Arizona men's hoops: Scouting report for Sunday's NCAA Tournament game vs Oregon

No. 5 seed Oregon (25-9) vs. No. 4 seed Arizona (23-12) | NCAA Tournament second-round game | Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle | 6:40 p.m. Sunday | TBS | 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

PROBABLE STARTERS

ARIZONA

G Jaden Bradley (6-3 junior)

G Caleb Love (6-4 senior)

F Anthony Dell’Orso (6-6 junior)

F Trey Townsend (6-8 senior)

C Tobe Awaka (6-8 junior)

OREGON

G Jackson Shelstad (6-0 sophomore)

G TJ Bamba (6-5 senior)

F Keeshawn Barthelemy (6-1 senior)

F Brandon Angel (6-9 senior)

G Nate Bittle (7-0 senior)

HOW THEY MATCH UP

How they got here: Oregon went 12-8 in the Big Ten to finish in a seventh-place tie with Illinois, lost to Michigan State 74-64 in the Big Ten Tournament quarterfinals and then received the East Region’s No. 5 seed with a 24-9 record. The Ducks then blew out Liberty 81-52 in a first-round game Friday.

Arizona went 14-6 in the Big 12 to finish in a third-place tie, then beat Kansas and Texas Tech to reach the conference tournament final. The Wildcats lost 72-64 to Houston in the final but received a No. 4 seed on Selection Sunday and beat No. 13 seed Akron 93-65 on Friday.

Series history: Arizona leads its old Pac-12 rival 56-37 and has won three of the past five games since snapping a seven-game loss to the Ducks with an 84-81 victory at McKale on Feb. 19, 2022.

The Wildcats swept the teams’ final Pac-12 regular-season series last season, with Caleb Love tying the Matthew Knight Arena scoring record with 36 points to help Arizona beat Oregon 87-78 on Jan. 27 in Eugene. At McKale Center, Arizona celebrated Senior Day and its regular-season finale with a 103-83 win over Oregon. Then Oregon bounced the Wildcats from the Pac-12 Tournament semifinals, 67-59, when Jermaine Couisnard had 20 points, six rebounds and seven assists while hitting 4 of 8 3-pointers. Oregon was the only team Arizona trailed in Pac-12 Tournament history, with the Ducks winning four of six matchups.

Oregon overview: Largely free of the injury problems that bogged them down in recent seasons — but having to take four conference trips to the Midwest and two to Los Angeles in the Big Ten — the Ducks generally kept their heads above water in their new conference. They lost five straight in late January and early February but finished the regular season on a seven-game winning streak that included a road sweep of Iowa and Wisconsin to move firmly into the NCAA Tournament, then beat Indiana but lost to Michigan State in the Big Ten Tournament.

Despite being in the Big Ten, the Ducks were built out of Pac-12 blood. Of Oregon’s five starters, two are homegrown Oregon natives (guard Jackson Shelstad and center Nate Bittle), while the other three transferred in from Pac-12 schools: Guard TJ Bamba came from Washington State via Villanova, guard Keeshawn Barthelemy came from Colorado and power forward Brandon Angel arrived from Stanford.

Not surprisingly, even in their new league, the Ducks are very much the sort of team they have been under coach Dana Altman for years, ranking 22nd in defensive efficiency and 36th in offensive efficiency with a balanced offensive attack. While Shelstad (37.5%) and Barthelemy (41.6%) are big 3-point threats, they don’t rely overly heavily on 3-pointers, getting just 30.5% of their points from them, but hitting long-range shots at a 34.4% rate.

Inside the arc, the Ducks make 53.2% of their shots and hit 76.4% of their shots when they get to the free throw line. Bamba, a 220-pound wing, shoots 44.7% inside and draws 4.4 fouls per 40 minutes. Former five-star forward Kwame Evans is a versatile talent inside while Bittle has excelled without the injuries that plagued his first three seasons with the Ducks: He converts shots at a 58.6% rate inside, ranks 82nd nationally in defensive rebounding percentage (23.9) and blocks 8.6% of opponents’ two-pointers when he’s on the floor, the 33rd-best percentage in Division I.

He said it: “They're experienced, they're balanced, and I think those are signs of really, really good Dana Altman Oregon Duck teams. One thing you know is his teams always get better as the year goes along. He's a great coach and does a great job of finding ways to tinker and just keep building those guys.

“They’ve got six seniors and some of them are fifth-year guys. That’s a huge part of college basketball right now when you’ve got older, experienced guys. Some of them have been in this program for multiple years now, and you look at a guy like little Bittle — he's talented and he's in his fourth year. He's having an all Big Ten-type year. He gives them a different dynamic with being able to play inside and out. Shelstad makes them go. He's talented. He was really, really good in the first half (Friday) night, and he’s been really good over the last 20 games for them.

