Azoulas Tubelis giving family back home — and coach Sean Miller — plenty to be proud of as a freshman

Tipoffs at 9 p.m. might be a hardship for early rising Arizona basketball fans, but they’re probably just about right for Valentina Tubeliené.

Instead of getting up in the middle of the night to watch the Wildcats, the mother of the UA’s Azuolas Tubelis and Tautvilas Tubelis just has to get up a little early for work. Thursday’s late Arizona-Washington State game will start at 6 a.m. Friday in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Many of Arizona’s games this season have been played between 3 p.m-7 p.m., forcing Valentina to wake up after midnight to watch the game and then try to fall back asleep for a while before heading to her jobs teaching high school physical education and working with a local basketball club.

“I don’t know how she feels in the day when we have our games because when we have our games set at 3 (p.m.), she needs to wake up at one” in the morning, Tubelis said. “A lot of times, she wakes up at 3 or 4 a.m.”

Still, Tubelis’ mother has managed to watch every game this season and send a text messages afterward, curious not so much about what he did right or wrong but simply to better soak up her sons’ adjustment to the U.S. college game.

“She maybe asks me one or two times, ‘Why thing like that happen? Why the referee (make) that call?’ Or something like that, just to make sure that she understands.”

Of course, the season has been a learning experience for Azuolas himself after he made an abrupt shift from international ball. He and Tautvilas arrived from Lithuania in late August.

In six months, Azuolas Tubelis has turned from what ESPN called the top European player to head to college this season, to a guy wondering why he was called for a technical foul for hanging on a rim against Montana, to a quickly improving player stretched out against athletic and physical Pac-12 power forwards … to a likely all-freshman team honoree.

His progress reached a new peak last weekend, when Tubelis was named the Pac-12 Freshman of the Week after leading the Wildcats’ to an 81-72 upset win at USC with 16 points and 15 rebounds. Tubelis averaged 17.0 points and 11.5 rebounds while shooting 48.3% from the field last weekend.

While those numbers are impressive in themselves, what’s also particularly notable is that Tubelis recorded that double-double against USC while facing expected high NBA lottery pick Evan Mobley and his older brother, Isaiah. Tubelis also had 31 points and eight rebounds against the Trojans at McKale Center last month.

UA coach Sean Miller said after the USC game that Tubelis is more comfortable playing against big men his own size, even if they are supremely skilled — as opposed to having to deal with smaller, mobile forwards such as UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez or Oregon’s Eugene Omoruyi.

But there’s also this: People look at NBA mock drafts over in Lithuania, too — and everybody wants to prove himself against a projected lottery pick.

“When I played against the Mobley brothers, they were kind of the same size and I tried to do my best and to be strong, to be tough,” Tubelis said. “And of course it’s more motivation to play against a top-five pick.”

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

While Mobley is still the frontrunner for the Pac-12’s Freshman of the Year — and maybe overall Player of the Year — Tubelis appears to have all but sewn up a spot on the five-player all-freshman team.

In conference play, Tubelis is the Pac-12’s third-leading rebounder (7.5) while he’s 10th in field goal percentage (51.1) and 15th in scoring (13.9). In offensive rebounds, Tubelis is second at 3.8, behind only OSU’s Warith Alatishe (3.2) and ahead of third-place Evan Mobley (2.5).

In other evidence of his growth in the college game, Tubelis is also drawing 4.8 fouls per 40 minutes and shooting 36.1% from 3-point range.

“He’s much better than I thought,” said Miller, who was forced to recruit Tubelis virtually last spring thanks to COVID-19 shutdowns. His production is “nothing to gloss over. It’s one thing if I’m talking about his nonconference season or early January, but we’re at the very end here and he’s proven home and away, against almost every style (of opponent) that he’s a very good player.”

Plus, it’s not like Tubelis just gradually dipped his toes in the water. He had 13 points and nine rebounds in his second college game, a 23-minute effort against Eastern Washington, and broke into the starting lineup in his seventh game.

Now, over 17 conference games, Tubelis is the Wildcats’ leading rebounder, leading percentage shooter and second-leading scorer.

“You think about all that we’ve asked him to do as a 19-year-old freshman — matching him up on the perimeter and being a little bit more basketball intelligent with certain things,” Miller said. “We’re coaching him in that area and that’s something that I have no doubt he’ll improve on with age and experience.

“But, look, if you would have told me in August that Azuolas would be No. 2 in offensive rebounding in the Pac-12, knowing that Evan Mobley is in our league? I mean, think about that. He’s number two in offensive rebounding, number three in total rebounding, sixth in defensive rebounding, 10th in field goal percentage top 15 in scoring. That’s one heck of a freshman year.”

Not surprisingly, then, Miller says Tubelis has a “very bright” future.

And in what might be particularly good news for a program annually plagued with heavy roster transition, more of that future just might happen at Arizona.

Asked this week if the Lithuanian national team had asked him about playing in the FIBA EuroBasket qualifiers this month, Tubelis said it was “hard to watch” his home country struggle to edge a weaker team from Denmark. He then made it clear his priorities were elsewhere right now.

“I don’t know what plans they have — whether they will invite me or not,” Tubelis said of his home country’s basketball federation. “But now I’m here. I want to play here as much time as I can.”

Even if that means mom might have to sacrifice some more sleep in the seasons ahead.