Anderson's A+ effort keeps Cats in Pac-12 hunt
Arizona has produced so many Pac-12 Players of the Week (39) that the school no longer lists them in the yearly media guide.
It almost got to be so … so … so what?
Chris Mills was seven times the league’s basketball Player of the Week. Sean Elliott? Six times. Salim Stoudamire, five. Jason Terry, four. It became so routine that Ivan Radenovic was twice POW. Why, the coaching staff of the Golden State Warriors has five Pac-12 Player of the Week ribbons: Steve Kerr, three, and Luke Walton, two.
But when Arizona senior Ryan Anderson put the final touches to the UA’s weekend sweep of the Washington schools on Saturday, the award regained its esteem. The Wildcats couldn’t have beaten the Huskies on Saturday without Anderson’s 22 points and especially his free-throw shooting, 10 for 11.
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Anderson will surely be selected as the league’s Player of the Week. At WSU and in Seattle he scored 53 points, pulled down 27 rebounds and shot 57 percent. Without Anderson, the Wildcats would essentially have been eliminated from the Pac-12 race Saturday.
Since being swept at UCLA and USC early last month, Anderson has been as productive as almost any UA basketball player in history. Over those eight games, he has averaged 18.2 points, 10.1 rebounds, shot an astonishing 69 percent (55 for 79) and forced opposing defenses to deal with him so thoroughly that he has attempted 60 foul shots.
That’s the way to stay alive in the stampede to the Pac-12 championship.
The appeal of Pac-12 basketball is that so many meaningful games, involving so many teams, fill the coming schedule.
USC plays in Tucson next Sunday and then goes to Cal.
Oregon still has road games at USC, UCLA and Cal.
Utah has yet to make its Los Angeles trip and awaits a Feb. 27 showdown at the Huntsman Center against Arizona.
Somehow, Arizona was resourceful enough to win at Washington while committing 20 turnovers, shooting 39 percent and allowing the Huskies eight rim-shaking dunks.
In the end, Ryan Anderson was the best player on the court, the league’s top player of the week, and that’s how you win a road game to sustain a chance to catch Oregon over the next month.