HONOLULU — The Arizona Wildcats have developed their own form of Hawaiian Island magic.
When Kadeem Allen went coast-to-coast with seven seconds left for a game-winning layup to push No. 10 Arizona past 12th-ranked Michigan State 65-63 on Friday, it was only the latest in a string of seven mostly memorable wins the Wildcats have enjoyed in Hawaii.
It was also especially reminiscent of the way Arizona won its last game at the University of Hawaii’s Stan Sheriff Center — when Mark Lyons pulled UA ahead of San Diego State with a pair of free throws and Nick Johnson flew from out of nowhere to block a potential Aztecs game-winner.
This time, Allen took an inbounds pass from Rawle Alkins, drove down the right side of the court, and put it up about 5 feet away from the basket.
“With me being a senior and the leader of the team, (coach Sean Miller) put faith and trust in me, and my teammates had a lot of faith and trust in me,” Allen said. “He gave me the ball and I just made the play happen.”
It was similar to the way Miller gave the ball to Lyons four years earlier in Honolulu, having the then-grad transfer senior drive to the basket and pick up a foul, then hitting the free throws to go ahead.
Tie game. Seconds left. A senior.
It was the first option on the play and, the way Miller described it, clearly the best.
“The option was for him to make a play off the dribble,” Miller said. “Late in the game you want to have a chance to get a drive or get a tip-in and second shot, and you live with the results. We put the ball in his hands.”
Allen also knocked away a successive inbounds pass from Miles Bridges, the talented freshman forward who had tortured the Wildcats much of the night, much like Kevin Parrom wrestled the ball away as time expired after Johnson’s dramatic block in the Diamond Head Classic.
“This game reminded me a lot of the last game we had here,” Miller said. “Nick had an epic blocked shot against a great team. We won the championship on Christmas Day, a thrilling last-second win. It felt the same way tonight except we made a shot instead of a block.”
Another difference: It hardly looked like a thriller for the first six minutes of the game.
Arizona sputtered on both ends of the court early, unable to guard Bridges and going without a single point for nearly the first four minutes with an offense that appeared to lack cohesion and confidence.
It was then that the ineligibility of sophomore guard Allonzo Trier, the Wildcats’ most proven scorer, became a glaring issue. But reserve guard Kobi Simmons scored his first 13 of a team-high 18 points over a 12-minute period in the middle of the first half, bringing a much-needed dose of confidence off the bench.
For a guy who played in the McDonald’s All-American Game and earned five-star status as a recruit from Atlanta last year, confidence isn’t a hard thing to find. Even if his teammates lacked it early.
“I was just seeing what they were doing there and (knew) the energy I needed to bring off the bench,” Simmons said. “The coaches and players kept saying ‘energy, energy, bring a spark to the team, bring us to life.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”
As it turned out, Simmons suffered a sprained right ankle and was out in the final minute of the game, while Allen sprained his left knee, according to trainer Justin Kokoskie. But Allen obviously finished the game without much trouble, and both players will be re-evaluated before UA’s game on Tuesday against Cal State Bakersfield.
Simmons’ offense helped spark UA during what became a 17-0 run, while the Wildcats finally found some success mixing and matching their bigger lineup against the small but explosive Spartans, who ran into troubles of their own.
“The mistakes we made, the freshman errors, the layups we missed … you can’t do that against good teams and win,” MSU coach Tom Izzo said. “I told our guys before, and I think this is what it comes down to, you got to play hard enough, tough enough, but you have to play smart enough. I think we did two out of three. A couple times we turned the ball over it was ridiculous.”
As a result, the game remained close for the final 30 minutes.
That doesn’t always happen in Miller’s experience.
“We just got off to a terrible start,” Miller said. “A lot of times when you’re not at home and you get off to a slow start, you don’t necessarily put it behind you. But we did and I credit all our team for that.”
