Greg Hansen: Big Benn delivers Wildcats fans from basketball hell, and Arizona marches on

SAN DIEGO — It was March’s singular version of basketball hell and Arizona was the guest of honor.

A sense of finality engulfed Viejas Arena, threatening to squeeze the life out of an Arizona basketball team that has spent the last four months hyper, happy and full of life.

UA coach Tommy Lloyd paced back and forth, back and forth, from midcourt to the end of the Wildcat bench. The pressure seemed unendurable.

The Wildcats didn’t score for five minutes, losing a 67-58 lead, trailing 75-72 with the clock ticking: 15, 14, 13, 12. ….

If someone didn’t make the play of his life — NOW — the No. 1-seeded Wildcats would join the Holy Trinity of Disappointments in school basketball history, losing at the worst possible time as Steve Kerr’s 1988 team, Sean Elliott’s 1989 team and Miles Simon’s 1998 team did.

And then Bennedict Mathurin fought off the urgency of the moment, gathered himself, let a few more seconds tick off the clock and swished a 3-pointer. It was like a lightning bolt from the basketball heavens.

Overtime.

And in overtime Arizona was, at last, the better team. Mathurin scored six more points. Christian Koloko, who played the best game of his life, added the exclamation point with a put-back dunk.

Arizona won, 85-80, and it wasn’t a game for the ages as much as it was a game that might’ve aged every UA fan from San Diego to the San Xavier Mission a few years.

As Lloyd stepped to the podium in a brief Q&A session outside of Viejas Arena, a loud clatter of horns began to sound on the streets outside of the arena. Wildcats fans celebrated in an impromptu single-file parade down College Avenue to Interstate 8.

"It was an Incredible battle," said Lloyd. "It didn’t look good but I know this, I believed in them the whole time. I knew we just had to hang in there and make a play or two."

Or more. Many more.

TCU stepped it up a notch, or two. Shooting guard Chuck O’Bannon Jr. scored 23 points, his career high. Center Eddie Lampkin scored 20, also a career high. The Horned Frogs not only played as if they were deep in the heart of Texas, but as if they were in orbit somewhere above Texas. They outrebounded the bigger Wildcat front-line 48-44.

"I thought Lampkin gave us our lunch a little bit," said Lloyd. "We hadn’t have a big guy do that to us all year."

What made Mathurin’s overtime-forcing, tying 3-pointer so meaningful is that the Wildcats had gone 4 for 22 from 3-point distance before he hit one of the most clutch shots in school history. Yes, 4 for 22.

Does that sound familiar?

When No. 1 seed Arizona lost to Utah in the 1998 Elite Eight, it went 4 for 22 from 3-point distance, too. And so did Arizona’s 2001 Final Four team in a championship game loss to Duke. Exactly 4 for 22.

Mathurin avoided the worst kind of history at the best possible time.

"It was win or go home," said Mathurin

Lloyd added some definition to Mathurin’s shot, saying: "Benn’s not afraid of the moment. He has the clutch gene."

For much of the game’s first 39 minutes, TCU was clearly the aggressor. The Horned Frogs celebrated when timeouts were called. They pounded their chests and waved to their fans. They showed up for the opening bell and took it to the favored Wildcats. TCU didn't play the victim for even a minute.

Arizona seemed to hit the snooze-button several times. It only scored 10 fast-break points. Had not both Mathurin and Koloko played the best games of their lives, Arizona would’ve joined No, 1 seed Baylor and No. 2 seeds Kentucky and Auburn in the home-too-soon category.

"I don’t know if I deserve this, but the players deserve it," said Lloyd, who had already begun to plan for Thursday’s Sweet 16 game against Houston, which is a more talented version of TCU, defense-first, passion always.

"We’ve got a daunting, daunting task ahead of us," said Lloyd. "The grit and toughness of the teams ahead of us in the bracket is pretty formidable."

Arizona deserves credit for more than a unforgettable comeback. It scored 85 points on a TCU team that allowed an average of 68. No one had scored more than 76 points on the Horned Frogs all season. The first half belonged to Koloko, who incredibly made his first six shots and had 14 points when Arizona took its first lead, 18-17.

The second half belonged to Mathurin, who scored 20 of his 30. Nothing less would have worked for the Wildcats.

"My coaches were getting on me for not getting enough rebounds," said Mathurin, who produced late in the game, with seven rebounds, almost all of them critically necessary. He also played with an edge, an extra gear, that turned the game at the last possible moment.

"I had to show emotion," he said. "I play a game that I love most. So I just went out there and got the rebounds and scored. I was emotional."

Who wasn't?

TCU coach Jamie Dixon measured his words at the media podium. His out-of-nowhere, 8-10 team in the Big 12, won its first NCAA Tournament game two days earlier. And on Sunday the Horned Frogs were one Mathurin jumper from going to the Sweet 16 for the first time ever.

Maybe next time, right?

"I just told them they made millions of fans tonight who were watching this game," he said. "The challenge now is how to handle it the right way after this loss. I still felt we should have won the game. We did everything. And we just came up short."

Arizona didn't come up short, it came up for air. It can breathe again. Basketball hell can wait for another day.