The Wildcats announced late Friday night that the NCAA told them Friday afternoon that Trier’s latest test revealed he didn’t have any more traces of the unspecified PED in his system.
That meant Trier, who was not made available for comment, could play for the first time since UA lost to Wichita State in the NCAA Tournament last March.
His emotions could have been all over the map, after 19 games on the bench or at home, four months of speculation having swirled around him, possibly pulling him toward bitterness and maybe a determination to press too hard in his first game back.
Instead, Trier came off the bench after the first 6:18 of the game and didn’t appear to force much of anything. He took 10 shots, making four, including a coast-to-coast layup just before the halftime buzzer. Trier also had seven rebounds, four assists and just one turnover while playing 27 minutes.
“One of the things you guys haven’t seen is he’s a lot more mature than he was as a freshman,” Miller said. “He worked so hard in the offseason to be one of the leaders on this team. I think he was ready for the opportunity.”
But all that offensive production doesn’t speak to maybe the most important infusion Trier gave the Wildcats on Saturday, maybe one that they’ll have the rest of the season: He provided defense and depth that now gives the Wildcats the option to throw out varied looks in the lineup, to make sure top defender Kadeem Allen gets enough rest, and to allow Miller the chance to motivate underperforming players by benching them.
“Would we have won the game if Allonzo hadn’t played? I don’t know if we would have,” Miller said. “He made a big difference. We have worn down in the second half in a lot of games. Today we didn’t wear down because we had an extra player. So just that alone really makes us better.”
It’s even better for the Wildcats because that extra player is not just another player. Not only is Trier UA’s top returning scorer from last season, but Simmons said Trier has become a “great passer” and even the stoically confident Markkanen raved about having Trier as an active teammate.
“It’s huge,” Markkanen said. “Just to give our team confidence, knowing we have our whole team.”
Their whole team — except injured forwards Ray Smith and Talbott Denny, at least — is back. Finally.
That whole team never did melt away Saturday. UA’s four-point lead went back to double digits, thanks possibly to extra defensive energy afforded by the additional depth, and, fittingly, it was Trier who hit a pair of free throws with 38 seconds left to seal the win up for UA at 94-83.
Crowded against a Pauley Pavilion wall outside the UA locker room after the game, with a pack of media around him and a hundred or so giddy Wildcat fans roaming about, Miller spoke carefully about what it all meant.
For now, and maybe later.
“It means the world. It really does,” Miller said. “If things didn’t work out for us today and he didn’t play well, it still means the world.
“It was a very, very difficult situation. The things all of us went through — the team and coaches — and to get that news very unexpectedly, and watching him play? That was great.”
