After quiet 3-point start, Dwayne Aristode and Arizona men's basketball heat up outside

Already out for his senior year of high school in New Hampshire with a lower leg injury last December, Dwayne Aristode watched a telecast of the UCLA-Arizona game in Phoenix and felt even worse.

The Wildcats, with a commitment from the athletic Dutch forward in hand but a 4-4 record, coughed up a 13-point lead to the Bruins in Phoenix to drop below .500 and off just about everybody’s radar.

“I was pissed,” Aristode said. “We let it slip away.”

Speaking after he hit 6 of 9 3-pointers to tie an Arizona freshman record and lead the Wildcats to an 84-49 win over NAU on Tuesday, Aristode said he knew UA coach Tommy Lloyd wasn’t happy and that “we got something for it on Friday,” when the Wildcats and Bruins will again reprise their old Pac-12 rivarly at Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome.

One “something” the Wildcats may have, all of a sudden, is Aristode. The freshman forward didn’t take a single shot in six minutes against Florida in the Wildcats’ regular-season opener on Nov. 3 nor over an 11-minute appearance in the first half of UA’s Nov. 7 win over Utah Tech.

But he took four shots in the second half of that Utah Tech game, hitting 1 of 2 3-pointers, then sprayed the field on Tuesday at McKale Center.

“He’s a really good shooter,” Lloyd said. “He just needed a few games to get comfortable. I don’t know what it’s going to be like on Friday, but today, he was great. I think that’s a big step forward for him. He’s a really good player.”

Aristode said it was a matter of changing his mindset.

“Absolutely you can make your excuses that I didn’t play a whole year and was trying to get my rhythm back,” Aristode said. “But enough of that. Coach wants me to be aggressive. So it was time I started being aggressive.”

As it turned out, Aristode was something of a microcosm of the Wildcats’ 3-point attack so far this season. He didn’t shoot much early, but his teammates didn’t either.

Guard Jaden Bradley said Florida aimed to take away the 3, limiting UA to just five 3-point attempts in the Wildcats’ 93-87 win, and the Wildcats only started to warm up on Nov. 7 against Utah Tech, when they were 7 of 15 from beyond the arc.

“It just depends on how teams are playing us, and we’ll adjust,” Bradley said.

Chances are, UCLA probably won’t make it too easy from long range Friday. The Bruins have given up 35.5% 3-point shooting to their first three opponents but Lloyd said when facing UCLA coach Mick Cronin “you know the game is going to be physical, it’s going to be gritty.”

NAU coach Shane Burcar didn’t really have the ability to create that sort of environment Tuesday, having lost all but three of his players from an 18-win team last season — and his best player, forward Zack Davidson, to a knee issue in the second half.

But he did have some intuition, saying of UA’s limited 3-point shooting in its first two games that “we knew that wasn’t who they are,” and his guys also managed to put up a fight inside to some degree. The Lumberjacks limited freshman forward Koa Peat to 10 points on 3-of-10 shooting after Peat dropped 30 points on Florida and another 18 on Utah Tech.

Still, Burcar declined to take all the credit for that.

“I’ll go two angles on that: One, guys battled and all our guys know Koa from (Gilbert) Perry High school, just an unbelievable young man, stayed at his high school for four years,” Burcar said. “I’ve known Koa and his family forever.

“But 3 for 10, maybe that had a little bit to do with he missed a couple shots. If he makes two more, he’s 5 for 10, and everybody’s happy with it.”

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In a game that Arizona was never tested in, going on 10-0 and 16-0 first-half runs en route to a 46-17 halftime lead, Peat and Aristode were two of five UA players scoring in double figures. Aristode poured in 15 of his 18 points in the second half on 5-for-7 3-point shooting, while Bradley had all 13 of his points in the first half.

Inside, Tobe Awaka had 10 points and nine rebounds while Motiejus Krivas had 12 points, seven rebounds and four blocks.

Krivas makes impact

For Krivas, as with Aristode, Tuesday’s game was something of a breakout after he missed most of last season with a leg injury. He averaged 6.0 points and 6.0 rebounds over UA’s first two games, though he did block three shots against Florida.

“Mo has great size and I think he’s really growing as a paint protector defensively,” Lloyd said. “He may not be Ralph Sampson or Dikembe Mutombo blocking shots, but he’s starting to impact the game around the rim, and that’s something we’ve really encouraged him to get better at.

“His ball-screen coverages seem to be getting a little bit better. His effort and attention to detail on those matter, and I’m definitely seeing improvement. I think it’s trending in the right direction.”

Redshirting on the table for James, Mawut

For the third straight game, Lloyd did not play freshmen Bryce James and Mabil Mawut, leaving them eligible for an intentional redshirt.

Football players can play in up to four games and still qualify for a redshirt season, but men’s basketball players can’t play in any regular-season games if they are to be eligible for a non-medical redshirt season. However, no definitive decision needs to be made during a season — either the player is eligible at the end of a season if he didn’t play in a single game or he’s not if he played a minute in any of them.

“Obviously, redshirting is on the table for both of them,” Lloyd said. “No final decisions have been made. But it’s tough. It puts you in a tough situation — you play Bryce in a game like this for three minutes, it burns a year of eligibility. I wish it was easier. I wish there was a set number of games you could play a guy like they have in football.”

Last year, UA center Emmanuel Stephen entered the season intending to redshirt but began playing a reserve role after Krivas was declared out for the season in December, burning his redshirt. He transferred to UNLV after the season.

UA-NAU bond tightens

While UA and NAU were meeting for the first time since 2021 because Lloyd’s son, Liam, was playing for the Lumberjacks for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons, that only served to bond the two coaches together.

In fact, Lloyd made the unusual move of inviting Burcar and his staffers over to his house before Tuesday’s game, even as Liam is now a graduate assistant for the Wildcats.

“We’ve developed a really good friendship over the years,” Lloyd said. “Shane’s a stand-up guy. He’s a guy’s guy, and he’s fun to be around. And I get to speak from personal experience — he did everything right by my son. As a parent, you appreciate that. As a coach, you respect that.”

“Liam is really happy to be kind of taking his next step in his career, testing out this coaching thing. And Shane was incredibly supportive of Liam and everything he went through at NAU. I always have a soft spot in my heart for Shane.”

After Tuesday’s game, Burcar praised UA associate head coach Jack Murphy, who hired Burcar as an assistant when Murphy was the Lumberjacks’ head coach. Murphy left NAU in 2019 to become UA’s associate head coach under Sean Miller and remained in the role when Lloyd took over in 2021.

Burcar has remained at NAU since then.

“I’m not gonna get emotional about it, but he’s a special man for me,” Burcar said of Murphy. “He took a chance on me. … we ran with it, and before you know it, he comes down here and becomes the associate coach for coach Sean Miller, and I’m the interim. And here I am, six or seven years later, because of that man.”