Bennedict Mathurin becomes only third Arizona player to win back-to-back Pac-12 Player of Week honors

Bennedict Mathurin says he brings the same confidence level into every game, so maybe something else can explain it.

Becoming only the third Arizona player ever to win back-to-back Pac-12/10 Player of the Week honors Monday, the sophomore wing from Montreal has averaged 27.7 points over his last three games … maybe just because he really is that projected NBA lottery pick — and one who’s increasingly folded his game into that of the unbeaten Wildcats and new coach Tommy Lloyd’s movement-based system.

“I feel like coming out this season I thought I had to do it all myself but it’s just about trusting my teammates,” Mathurin said Saturday, after scoring 30 points to lead UA to an 83-79 win at Illinois. “They can find me and I’m gonna find them.”

The Wildcats do have four players averaging 12 or more points but on Saturday, they found Mathurin early and often. He hit two quick 3-pointers to help UA take an 10-3 lead early in the game and wound up hitting 5 of 8 3s and 10 of 17 field goals overall while collecting seven rebounds.

Illinois’ Trent Frazier, who had 27 points on the other end of the floor, said trying to guard the 6-foot-6, athletic and skilled Mathurin was “very challenging.” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said simply that Mathurin was “a pro,” and he didn’t exactly need an NBA draft board to figure that out.

“All you wonderful evaluators of talent out there?” Underwood said. “That’s what they look like.”

Mathurin’s performance against Illinois, combined with his 24-point effort against Wyoming on Dec. 8, earned him the Pac-12 Player of the Week award Monday over UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez, who had 24 points and 12 rebounds in the Bruins’ win at Marquette on Saturday, and USC’s Isaiah Mobley, who averaged 22.0 points and 8.5 rebounds in a pair of Trojan home wins.

Having also won the weekly award on Dec. 6 after scoring 29 points at Oregon State a day earlier, Mathurin became the first-ever UA player to win back-to-back honors since the Pac-12 expanded to a dozen teams in 2011-12.

The feat hadn’t been accomplished by an Arizona player at all since 2005-06, when Hassan Adams won Pac-10 Player of the Week honors twice in a row, while Steve Kerr pulled off back-to-back honors in 1987-88.

Arizona breaks into Top 10

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The Wildcats moved up three spots to No. 8 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll on Monday and, if they don’t feel that wasn’t high enough, they’ll have a chance to fix that issue quickly.

Arizona has not yet faced a team currently in the Top 25 but will play three of them on the road over the next few weeks: The Wildcats will play at No. 18 Tennessee on Dec. 22, at No. 4 UCLA on Dec. 30 and at No. 10 USC on Jan. 2.

But, when asked Saturday about the potential of landing in the Top 10, guard Kerr Kriisa said rankings don’t really matter.

“We don’t think about it,” Kriisa said. “We play with chips on our shoulders. The fact is that everybody wants to take us down. We are one of the one of the last teams in the country who are undefeated. So we just have the mentality that whoever we play, they want to screw us up. They want to beat our butts. We’ve just got to play with a chip on our shoulder.”

The move into the Top 10 was Arizona’s first since Jan. 29, 2018, when it was ranked ninth after winning six straight Pac-12 games.

Playing that season with eventual No. 1 NBA pick Deandre Ayton, the Wildcats were ranked second early in the season but dropped from No. 2 to unranked for two weeks after losing all three games they played at the Battle 4 Atlantis.

The Wildcats were not ranked at all during the 2018-19 and 2020-21 seasons, though they reached as high as No. 12 early in 2019-20 after winning the Wooden Legacy event.

The Wildcats are now 9-0, with road wins over Oregon State and Illinois, plus marquee neutral-site wins over Wichita State and then-No. 4 Michigan. Arizona will host Northern Colorado on Wednesday at 7 p.m. at McKale Center.

Computers like Wildcats better

Regardless of what the human AP voters thought, Arizona has shot up No. 1 in the NCAA’s NET ratings. They Wildcats have gone 3-0 in top-level “Quadrant 1” opportunities as defined by the NET while Baylor, No. 1 in the AP poll and No. 2 in NET, is 2-0 in Quadrant 1 wins.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats are ranked fifth by Sagarin and Torvik, and No. 7 by Kenpom.