Back from break, No. 5 Arizona turns attention to in-state rivalry game

A four-day Christmas break was too short to let the Arizona Wildcats’ international players go home, but still long enough to take everyone’s minds off basketball for a bit.

While domestic players Courtney Ramey (St. Louis) and Cedric Henderson (Memphis) squeezed in brief trips home, UA coach Tommy Lloyd said he “just hung out with family” in Tucson while the Wildcats’ eight international players all followed through on arrangements to visit with nearby family and/or friends somewhere in the region.

“I went to Mount Lemmon,” said center Oumar Ballo, a native of Mali. “That was fun.”

All of it was probably good for their minds but, maybe, not so much for their focus. Except the Wildcats picked up a tool to use against complacency back on Nov. 30 in Salt Lake City.

That’s when they lost 81-66 to Utah.

“We were not ready mentally and we were not ready physically to play against Utah, and it taught us a great lesson,” Ballo said. “We learned that you can lose to any team if you’re not ready and we are taking every game seriously.”

As a result, possibly, Ballo said the fifth-ranked Wildcats (12-1) returned to practice Tuesday with the same kind of focus he has seen since the Utah game, preparing for their game at ASU (11-2) on Saturday.

“We needed to have a break, go home, see family and stuff like that,” Ballo said. “But we since we got back, everyone’s locked in and we are ready to get back where we left off.”

The Wildcats left off with big December wins against Indiana and Tennessee, plus wins over Montana State and Morgan State in the final week before their Christmas break.

Those two relatively uninspired wins last week could have been written off as a case of pre-Christmas doldrums, while ASU may have had a much worse case. The Sun Devils, who had risen into the AP Top 25 on Dec. 19 for the first time this season, lost two days later at San Francisco by 37 points.

Still, ASU is ranked 32nd overall in defensive efficiency, and keeps opponents to just 40.5% shooting from two-point range. The Sun Devils also block 13.9% of opponents’ shots, the 29th highest block percentage in Division I.

“They’re aggressive, they’re handsy, they take chances, they play with great effort, and they’ve got rim protection behind all that,” Lloyd said. “That’s usually a pretty good formula.”

While the Sun Devils have infused transfers Desmond Cambridge (Nevada), Devon Cambridge (Auburn) and Frankie Collins (Michigan) into their starting lineup, Lloyd said he sees the same sort of “energy and scrappiness” that has been a trademark of coach Bobby Hurley’s teams.

The Wildcats saw that sort of thing during their last appearance in Tempe: ASU took a 14-1 lead over the Wildcats before UA took a halftime lead and went on to win 91-79.

“They made some big shots early and they were just going crazy,” Ballo said. “But it’s a long game and we just needed to make our run and we did it. To be honest, I’m expecting the same thing. They’re gonna make some big shots, but we just have to keep doing what we’re doing.

“Even though (ASU is) a brand new team from last year, some guys remember and we know we need to start from the first second.”

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Quad 1 opportunities ahead

Entering the resumption of league play Thursday, the Pac-12 had nine teams among the Top 100 in updated NET rankings, including six in the Top 75. If those ratings held up, UA would have four “Quad 1” opportunities remaining, starting with its game at ASU (ranked 42 in the NET) on Saturday.

Both UA-UCLA games would be Quad 1 opportunities for each team, since UA is ranked No. 8 and UCLA No. 6 in the NET, while UA’s Jan. 14 road game at Oregon (71) would also qualify as a Quad 1 chance as of now.

If USC (86), Washington State (92) and Stanford (100) somehow moved into the Top 75 of the NET, the Wildcats’ games at those schools would also count as Quad 1s, which are defined as home games against teams ranked from 1-30 and road games against teams ranked 1-75.

“It looks like there’s going to be a competitive league and there’s going to be a lot of hard games,” Lloyd said. “I haven’t really spent a bunch of time looking at the NET ratings, but it looks like there’s going to be opportunities to get Quad 1 wins, which ultimately is important. If you have an opportunity to stack those up within conference, it really can benefit everybody in the conference.”

Richardson, Miller speak in New York

After going five-plus years without speaking during the federal and NCAA proceedings that surrounded Arizona from September 2017 until earlier this month, former UA coach Sean Miller met with ex-assistant Book Richardson met Wednesday.

According to what Richardson told ESPN, the meeting — which came immediately after Xavier beat St. John’s in New York — represented a “new chapter,” with both coaches planning to talk in the future.

“He said, ‘I love you,’ and I said, ‘I know,’” Richardson told ESPN.

An assistant under Miller at both Xavier and Arizona, Richardson was arrested in September 2017, fired by UA in January 2018 and served a three-month federal prison sentence in 2019 after reaching a plea agreement over taking $20,000 in bribes from an agent.

The federal proceedings led to an NCAA investigation. The Independent Accountability Resolution Process ruled that Richardson committed three Level I violations — one for taking the bribes, one for paying $40,000 to obtain a fraudulent academic record and one for providing false information to investigators and failing to cooperate with their investigation.

Richardson was handed a 10-year show cause penalty earlier this month that effectively prohibits him from coaching in college basketball until December 2032.

Miller, who was cleared of a Level I head coach responsibility charge earlier this month, coached at Arizona until the end of the 2020-21 season, when UA fired him for what it said were both on and off the court reasons. He took last season off and returned to Xavier, which is now 11-3 and ranked No. 22 in the AP college basketball poll.

Miller had coached five seasons at Xavier before being hired at Arizona in April 2009.