In a post-Pac-12 world, Arizona's Brayden Burries will make rare trip home to California

If he had committed to Arizona a decade or two earlier, maybe even as late as 2023, Brayden Burries would have been a prototypical Wildcat recruit.

He was a high school basketball star from Southern California, named California’s Gatorade Player of the Year. He also led his team to the California Open Division title with a raging competitive drive that became obvious when he threw in a state record 44 points in the championship game for Eleanor Roosevelt High School.

“I just didn’t want to go out there and lose, honestly,” Burries said.

Burries also had deep athletic roots in the state: Burries has a father who was named to Cal State San Bernardino’s Hall of Fame after his basketball career there and a mother who played softball at Tennessee and basketball at Cal State San Bernardino.

Guys like Burries used to sign up for Arizona and take advantage of the chance to make regular appearances at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion and USC’s Galen Center courtesy of the Pac-12 schedule. Their families and friends could easily watch them play Pac-12 games in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and in nearby Las Vegas for the conference tournament.

Essentially, Burries was the kind of player that Lute Olson and even Sean Miller routinely stacked their Arizona rosters with.

Instead, the Wildcats’ freshman guard is a something of an outlier this season. Joining Arizona in time for its second Big 12 go-round, with the Pac-12 having imploded in 2024, Burries is the Wildcats’ only scholarship player from California.

He won’t get to Pauley or Galen as a freshman, and his only scheduled game in his home state this season will be Friday, when Arizona will face UCLA at Inglewood’s Intuit Dome, the year-old home of the Los Angeles Clippers.

Not exactly a building with Pauley-style tradition.

“It’s gonna be my first time seeing it,” Burries said.

After Friday, instead of parading up and down the West Coast with the Pac-12, Burries will play nonconference games in Connecticut and Alabama and, thanks to the Big 12, is scheduled to play three times in Texas, once in Kansas and once in Florida this season.

Yet, none of this seems to be a problem. Burries committed to Arizona anyway last April, fully OK with the road ahead.

“I don’t think it really matters too much,” Burries said. “The Big 12 is a better league basketball wise. And I feel like Arizona is close to home, so I’ll still have family at games. It’s all good.”

Actually, he already did. Burries has so far played in two home games at McKale Center and, in the Wildcats’ Nov. 3 opener against Florida in Las Vegas, found his own personal home vibe: He said between 80-100 friends and family were on hand at T-Mobile Center for that one.

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Burries wound up having a rough night against the Gators, fouling out after just 17 minutes, with three points on 1-for-6 shooting, but offered no complaints afterward.

“It was a great experience. We won,” he said. “I didn’t get to see my family, but I got to see my dad after the game, and just knowing everyone was there to support was great.”

Burries said he expects a similar crowd of family and friends Friday, maybe even bigger, though the job may not be any easier. UCLA wiped away a 13-point deficit to beat Arizona 57-54 last December in Phoenix and, with a strong core that added highly regarded transfers in guard Donovan Dent (New Mexico) and center Xavier Booker (Michigan State), might be even better this season.

Uncommitted at the time of last season’s UA-UCLA game, and actually still considering the Bruins, Burries said he tuned in to see the end of the game but didn’t feel much emotion.

“I was still open to any school, but most importantly, I was really focused on the (high school) season,” Burries said.

For the Wildcats, it was a pivotal game that initially stung but ultimately helped them turn their season around. UA was 4-4 entering the UCLA game, when center Motiejus Krivas showed up in a boot after playing in its first eight games while struggling with a stress-related injury.

Krivas was formally declared out for the season later that month, and the Wildcats sorted out a rotation without him, then won 13 of their next 14 games.

“We were going through a tough stretch,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “Mo looked like he was turning the corner and really coming back healthy and then a couple days before the game, he re-injured his foot, and basically his season was over.

“So then we were forced to, on the fly, figure out a little different way to play. Nothing crazy, but we had to make some adjustments. And that was the first game we really headed into it. We had some success but we also had some struggles with it, and UCLA has something to do with that.”

Burries said the Wildcats will have to take care of the ball and “know when to be aggressive” against the Bruins, who have another team Lloyd said was gritty and purposeful.

Kind of like they were in the eight times Arizona faced UCLA in Pac-12 play since Lloyd took over the Wildcats in 2021-22.

“Tough, solid, well-schooled in the fundamentals,” Lloyd said. “They have a plan and a conviction to stick with their plan. Whenever you play somebody that has those attributes, I don’t care what they’re running, it’s going to be a tough game.”