SALT LAKE CITY β Bennedict Mathurinβs ankle may be all but healed at this point, but UA coach Sean Miller found something else wrong Thursday at Utah.
Namely, his attitude. If that wasnβt clear enough by how Miller played Mathurin only 21 minutes total and didnβt start him in the second half Thursday -- or from Miller's apparent disappointment in him during a late first-half timeout -- it certainly was clear during Miller's postgame Zoom interview.
βBenn has to have a great attitude and has to play with a total effort towards winning the game, both on defense and on offense, and his body language has to be great,β Miller said. βHe has to give us everything that he has. And when he does that, he's a very, very good player. But I didn't like the way he played.β
Mathurinβs body language appeared to be trending downward late in the first half, when he took an ill-advised shot and tried to pick up a foul. Miller, who appeared to be angry at Mathurin during an ensuing timeout, started Dalen Terry over Mathurin at small forward in the second half and played Mathurin only nine minutes after halftime.
βI thought it was a reflection of really our whole team,β Miller said of Mathurin. βWhen somebody's not locked in we kind of have a couple guys going really, really hard and some others not. Again, we don't have that room for error, that luxury. We're not going to walk out at the jump ball and overwhelm any team in the Pac-12.β
Miller continued:
βAnd right now in the month of February playing at Utah, Utah is a good team, playing with a lot of purpose and confidence. Like I said, they kicked our butt. But one thing that's never going to change with me is if you don't have great attitude, itβs going to be really, really hard, hard to grow. And I didn't like Benn's attitude.β
Thereβs a reason Miller downplayed Kerr Kriisaβs immediate impact on Thursday somewhat, since the Estonian freshman was being thrown into the fire, during a true road game at one of the Pac-12βs tougher venues, against a veteran team that also appeared to have caught some momentum by coming back to win at Colorado last weekend.
Still, Kriisa had two assists in his 19 minutes played and did not turn the ball over.
βAs I told you guys earlier in the week, he's gonna give us everything,β Miller said.
βIt was nice to have him out there. He deserved to be out there and you could kind of see his spark a little bit. I'm glad we had him tonight. I'm not so sure if we didn't have him with the predicament we were in, if the score wouldn't have been more lopsided. But I thought he helped us. He did some good things and he'll continue to get more comfortable as the schedule moves forward.β
Maybe the biggest thing Kriisa did was simply play solidly enough in order to allow Miller to rest James Akinjo and Terrell Brown, while also allowing him to bench Mathurin and cope with Terryβs foul trouble at the same time.
Akinjo played just 30 minutes despite averaging 34.8 entering the game, while Brown played 32, Mathurin the 21 minutes and Terry just 18 in part because of his four fouls. Kriisa played 21 minutes.
βI'm glad we had Kerr available,β Miller said. βI think he was nothing but a bonus. The fact that we were able to rest Terrell brown and James Akinjo -- those guys need rest.
βWe struggled -- look, we struggled to guard the dribble tonight, and there have been times this season when we've struggled with it, but we were overwhelmed tonight. I mean, just one guy after another, just really struggling guarding the ball. Again it's a credit to Utah's ball movement and execution.β
Arizona still hasnβt been outrebounded this season but the Wildcats lost their usual advantage on the glass Thursday, with both teams collecting 32 rebounds.
Some of that has to do with Utahβs size and experience inside, of course. Utah starts sophomore 7-footer Branden Carlson at center and 6-8, 220-pound Finnish sophomore Mikael Jantunen at power forward, with 6-9 junior Riley Battin off the bench.
βTheir big guys are very good players,β Miller said. βA year ago, they played a lot of minutes as true freshmen. I think they learned the ropes, going through a regular season Pac 12. They've grown, they've improved, they're bigger, they're stronger and they're good playersβ¦ and (forward) Riley Battin, who's another one of their bigs, is different than their two starters. He can hurt you in different ways and he hurt us. He's skilled, he can shoot the ball and, and again he's now an upperclassman in his third Pac 12 season. They have a nice little rotation there.
βAnd I think they play well as a group. I thought their team was very, very prepared tonight. They were prepared for us with their defense. They were prepared with their attack against our defense, and we didn't have any answers."
Utah might be only 8-7 but the Utes lost at UCLA by only two points, against Oregon by six and at Washington by four. Then they came back from a 19-point deficit to beat Colorado last Saturday in a game that might ultimately become a turning point for their season.
βTheyβve played a lot of close games in our conference and they're right there,β Miller said. βUtah is one of many teams that can play their best in the month of February and really catch fire. I certainly think they have that type of team and I was really impressed with how physical they were, how hard they played on defense.
βI thought their ball screen defense really made it difficult at times for us, especially in the first half. They forced turnovers and we struggled. We didn't have a good night on offense. Utah deserves the credit in many ways for our struggles because they played a better game than us and they took it to us. They really did.β
Lithuanian freshman Azuolas Tubelis has a pretty good grip on the English language and even already knows some slang (he'll just have to learn that English is such a strange language that even something like βbaddestβ actually can mean something that's not bad at all...)
Anyway, here's how he described UAβs defense on Thursday:
βOur defense was the baddest defense all this season,β Tubelis said. βThey kick our asses.β
Tubelis speaks very carefully and is limited in English but heβs refreshing in that what he says appears to be very straightforward and not rehearsed.
On Thursday, for example, Tubelis expressed complete puzzlement that UAβs defense could have struggled the way it did.
βWe worked hard the last four days in practices,β Tubelis said. βAll those things were good -- I don't know just mentally. We need to prepare ourselves better and play like a team, like one fist. But still β¦ I don't know why.β
