2023 has tested Arizona's Oumar Ballo already, but the bend-don't-break big man carries on

For all the success Oumar Ballo had in the 2022 calendar year — he snipped Pac-12 nets as a fast-improving sophomore last season and picked up the Maui Invitational MVP trophy earlier this season as a dominating junior — 2023 continues to offer nothing but challenges.

Ballo began by “celebrating” New Year’s Day in the hospital, making first of three visits related to a bacterial infection. He then spent the next two weeks trying to feel normal. Ballo said he lost about 12 pounds from the illness and, although he never missed a game, his production was limited over the first two weeks of January.

Then, less than two weeks after Ballo played a starring role in UA’s 58-52 win over UCLA on Jan. 21, collecting 16 points and eight rebounds while getting to the free throw line 11 times, the outside of his body began to hurt.

Specifically, Ballo suffered a sprained thumb against Oregon on Feb. 2, and it hasn’t really had a chance to heal. Ballo has worn wraps around his right wrist and thumb since then.

“The thumb gets hit and as a big man, you get the ball, they guard and hit you again, then it starts bothering you again,” Ballo said. “So you just have to tape it and make sure that you are taking care of it because it always gets hit, heals and then you get hit again.”

It’s a vicious circle. Arguably, the tape around the injury can even make things worse – by signaling to opponents that, hmm, maybe hitting Ballo in the same place might really make him struggle.

“Possibly,” Ballo said. “You have to do what you have to do to protect yourself. I don’t feel like anyone’s gonna be such a bad player to try to purposely injury someone, because this is just a fun game that we all love to do. But it happens.”

In Arizona’s 88-79 loss at Stanford on Saturday, Ballo ran into another obstacle. The Cardinal pulled off the sort of feat every UA opponent would like to do by taking Ballo and fellow UA big Azuolas Tubelis pretty much out of the game.

Tubelis ran into foul trouble and took only two shots over 17 minutes played while Ballo took just five shots and struggled with matchups on both sides of the court.

Defensively, Ballo was pulled away from the basket by a Stanford team that had all five starters making 3-pointers while offensively, he and Tubelis couldn’t get the ball often because of the Cardinal’s successful strategy to switch off of every UA ballscreen with its array of versatile, similarly sized players.

“They were putting a lot of pressure on the guards, so it was a kind of hard to feed us in the post,” Ballo said. “We just need to get better at handling the pressure a little bit more better and us as big men, give them better, bigger targets so they can find us.”

But even against other teams, it’s a challenge: Ballo said every time he or Tubelis touches the ball “there’s two guys on us and a third guy waiting under the basket to help.”

The Cardinal just added a different dimension. Ballo said the Wildcats hadn’t faced anyone like Stanford that switched all their players, making it tougher for the Wildcats to shake the defense off, though he said the ultimate problem was that UA simply didn’t defend well enough.

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While the Wildcats hit 14-of-35 from 3-point range, Stanford shot 61.1% from the field, including 10 of 18 from 3.

“Offensively we were there,” Ballo said. “Sure, me and Zu didn’t score a lot but our guards were hooping. We just needed to get us a few stops and take care of the ball a little bit more.”

Ballo wound up playing 27 minutes and, because Tubelis was on the bench for most of the game, UA coach Tommy Lloyd went with five perimeter players at times. It wasn’t an intentional small-ball type of strategy, Lloyd indicated, as much as it was just going with the players he felt were the best, meaning he wouldn’t go beyond his seven-man rotation.

“It’s always an option. It’s stuff that we practice once in a while,” Lloyd said. “That was probably dictated a little bit by foul trouble and a little bit by fatigue

“It’s a lineup that I’m comfortable playing because they’re good basketball players, but obviously our bread and butter is our big guys.”

Maybe both UA bigs return in full form this week against Utah on Thursday and Colorado on Saturday.

Because while Ballo’s wrist may keep getting banged around this week, the damage Stanford handed Arizona can heal because there’s game video to study.

“I feel like every time we lose, we learn a lot,” Ballo said. “I was watching the (Stanford) tape for myself and I was like `Oh man, there’s so much room for me to get better.’ I feel like our teams always take a huge step forward” after a loss.

So far, the Wildcats have a track record of doing just that. They have avenged two of their four losses so far, winning at Washington State after the Cougars shocked them at McKale and then beating Oregon at home less than three weeks after the Ducks crushed UA in Eugene.

On Thursday, they’ll get a chance to face the team that handed them their first loss of the season, too.

The good vibes the Wildcats carried home from their Maui Invitational title crashed into an 81-66 loss at Utah on Dec. 1. Although the Utes (17-9, 10-5) were picked to finish 10th in the Pac-12, they are now in third place, just a game behind the Wildcats (22-4, 11-4).

“Traditionally, these guys have been able to respond,” Lloyd said. “This is another opportunity for them to do that.”