Arizona-LBSU pregame: Which Wildcats will show up?

For an opponent traveling to face a highly regarded team that’s coming off an embarrassing upset (or string of them), there’s two ways to look at it:

-- You’re doomed because they’ll be angry and motivated to win big.

-- You have a chance because maybe they’ve lost confidence, maybe there's backbiting, maybe there's some other festering issue.

Not surprisingly, while UA coach Sean Miller is worried about the second possibility, Long Beach State coach Dan Monson insists the first is more applicable to Wednesday’s Arizona-LBSU game.

“They concern us,” Monson said. “To be honest I told my staff, `We can’t worry about Arizona.' If we play well and Arizona plays well, we are not going to win. They can beat themselves. But it’s all about us and getting ourselves better.”

And Miller?

“There’s a lot of teams that are going to lick their chops here now,” Miller said. “They’re going to look at our team as being the most vulnerable Arizona team ever. Very few teams here have lost three in a row. We’re not a top 25 team, we’re playing a lot of young players, we’re vulnerable and they’re going to try to come in here and do what those three teams in the Bahamas did.”

Miller spoke briefly last week about installing a zone defense when Dusan Ristic and Deandre Ayton are in the game together against a small-ball team.

Asked about it again Tuesday, he made it clear there are now other priorities. Like, just guarding somebody straight up.

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“We might mix it in but you have to get good at something first,” Miller said. “If you start to try to deviate and do a lot of things, how are you gonna fix something you know you can really utilize to beat a team like Long Beach State. You overlook that because you’re trying to big picture it and, guess want, you don’t beat Long Beach State and the reason is because you didn’t improve a lot form the Bahamas. Unless we improve our level of play we’re not going to be successful either.”

Arizona will play its first road game Saturday at UNLV, meaning the Wildcats could soon start seeing the sort of welcoming Louisville received at Purdue.

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Arizona will join Auburn, Duke, Gonzaga, Illinois, Iowa State, San Diego State and Xavier in a loaded Maui field.

Lots of talk about UA’s troubles out there nationally, including this detailed breakdown by NBC Sports’ Rob Dauster.

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