PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas – Teams in and around college basketball’s Top 25 stumbled out of the Atlantis Resort’s converted ballroom all day Wednesday, and for a few minutes at least, Arizona looked like it was next in line.
No. 14 Indiana, blown out by Louisville. No. 3 Gonzaga, taken apart in overtime by West Virginia. And Providence, receiving AP Top 25 votes on Monday after a 5-0 start, edged 79-77 by Oklahoma, which hadn’t received a single vote.
Then there was Arizona, before an eventual 104-71 win over Davidson that put the Wildcats into a semifinal game against Oklahoma on Thursday at 3 p.m., coughing up five turnovers in the first five minutes and trailing by seven early to the mid-major Wildcats of North Carolina.
But UA coach Tommy Lloyd looked at the trends of the day a little differently.
Well, actually, he didn’t really look much at those previous games at all, missing much of the one involving Indiana and former UA center Oumar Ballo because he was at practice. Then he couldn’t find a way to tune in for the Oklahoma-Providence game, since both ESPN's international linear and streaming options were limited.
“It's hard. Like in my hotel room, the game's not on,” Lloyd said. “Then I was trying to get it on my iPad.”
Still, Lloyd and his players no doubt heard the scores before they headed into the Imperial Ballroom’s arena. They were standing right there watching the end of the Oklahoma-Providence game, waiting for it to end before they hit the floor for warmups.
But both Caleb Love and Anthony Dell’Orso, who led the Wildcats to what became a decisive win by playing featured roles in a revived offense, shook their heads to indicate the earlier losses didn’t faze them.
And Lloyd questioned what those games really were anyway.
“There’s no upsets right now,” Lloyd said. “There's no upsets because it's so early in the year. I mean, I know they're upsets on paper and the media wants to make it because it's a great story.
"For us, there's no upsets. There's only respect for your opponents … there's a lot of good teams out there right now, there's a lot of parity, and I bet you, in another month, college basketball's gonna look a lot different.”
A proud mid-major program that started out 4-0 thanks in part to four returning starters, Davidson looked like one of those better college basketball teams nearly all of Wednesday evening. Those Wildcats took three seven-point leads early in the game over Arizona and, after UA turned the game around with a 16-2 run in the first half, kept cutting UA’s lead from double digits.
Davidson didn't fade until the final nine minutes. It trailed just 68-62 with 12:25 left until Dell’Orso hit a jumper and 3-pointer over the next 75 seconds to ignite a 12-0 run that began to put the game away.
Another 3 from Dell’Orso with 2:42 left gave Arizona a 30-point lead and the Aussie guard finished with a season-high 21 points, hitting 5 of 7 3s over 18 minutes.
Dell'Orso's production was such a jump after four relatively quiet games, including a scoreless four-minute effort against Duke on Nov. 44, that Love answered a question about his slump-breaking 20-point effort by talking about Dell’Orso instead.
“I was proud of him,” Love said. “He was my player of the game. I was so happy to see him break through and make those shots. Because we're in the gym every day and I see how hard he works. He continues to push through mistakes and hardships.”
Dell’Orso, meanwhile, talked about everyone else.
“We’re all looking out for each other,” Dell’Orso said. “We’re all trying to have big moments, and that's a good thing for our team, because we can play together.”
That was what was most striking Wednesday. The Wildcats played together, and far more efficiently, than they had even in early wins over Canisius and Old Dominion, and certainly more so than they did in losses to Wisconsin and Duke.
Arizona shot a season-high 56.5%, while hitting 11 for 22 3-pointers. While they set up only 14 of their 39 made shots with assists, that was partly a function of the offensive putbacks Tobe Awaka made inside and quick transition baskets, including a 3-pointer that helped untrack Love’s two-game slump.
The make was the first 3-pointer Love tried, cutting Davidson’s lead to 16-14 and appearing to ignite Love after he hit just 1 for 15 3s over his previous two games, UA's losses to Wisconsin and Duke.
Love wound up scoring on the perimeter and on the drive, just as he had said before the game that he aimed to do. He finished with 20 points on 7-for-13 shooting and made 3 of 7 3-pointers.
“It was a rhythm 3,” Love said of his first 3. “I tried to take out the bad shots and that definitely was a confidence-booster. And I wanted to attack the basket. That was something that I've been good at my whole career. I just want to get back to it.”
Arizona’s Caleb Love said he was locked in to his faith going into the Battle 4 Atlantis game against Davidson Nov. 27, 2024.
Arizona’s Caleb Love said he was locked in to his faith going into the Battle 4 Atlantis game against Davidson Nov. 27, 2024.
“It felt like there was good tempo, there was good ball movement,” Lloyd said. “I think we were kind of getting our break going a little bit north-south, and then I think once we settled in the half court, we were getting the ball going east and west, side to side, and finding angles to attack.
“Our big guys weren't perfect, but they're coming along.”
It was only very early in the game that the Wildcats didn’t have any sort of flow. Arizona fumbled away five turnovers over the first five minutes while falling behind by up to seven points. But after Lloyd subbed out his entire frontline, Awaka began what became an 16-2 run by scoring inside and then dishing an assist to Veesaar for another.
Davidson coach Matt McKillop said his Wildcats succeeded initially by playing the gaps well, getting back after made baskets to set their defense properly.
“We were disciplined,” McKillop said. “One thing we were reminding our guys of every single time out was that if we're going to hit the offensive glass, it's got to be with a major sense of IQ, to not position ourselves where they can outrun us to the other end.”
As it was, Arizona managed 13 fast-break points while doing plenty of damage in the paint, outscoring Davidson there 50-28. And while Davidson matched Arizona’s 11 3-pointers, Davidson had to attempt 34 to get there.
“To beat a team as talented and well-coached as Arizona is, you have to be perfect on so many things,” McKillop said. “I thought there were stretches where we looked like we could hang in there with any team in the country, and it's pretty safe to say that Arizona can be a Final Four team and national championship contender.”
But as Lloyd always makes clear, that’s way too far ahead to think.
After he was done speaking at Wednesday’s postgame press conference, Lloyd went down an Atlantis hallway, determined, somehow, to get a copy of that Oklahoma-Providence game to look at.
He had exactly 17 hours to watch it and get the Wildcats ready.
And sleep, maybe.
“I'll have time to watch the game tonight,” Lloyd said. “That’s why I gotta get this press conference over. I need to get to work.”
Arizona’s Caleb Love said he was locked in to his faith going into the Battle 4 Atlantis game against Davidson Nov. 27, 2024.
Tobe Awaka, coming off the bench for the second straight game behind Motiejus Krivas at center, had 10 points and eight rebounds in just nine minutes played.
