TEMPE — About four months before the Arizona men’s basketball team headed up I-10 to beat ASU and extend its unbeaten start to a school-record 22-0 on Saturday, the Wildcats’ bus made it only to the halfway mark.
Then the Wildcats got off, went to work at Central Arizona College, and stayed overnight in Casa Grande.
“That Texas Roadhouse there might be the best one in the country,” Tommy Lloyd said Saturday at Desert Financial Arena, generating laughter after the Wildcats beat ASU 87-74.
The Wildcats were having a preseason retreat, or mini-camp of sorts, that Lloyd had not previously disclosed publicly. It was a weekend to bond and learn, before the Wildcats played in the Red-Blue Game or beat Saint Mary’s in an October exhibition, and long before they became the top-ranked team they are now.
In case they didn’t remember it well, Lloyd said he held a "small exercise" before the ASU game in which he showed them some video.
It wasn’t pretty.
“Our guys didn't even recognize themselves physically, the way we were playing, and just how much better we've gotten," Lloyd said.
Well, at least one of them wasn’t playing as well as he is now. When UA post players Koa Peat and Motiejus Krivas were asked what memories came back from that exercise, the soft-spoken Krivas quickly took the mic.
“Most of the clips was just me missing layups,” he said, also generating laughter. “I mean, that trip was really important for us. We had the scrimmage there, and they just showed us clips of how much we got better.”
Arizona State center Massamba Diop (35) fouls Arizona center Motiejus Krivas during the first half, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026, in Tempe.
That’s the point, Lloyd has said repeatedly this season: Get better, keep getting better, head down, streak or no streak.
“I’m the wrong guy to talk about that,” Lloyd said, when asked about UA’s 22-0 start. “You guys can talk about that. It was a great week. We started off with a tough win at BYU. We get a tough win (at ASU.) So to win two road games in a week in the Big 12 — I don't care what your record is, you feel good.”
After all, college basketball seasons aren’t defined by unbeaten streaks at the beginning, or even the ones that go into February, as Arizona’s now has. They are defined by March and April, of course.
So the goal is to be steadily improving over the course of the season, Lloyd says, and steady in a game.
On Saturday at ASU, in what appeared another tight game with UA's intrastate rival, the Wildcats could have been knocked off that track.
UA trailed 14-12 after the first eight minutes, having shot just 26.7% while ASU hit 50%, and the Wildcats missed 7 of 8 shots during the middle of the first half. Also, thanks to a 3-pointer from Sun Devils guard Noah Meeusen just before the first-half final buzzer, the Wildcats headed into halftime mired in a 38-38 tie.
They reached their locker room by jogging under a gold banner that read “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.”
Yet they returned from the locker room steady enough. Arizona started the second half by grabbing five of seven available rebounds through the first 2:14 after halftime, going ahead 44-36 and prompting an ASU timeout. Peat hit a 3-pointer during that run, when ASU coach Bobby Hurley said the Sun Devils had purposely left him open.
Like many teams, the Sun Devils were getting pounded inside, so that’s where they tried to focus: While Peat had 21 points despite receiving a blow above his eye in the first half that kept him out for several minutes, Krivas had 15 points on 6-for-10 shooting and Tobe Awaka had 13 points and seven rebounds.
Arizona forward Koa Peat (10) heads to the bench to get treated after taking an elbow to the eye that opened a bloody gash during the first half against Arizona State, Jan. 31, 2026, in Tempe.
“We could not deal with their strength, their size, their ability to do things physically,” Hurley said. “Our roster could not stay with them.”
The biggest issue the Wildcats ultimately had in the second half was a technical foul for taunting that was called on Peat with 6:15 left Saturday and UA leading 71-60.
"Kind of went over the line a little bit," Peat said. "But coach knows that I've just got to be better next time, and he forgave me."
This time it didn't hurt the Wildcats. After Peat was teed up, ASU's Meeseun hit both ensuing free throws to cut UA's lead to 71-62 but Adrija Grbovic missed a 3-pointer on ASU's resulting possession and the Wildcats never trailed by less than nine after that.
Still, Lloyd and Peat had a little chat about the incident.
It was "nothing crazy, just Koa is a competitive guy, and it was just to keep encouraging him to stay steady. Stay steady," Lloyd said. "That could have happened any game. Koa is just a competitive guy who always wants to do well for his team."
Another of ASU’s problems, Hurley said, was its inability to deal with teams such as Arizona that are “brilliant” at using post players to take out help defenders so somebody else can drive to the basket. For what it's worth, wings Brayden Burries (17 points) and Ivan Kharchenkov (12) often drove to the basket Saturday.
Arizona forward Ivan Kharchenkov (8) tries to get Wildcat fans excited as the team begins salting away an 87-74 win over arch rival Arizona State, Jan. 31, 2026, in Tempe.
But earlier in the season, as the Wildcats may now recall, Burries was struggling to drive or score in virtually any way, and Kharchenkov was still something of an unknown.
Arizona didn’t yet have a solid eight-player rotation, and among other issues, Krivas may have been actually missing a whole bunch of layups behind closed doors.
After Saturday’s game, Lloyd dismissed the idea that coaching and teaching can be easier after a loss, when players might be more interested in listening and working.
That's in part because of the guys he has now.
Arizona guard Jaden Bradley (0), left, and forward Ivan Kharchenkov (8) clamp down on Arizona State guard Bryce Ford (4), trying to stop him from getting to the lane in the first half of their Big 12 game, Jan. 31, 2026, in Tempe.
“Our guys don't have hubris,” Lloyd said. “They know there's things we can get better from, and they're mature enough to handle it when I come in there and say, 'Hey, great job, but we’ve got to get better.'”
That’s pretty much the same thing Lloyd told them after forcing them to watch that Casa Grande “mixtape.”
“The message to our guys is, 'Look how far we've come in four months. That’s a credit to you guys. Now let's dream big and see how big, how much better we can get the next month. Let's not just assume we're at our end point. Let's keep building. Let's keep getting better,'" Lloyd said.
"And who doesn't like to get better? I think our guys really appreciate the challenge of improving.”
