After long layoff, sixth-ranked Wildcats to host Colorado at beginning of busy stretch

Because the Arizona Wildcats have played only one basketball game in the past three weeks, guard Pelle Larsson had time to discover that walk-on forward Jordan Mains may be the team’s best golfer, not too far ahead of himself.

“I’d say I’m probably top four,” Larsson said.

Except coach Tommy Lloyd wasn’t so sure, not after having taken his guys earlier in the season to Top Golf driving, where the Wildcats returned recently to spend some of their increasingly abundant down time.

“To be honest with you, I don’t think any of them look good,” Lloyd said, smiling. “That was my assessment. I prefer them in working on their shooting, working on their footwork, things of that nature, rather than out golfing.”

Lloyd might not have to worry about that anymore. Just as UA classes started again Wednesday, basketball was becoming a fulltime job again for the sixth-ranked Wildcats: They were assigned a Jan. 25 make-up game at UCLA, creating a three-game road trip next week starting Jan. 20 at Stanford, after UA hosts Colorado on Thursday and Utah on Saturday.

The Jan. 25 date was something of a no-brainer. The Wildcats will play at Cal on Jan. 23 but weren’t scheduled to play again until they hosted ASU on Jan. 29.

But considering the Wildcats also have games at USC (Jan. 2) and at ASU (Jan. 8) yet to be rescheduled, they’re still looking at two three-game weeks ahead at some point in the schedule if they play all 20 conference games as Lloyd said he expects all Pac-12 teams will.

“We know it’s going to create some logjams in the schedule probably for everybody,” Lloyd said. “But it’s an opportunity to compete and play games against other good teams. So we’re going to welcome those opportunities when they’re presented to us.”

In UA’s case, Lloyd said the missed ASU game at Tempe will be easy to make up because of the short travel time. But making up the USC will require a second trip to Los Angeles.

And that’s assuming there are no other COVID issues ahead for the Wildcats or their opponents.

“To me, it looks like it’s everybody’s gonna have those issues,” Lloyd said. “In order to get a full conference season in, you’re going to have to make some sacrifices. The unfortunate thing is if you schedule games a couple of weeks out, you can’t predict injuries, you can’t predict stuff like that. So hopefully it’ll all work out for everybody.”

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Theoretically, at least, Arizona’s future schedule didn’t have to be so crowded. Arizona and UCLA were both open to play each other on Jan. 6, and Arizona and USC were both open on Jan. 8.

But UCLA instead scheduled Long Beach State for Jan. 6, while the Pac-12 kept Jan. 8 open for USC and instead had them make up a game at Stanford on Tuesday.

The Pac-12 has declined comment on rescheduling, except to say it has the final say while consulting with teams and television partners. That’s led to wild speculation about whether agendas, a lack of high-profile television windows or the current ban on fans at the Los Angeles schools’ indoor events led to UA’s lack of games last weekend.

Lloyd said he wasn’t given television or fan situation as reasons, but also noted that he “didn’t do a lot of digging” and left things up to administrators at UA and at the Pac-12.

“I’m not aware of any gamesmanship or anything like that going on,” Lloyd said. “I know everybody on the outside looking in wants to sit around and try to look through the haystack and find little reasons that ‘we got slighted.’ Listen, we haven’t been slighted.

“The situation’s hard for everybody. These are solutions that not everybody’s going to be 100% happy with. It might work out for you one time; it might not work out for you the next. So that’s how I’ve approached it.”

But another of the Pac-12’s stated criteria in rescheduling is “being mindful of student-athlete health and safety,” and even Colorado coach Tad Boyle expressed sympathy for the Wildcats’ idle weekend.

Rescheduling is “gonna come down to three things: What’s best for the league? What’s best for each individual program? And the most important thing, which I don’t think anybody thinks about or talks about, is what’s best for our players,” Boyle said.

“You can see what’s happened or what hasn’t happened over the last three weeks. There is push and pull between teams, coaches and the conference in terms of what is best for all three of those things. You can’t satisfy all of them, so what’s it going to be?

“What’s best for Arizona players over the last two weeks has not happened, because what’s best for the Arizona players is they play games. That’s the disappointing thing.”