Arizona's Tommy Lloyd gets first glimpse at Saturday's opponent, Indiana

Like many basketball coaches, Arizona’s Tommy Lloyd prefers to watch upcoming opponents only after their games are played, so he can zip back and forth on recordings to zero in on what he really needs to see.

“Watching on video is way more efficient for me,” he says.

But Wednesday, with a full week open before the Wildcats face Indiana in Las Vegas on Saturday, Lloyd had a chance to watch the Hoosiers face Nebraska live on the Big Ten Network.

It was worth a try.

“The game was on last night and I was having dinner, hanging out with my family,” Lloyd said Thursday, during his weekly news conference. “I wasn’t sitting there fast-forwarding, rewinding or anything. Just watching.”

Turns out, there were a few things with the Hoosiers that probably didn’t need a whole lot of review, anyway.

Like, that Trayce Jackson-Davis is one of the nation’s best players, a versatile big man who put together a triple-double of 12 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists in Indiana’s 81-65 win over Nebraska.

Or that Indiana is a pretty good defensive team, keeping the Cornhuskers to just 6-of-23 shooting, a performance that could signal a challenge for an Arizona team that has shot 16.7% from 3-point range in its last two games.

Or that Indiana, in general, is a solid Top 25 program, having also beaten Xavier and North Carolina so far this season while losing only to Rutgers.

Like the Wildcats, the Hoosiers are in the second year of an upswing after having fired a Miller brother (Arizona’s Sean and Indiana’s Archie) in spring 2021, flourishing in part because of how well players recruited by the Miller brothers (IU’s Jackson-Davis and UA’s Azuolas Tubelis among them) have flourished under new coaches.

The Hoosiers lost seven of their final nine regular-season games last season under new coach Mike Woodson, but parlayed a Big Ten Tournament semifinal appearance into a No. 12 NCAA Tournament seed.

This year, the Hoosiers are on track to a much higher seed, at 8-1 so far and ranked No. 14, four spots behind Arizona.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“They’re in a similar situation that we’re in a little bit, program-wise,” Lloyd said. “You’ve got a coach in his second year and obviously their coach (Woodson) is a lot more experienced than I am,” Lloyd said. “But you can see the comfort level of the players growing. They have a lot of returning players and they looked great last night.”

Academic finish line

The long week between games is also giving the Wildcats a chance to finish up fall semester work, with practices either becoming a diversion or a distraction, depending on the viewpoint.

“It can be both,” Lloyd said. “Sometimes you do notice just a little bit of — I don’t know if it’s academic fatigue, where guys are just tired from cramming stuff in for school, or just the wear and tear of the season. Those things sometimes accumulate and you have some good-energy days in practice and you have some lower-energy days in practice. That’s kind of what it is.”

Most of Arizona’s players are expected to be finished with fall semester work by Tuesday, when the Wildcats are scheduled to host Texas A&M Corpus Christi at McKale Center.

Payoff for returning

Projected as a second-round or undrafted player in the 2022 NBA Draft, Jackson-Davis appeared to have his stay-or-go decision made easier when a positive COVID-19 test kept him out of the NBA Combine last spring.

But by returning to Indiana this season, Jackson-Davis has a chance to become a national player of the year and lead Indiana deep into the postseason, as his triple-double on Wednesday indicated. He’s averaging 17.9 points, 8.9 rebounds and 2.0 blocks while shooting 67.5% so far.

“It honestly just solidifies why I came back,” Jackson-Davis said Wednesday after his performance against Nebraska. “I came back to do big things, not only individually but with the team, and we have high aspirations this year.

“So it’s just continuing to just play my hardest every game and play for my teammates and the man above. That’s what I’m going to do. Just moments like that make it special to me.”