Chase Jeter injury forces Arizona Wildcats to go small for bounce-back win

Having enjoyed the luxury of five-star 7-footers during each of the past six seasons, Arizona found out Saturday that size isn’t always everything.

Sometimes, as displayed in the Wildcats’ 82-71 win over Oregon State, a little humanly patience and effort can take you pretty far, too.

Already having lost Emmanuel Akot last week when the Canadian power forward quit the team, the Wildcats also went without center Chase Jeter to back spasms Saturday after the team’s lone true center suffered a hard fall in the first half.

UA coach Sean Miller said Jeter did not suffer a disk injury, which plagued Jeter as a Duke sophomore in 2016-17, but that he wasn’t sure exactly if Jeter could return for UA’s next game Thursday at USC.

Jeter’s loss forced Miller, who had already opted to start 6-foot-5 guard Dylan Smith at power forward, to install 6-9 stretch-four Ryan Luther as his post anchor.

Normally appearing most comfortable on the perimeter, Luther made a point of also causing some damage inside. While Brandon Williams led the Wildcats in scoring with 20 points, Luther totaled 16 points on 6-for-12 overall shooting while pulling down a season-high 11 rebounds.

At the same time, Luther wasn’t about to be left out of the Wildcats’ perimeter party. Arizona hit a season-high 13 3-pointers on 27 attempts, sometimes getting clear looks after collecting one of their season-high 21 offensive rebounds, and Luther did his part with 2-of-5 shooting from beyond the arc.

Three Wildcats hit 3 3s each — Brandon Williams was 3 of 4, Justin Coleman was 3 of 6 and Smith was 3 of 5 — while Alex Barcello also hit 2 of 3 3-pointers off the bench.

Coleman finished with 14 points, putting him over the 1,000-point mark for his career, counting previous stops at Alabama and Samford, and Miller noted how hard his road was in getting there.

The Wildcats’ smooth ball movement and shooting was a drastic contrast to just two days earlier, when Arizona hit only 6 of 22 from long range and Miller complained that they threw up five “horrible” and selfish shots that were taken unnecessarily too early in the shot clock.

This time, the Wildcats passed the ball around and generally kept it over and away from the Beavers’ pesky zone defenses and rim protector Kylor Kelley, the nation’s leading shot-blocker. Kelley rejected three UA shots, and the Wildcats actually shot only 40.3 percent overall but they made it up in volume.

Arizona actually took 18 more field goals than OSU, in part because of those 21 offensive rebounds (and an overall 41-29 rebounding edge) but also because they recorded a season-high nine steals that helped lead to 15 Beaver turnovers. Arizona scored 21 points off of those 15 turnovers, showing an effort on the glass and on defense that might have been its best of the season.

“We had 21 second shots and … without Chase I think that’s all you need to know about the effort level we played with,” Miller said. “We played an inspired two hours of basketball. We weren’t perfect but there’s nobody who could ever say that we didn’t give everything that we had. … (Getting) that many more shots is a big, big deal.”

HANSEN: 'Inspired' Wildcats play like well-oiled machine in win over Oregon State

Arizona’s furious effort was instantly obvious to the rowdy, near-sellout crowd of 14,410 at McKale. With a smaller lineup featuring Smith in for Luther at power forward, and with a high intensity, the Wildcats helped cause five Oregon State turnovers in the first four minutes of the game and took a 10-3 lead.

But that’s also when they lost Jeter. The UA center was undercut by Oregon State’s Tres Tinkle and fell hard on the left side of his back shoulder, unable to break his fall. Jeter stayed on the floor briefly while Miller and UA trainer Justin Kokoskie assessed him, then walked to the training room.

He did not return until the second half and did not play again, despite briefly taking warmups at the end of halftime while fans cheered him warmly. Jeter spent the rest of the game on the bench and appeared to carefully sit down after standing up, but Miller said he should be OK.

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“We don’t look at it as significant, meaning a disk or anything like that,” Miller said. “He fell, his back went into spasms, which happens a lot of times on a big guy like that. But I think he was starting to feel a little bit better late in the game.

“We’re hoping we can get him back for our next game but we’re not there yet.”

After Jeter left, that put even more pressure on Smith, who played 35 minutes, while Luther and Lee had to share time at center.

Typically, though, the soft-spoken Luther didn’t make too big a deal of it.

“Really just nothing changed,” Luther said. “It started on the defensive end. We knew we just had to get stops.”

Arizona allowed OSU to shoot 51.0 percent from the field, the sixth time this season that an opponent has hit more than half of its shots, but UA’s ability to force turnovers and rebound washed that problem away.

So did those 13 3-pointers on the other end of the court, of course, helping Arizona hold on to the lead the entire second half despite two major threats.

The Wildcats led 38-27 at halftime but the Beavers quickly sliced it to five, prompting Miller to call a timeout just 58 seconds into the second half, after OSU scored twice. A clipboard was slammed to the floor as Miller sat in the center of the team huddle during the timeout.

However, UA reclaimed a double-digit lead after Coleman and Smith hit 3-pointers and Arizona held a 51-41 lead with 15:06 to go after Brandon Randolph made a layup.

Then OSU cut to the UA lead to just one possession, 61-58, on a 3-pointer from Ethan Thompson with 8:19 left. But back-to-back 3s from Coleman and Williams gave the Wildcats a 71-60 lead with 5:01 to go and the Beavers never cut it to less than eight from there.

Again, patient offense made the difference.

“We were able to create some really good, open 3-point shots,” Miller said. “You might say 27 (attempts is) too much but that’s what the defense gave us. Very seldom did we ever play just catch around the perimeter or let that zone move us out.”

In a way, Miller said, it helped Saturday that Oregon’s zone defense on Thursday allowed the Wildcats to study their mistakes carefully over film between games, making them realize they needed to drive or pass the ball inside to initiate good offense.

There was another factor Miller cited, too, and it’s one he’s seen plenty of times before. McKale Center was at its loudest of the season Saturday and everyone could feel it.

Thanks in part to that energy from the stands, the Wildcats still have the nation’s best homecourt record over the past five-plus seasons, 92-5. Arizona is 14-5 overall and 5-1 in the Pac-12 while Oregon State dropped to 11-6 and 3-2.

The Wildcats haven’t been swept at home over a two-game weekend since 2007-08, two seasons before Miller arrived.

“They didn’t give up on us after losing a tough game on Thursday night,” Miller said of the McKale fans. “Part of the bounce back is to feel like you’re supported and to feel like you have that magical feeling in McKale. Trust me, everybody feeds off of it.”