“Shelstad and Bittle are their key guys and they have two complementary players in Bamba and Barthelemy. Bamba is a tough player. He’s got a way to get to the free throw line. He wants to attack. And Barthelemy is shooting the ball at a high clip right now." — UA assistant coach TJ Benson, who scouted the Ducks

KEY PLAYERS

OREGON

Nate Bittle

Unable to land him as a high school recruit, the Wildcats mostly avoided Bittle in Pac-12 play because of injuries and other limitations over the previous three seasons. Bittle played only six games last season and missed the final 16 games after a limited effort against Arizona Jan. 27, 2024, because of what turned out to be long COVID symptoms. But he was named to the Big Ten’s all-defensive team this season after leading the conference in blocks.

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ARIZONA

Caleb Love

After Love dropped 36 points at Oregon, then had 22 points and seven assists in a Senior Day effort at McKale, the Ducks limited him to six points on 2-for-11 shooting in the Pac-12 Tournament. Sunday's game may be a final rubber match of sorts. 

SIDELINES

Hiding Henri?

Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd ended his pregame press conference Saturday on an unusually huffy note, after an Athletic reporter, citing information from NBA people, asked him if he might be “hiding” forward Henri Veesaar from NBA scouts.

“That’s insulting,” Lloyd said. “Who are these NBA people? I’ve never seen them. Are they, like, sources?”

For what it's worth, the Star asked Lloyd on Selection Sunday about how Houston coach Kelvin Sampson called Veesaar a "first-round pick" following the Big 12 Tournament title game, and Lloyd responded by saying there's "still work to be done there" while acknowledging Veesaar's potential.

On Saturday, when told more detail about the buzz over Veesaar, Lloyd continued to defend his use of the Estonian 7-footer, who averages 20.7 minutes and started five games before Trey Townsend went back into UA’s starting lineup during the Big 12 Tournament.

"I'll just say this: A lot of people have answers to tests they've never passed. I'm a coach. I'm coaching my team. Anybody that thinks I'm holding a kid back is crazy. …. On a team, you have other players. You have other scenarios, and there's this thing called fouls, there's this thing called fatigue. You don't get to coach a team in a vacuum.

“It literally makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up when people are saying that, because it's coming from a place of ignorance, and it's really disrespectful to say that to a coach. To think that I would hide a kid is crazy.

“So yeah, on that note, thank you, guys.”

Learning experience

After taking in Arizona’s December 2022 win over Tennessee, class of 2022 shooting guard Jamari Phillips committed to the Wildcats, saying he loved the atmosphere and the “brotherhood” within Arizona basketball.

He stuck with the commitment for 17 months, but after UA signed guard Joson Sanon last spring and it started looking like UA would return guards Caleb Love, Jaden Bradley and KJ Lewis from the NBA Draft pool, Phillips was out (and so was Sanon, who joined ASU instead).

Phillips chose Oregon instead but found a similar backlog of talent ahead of him, and he's played only spot minutes in 14 games this season.

For that, Phillips can partially blame COVID, because the NCAA’s rule allowing an extra year for players who participated in 2020-21 — and the incentive of NIL money — has created a layer of fifth-year players all over the game, including Bamba and Barthelemy.

“I expected it to be like this,” Phillips said. “This is really just a learning year. I didn’t want to redshirt because I wanted to better myself. I didn’t get minutes but that’s as expected …. It’s kind of hard for freshman right now in college basketball because of all the older guys.”

Phillips said he’s improved playing against those experienced teammates and has grown to like Eugene and even the Big Ten travel.

Now Phillips will get to see the same guys he thought he was going to play with, including former club teammate Carter Bryant, on the other bench.

“It should be a movie, and I’m ready for it,” Phillips said. “I talk to Carter and E-man (Emmanuel Stephen) every day. They’re my guys.”

Payoff

In four years at Stanford, forward Brandon Angel played in 112 games, started 60 times and picked up a prestigious college degree.

He just didn’t get to play in a single NCAA Tournament game. So after taking advantage of his extra COVID year, Angel transferred to Oregon and didn’t hesitate to explain what the payoff was.

“The first thing is I'm playing right now in March," Angel said. “It's my first time in the tournament, and that was my biggest thing, being at a place where we can win at a high level, and this team's found a way to do that. I love being a part of this team. I love the opportunity we have here in March to play games and make a run.”

Numbers game

2: Sweet 16 appearances for Arizona under Tommy Lloyd since 2021

5: Sweet 16 appearances for Oregon under Dana Altman since 2011

76: Games in March the Ducks have won since coach Dana Altman took over the program in 2010-11

— Bruce Pascoe