Arizona Wildcats open Pac-12 play with a fresh slate — and tons of young talent

When the Arizona Wildcats dove into the scramble that was the spring of 2016, they weren’t alone.

Many of their Pac-12 rivals were in a mess, too.

Before they were collectively bailed out by the league’s talented freshmen, the Pac-12 looked like this for a brief moment back in April:

• The Wildcats were trying to replace four seniors and a transfer by adding significantly to a recruiting class that included just one player (Lauri Markkanen) in early signing period. And nobody was ever sure how serious five-star guard Terrance Ferguson could be about joining them, since he had serious eligibility issues.
• Arizona’s opponent Friday, Cal, nearly blew up after Jaylen Brown left for the NBA, Ivan Rabb was expected to do the same, Jordan Mathews took the grad transfer route to Gonzaga, an assistant coach resigned … and it became public that Cal coach Cuonzo Martin never signed a binding contract when he was hired in April 2014.
• Then there was Washington, where coach Lorenzo Romar’s high-level recruiting was once again undermined by the NBA Draft, which claimed promising freshmen Marquese Chriss and Dejounte Murray.
• And over at the league’s historical powerhouse, UCLA, things were so bad that an apologetic coach Steve Alford opted to give back a one-year contract extension after going just 15-17, just around the time a plane carrying a “Fire Alford!” banner flew over campus.
• Across town, even USC was bitten, too, when forward Nikola Jovanovich and guard Julian Jacobs decided to enter an NBA Draft that opted not to pick them.

But when the Wildcats signed Rawle Alkins, Kobi Simmons and Ferguson to join Markkanen in the class of 2016 — even though Ferguson took off for Australia in July — Arizona had enough freshman help to manage an 11-2 nonconference record this fall.

Markkanen, Alkins and Simmons are the Wildcats’ top three scorers, while the freshman impact at UCLA is possibly even more dramatic: With dazzling point guard Lonzo Ball setting the stage for a revived core of returning talent, and onetime UA commit T.J. Leaf thriving in the Bruins’ up-tempo system, UCLA rose to the No. 2 ranking and was undefeated before Oregon edged the Bruins 89-87 on Wednesday in Eugene.

“It’s one thing to be a good freshman on a great team,” UA coach Sean Miller says. “But when you’re a team’s leading scorer or, in our case the one-, two- and third-leading scorers, and you go 11-2 while battling through injuries, I think that says a lot about their impact. And UCLA’s freshmen, those guys’ performance speaks for itself.”

Then there’s California, which survived early injuries to standouts Rabb and Jabari Bird while freshman Charlie Moore has led the team in scoring. The Bears are 9-3, nearly having knocked off 12th-ranked Virginia, and appear overall as competitive as they were a year ago.

Washington, meanwhile, has possibly the No. 1 or No. 2 pick in the NBA Draft in freshman Markelle Fultz — though that hasn’t translated to overall improvement with the Huskies — while USC has gained needed backcourt help from freshman De’Anthony Melton.

“I believe this year in particular the freshman class in the Pac-12 is probably as good as there is in the country,” Miller said. “I think if you look at the projections of where these guys will be this spring and the impact that they’ll have on their current team, I don’t think you can understate that.”

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

But whether or not it’s a surprise that the Pac-12 has so many freshmen contributing at a high level is up for debate. This is a conference, after all, that had eight freshmen jump into the past nine NBA Drafts as lottery picks, including UA’s Stanley Johnson (2015), Aaron Gordon (2014) and Jerryd Bayless (2008).

The difference this season is that the talent is falling into the opportunity created by all those holes last spring.

In the case of UA and Cal, both teams also created more opportunity this fall: The Wildcats lost Allonzo Trier to suspension and Parker Jackson-Cartwright to injury, while the Bears were without Rabb and Bird early this season.

That left the door open for Moore, an aggressive playmaker from Chicago. Martin knew what Moore was capable of, having recruited him for years before he committed to Memphis and then flipped to Cal after Tigers coach Josh Pastner left for Georgia Tech.

But Martin said Moore has played a notch beyond expectations because of the growth afforded by all that opportunity, similar to the way Miller has said his freshmen will be better off in the long run because of the burden placed on them already.

“Oftentimes talented freshmen might take several months or a year or two” to develop, Martin said. “In (Moore’s) case, he was able to play on high school and AAU teams that gave him a high level of confidence. We gave him a level of confidence with Ivan and Jabari out. We needed him to put up points. I don’t know if he would have scored at that level if those guys would have been healthy early.”

Now, Rabb and Bird are fully back. Jackson-Cartwright may return at least in limited form Friday, giving the Wildcats more than seven scholarship players.

That gives both teams a brighter outlook just in time for a Pac-12 season that looks a lot more competitive than it might have last spring.

Thanks in large part to its freshmen standouts, that is.