Arizona guard T.J. McConnell beats UC-Irvine’s Luke Nelson to the basket, finishing off a fast break from a turnover.
UC-Irvine had yet to score, trailing 4-0 Wednesday, when Sean Miller scrunched himself into a defensive position and advanced to the three-point line.
The look on his face was one of a man who’d just seen a swarm of bees heading his way.
You can see an image of it on a hundred different Twitter feeds. Miller was playing defense in a suit and a tie, illegally on the court during an Anteaters possession, and although the refs didn’t stop the game or whistle a technical foul, you sensed that something was up.
UC-Irvine was up.
Miller was on the court again with 6 minutes 59 seconds remaining in the half, but this time he wasn’t shouting instructions, he was calling a needed timeout. The Anteaters led 16-14. They weren’t going to go away.
Until Wednesday night, the only mini-worry of Arizona’s basketball season had been the size of the cupholders on the new seats at McKale Center. Hundreds complained that they made the game day experience uncomfortable.
But on Wednesday, the Wildcats discovered a new kind of uncomfortable. UCI was paid $95,000 to be the designated stooge for the nation’s No. 2 team, but when they left for halftime , leading 29-26, ESPN flashed the notorious UPSET ALERT across the bottom of millions of TV sets.
“Hey, Marge, you’ve got to see this,” some guy under a foot of snow in Buffalo must’ve shouted, “some team named Anteaters is knocking off Arizona.”
Under fire for the first time this year, Arizona ultimately responded and wore UC-Irvine down, winning 71-54. It was a good lesson for Arizona, and for the Anteaters, a game between teams who are both apt to win their conference championships.
“Arizona’s size and physicality was the difference,” UCI coach Russell Turner said after he studied the final numbers and gave in to reality. “They caused us to fall apart.”
That’s not a nice way to describe the Anteaters — falling apart. It would be more appropriate to say that the Wildcats manifested themselves when nothing else would do.
When you shoot 21 more free throws than the other team, and have a 40-30 edge in rebounding, as Arizona did, you won’t often lose.
“It was not like we just quit playing,” Turner said. “They just came at us and scored in the paint and on free throws.”
If you didn’t enjoy Irvine’s demeanor and approach, you missed the game’s best theatrics.
When Irvine took a 16-14 lead, Luke Nelson slapped his palms on the court. Twice. Loudly. In basketball, that’s like challenging someone’s manhood.
And not only did Nelson do it, so did 7-foot-6-inch center Mamadou Ndiaye. Bring it on, boys.
Arizona point guard T.J. McConnell noticed. He, too, slapped the court. He would be the most influential player on the floor.
This was a terrific game for Sean Miller to schedule; he won’t fully discover what drives this team for a while, not until February or so, but on Wednesday he found that his club was up for a fight.
“You can see they have the makings of a great season,” Miller said of the Anteaters. “We played them in large part because we thought we’d get a lot of credit for playing them (in NCAA tournament mathematics) and hopefully defeating them.”
College basketball has changed so thoroughly the last decade that Wednesday’s struggle shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
Here’s UCI with four foreign players, three others who spent an extra year at prep schools, and transfers from New Mexico and Fresno State. They are coached by a guy who spent six years with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
Everybody’s chasing a prize, and the Anteaters came to McKale chasing a big one: recognition. They got that and more, a head-turning game that should put them on the lips of those who follow the game.
A year ago next week, No. 6 Duke had a similar challenge at home, going to the final shot before beating Vermont 91-90. It happens. It wasn’t unlike a long-ago, November 1990 game at McKale when total unknown East Tennessee State arrived and threw a scare into No. 3 Arizona before losing 88-79 in the final few ticks.
A year later, to validate that game, East Tennessee State shocked Arizona in the NCAA tournament. Irvine isn’t a team you’d want to face in March, either.
“We didn’t want to make too big of a deal of being down (29-26) at half,” said Miller. “Whether we are winning or losing, let’s focus on being a better team. Let’s not worry about being down, or start playing tight.
“We didn’t play tight, we played to win.”
The screws get turned a little tighter now. Arizona plays three games in three days in Hawaii, and the list of opponents is likely to be Missouri, Kansas State and Pitt, although it wouldn’t be a surprise if BYU shoots its way into the finals against Arizona.
But that’s getting ahead of the game.
Beating UC-Irvine in mid-November doesn’t make Arizona a wrecking crew the way Kentucky and Duke looked like wrecking crews in Tuesday’s impressive victories over Kansas and Michigan State.
But it does mean UCI didn’t wreck the UA’s season before it barely gets started.
