It's all hands on Arizona Wildcats guard Pelle Larsson (3) as he fights for a rebound against the Stanford Cardinal in the first half of their Pac 12 men's basketball game at McKale Center, Tucson, Ariz., March 3, 2022.

 Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

The almost inevitable hangover from clinching the Pac-12 title in resounding fashion less than 48 hours earlier at USC was one thing.

A brutal trip home was another: Before beating Stanford 81-69 on Thursday at McKale Center, No. 2-ranked Arizona not only had to squeeze in the COVID-19-prompted makeup game at USC on Tuesday but also couldn’t get home until nearly 4 a.m. Wednesday because of crew issues that delayed their charter flight out of Los Angeles.

And, as coach Tommy Lloyd noted “they don't get to just get to go home and take naps” all day, either.

Lloyd tried to make it tolerable by reducing Wednesday’s practice to a glorified walkthrough, then the Wildcats had another walkthrough before Thursday’s game.

Still, it was all a lot. Lloyd said it felt like the USC game seemed "like a month ago” and, as much as Christian Koloko said the Wildcats didn’t lose focus, the junior center acknowledged the physical itinerary took its toll.

“We got back at four, then you have to go to class, then we had practices and then a game today,” Koloko said. “Yeah, it’s pretty tough.”

There was a third obstacle for the Wildcats, too: The Cardinal was coming off a brutal 53-39 loss at Cal in which it shot just 23.5% from the field, and had five days to rest and get angry about it afterward.

For Lloyd, that was an all too familiar feeling. The Wildcats struggled to beat Oregon 84-81 on Feb 19 two days after the Ducks were crushed at ASU — and then were beaten a week later at Colorado two days after the Buffaloes lost to ASU on their home floor.

“It seems like we're kind of running into a lot of these scenarios where the team that is next on our schedule has a tough game before us,” Lloyd said. “And their coaches are good coaches. They get their guys to respond and these teams are coming on playing spirited. So tons of credit to Stanford, but I’m also happy with how our guys responded.”

Eventually, that is. Arizona trailed 39-37 at halftime and led by just two points with eight minutes to go before pulling away in the final five minutes to reach a double-digit victory margin.

That sort of evening was not a surprise, the way Koloko expressed it.

“We knew they were going to come in here hungry and that’s what they did,” Koloko said. “They came in here and they made all the shots.”

Well, not all the shots. But it may have felt that way for a while.

While taking leads of up to nine points in the first half, Stanford shot 53.6% before halftime and hit 7 of 10 3-pointers. Guard Michael O’Connell, who hadn’t made a 3-pointer since Feb. 10 at Oregon, hit all four 3-pointers he took in the first half while making 6 of 8 overall — and almost making a half-court heave that bounced off the back of the rim at the first-half buzzer.

The Wildcats didn’t just magically turn things around in the second half, either.

Arizona took its first lead of the half on a 3-pointer from Kerr Kriisa two minutes after halftime but the game remained a one-possession battle for much of the second half until Bennedict Mathurin put on a show just after the eight-minute mark en route to his game-high 24-point effort.

Arizona led just 59-58 after two straight dunks from Stanford’s Lukas Kisunas but Mathurin later stole the ball from O’Connell and dunked with 7:56 left. On UA’s next possession, Mathurin hit a 3-pointer and then, after Azuolas Tubelis stole O’Connell’s pass, Tubelis dished to Mathurin so he could race downcourt for another dunk that gave UA a 67-58 lead with 6:58 left

In other words, as the Wildcats’ defense woke up, so did their offense. Arizona wound up converting 17 Stanford turnovers into 23 points.

“All year they’ve kind of struggled with turnovers and against some pressure defenses, and we were able to luckily to kind of knock a few balls loose and make some plays, because our offense wasn't great in the first half,” Lloyd said. In the first half, “I thought our offense just kind of kept us in there when our defense was trying to figure things out. And then our offense and defense both got a little bit better, especially towards the end of the second half.”

The Wildcats expanded their lead into double digits over the final five minutes to pull away with the win, though they did receive a scare with 3:38 left, when Stanford’s Spencer Jones fell on Dalen Terry’s lower right leg under the basket.

Terry remained on the floor for over a minute before he was helped off the floor without putting pressure on the right leg — but Terry returned to the bench shortly after being examined in the locker room. Lloyd said he was cleared to return to the game but that he chose not to play Terry.

“I think he's fine,” Lloyd said. “It's fine, other than the missed layups his coach wasn't happy about. I mean, Dalen’s played so well this year but I just I thought he had two shots there where maybe he put a little extra mustard on 'em and it didn't turn out too well.”

Meanwhile, Lloyd said guard Kriisa has been “fine” despite wearing shoulder tape and that reserve guard Shane Nowell would be back in uniform on Saturday after sitting out the past three games because of “some things we wanted to address behind the scenes.”

Even the adversity of missed dunks by Tubelis and Pelle Larsson turned out to be no problem.

The Wildcats still had enough to move to 27-3 overall and 17-2 in Pac-12 play. Arizona can now become the first team to win 18 Pac-12 games in a season (though the league went to 20 games only last season) if they win their regular-season finale on Saturday against Cal, when Lloyd indicated the Wildcats would snip the nets if they won.

Then, when the Pac-12 Tournament rolls around next week, the Wildcats just might see Stanford again. The Cardinal (15-14 overall and 8-11) is locked into the No. 8- vs No. 9 opening-round game on Wednesday and the winner of that game will face Arizona in the quarterfinals next Thursday in Las Vegas.

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Contact sports reporter Bruce Pascoe at 573-4146 or bpascoe@tucson.com. On Twitter @brucepascoe