Arizona Wildcats 'roller coaster' season still finished pretty much as expected

NEWARK, N.J. — A No. 10 ranking in the preseason Associated Press Top 25 and a fifth-place prediction in the Big 12 suggested the Arizona Wildcats would be competitive in their new conference and finish in the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament.

That’s exactly what they wound up doing.

It just didn’t look that way for a long while. No more so than on the afternoon of Dec. 14.

In a 57-54 loss to UCLA at Phoenix’s Footprint Center, Arizona coughed up 22 turnovers that led to 27 Bruin points as UA completely blew a 13-point second-half lead.

Their projected lottery pick center, Motiejus Krivas, watched the game from the sidelines wearing a boot, and UA coach Tommy Lloyd was still scrambling to find an effective rotation with or without him.

The Wildcats were 4-5 after the game, in nobody’s idea of an early NCAA Tournament bracket.

Without a single win over a high-major team at that point, it wasn’t even clear if the Wildcats could break .500 in the Big 12, much less finish in a third-place tie and reach the Sweet 16 as fourth-seeded Arizona ultimately did, finishing its season with a 100-93 loss to top-ranked Duke on Thursday.

“It’s not coming easy,” Lloyd said after the UCLA game. “We’re not going to act like everything’s going great and we’re expecting everything to just flow together naturally. We’re gonna have to fight for it. This group’s gonna have to fight.”

Up to that point, the Wildcats had some excuses.

They had lost four starters from the previous season, were figuring out what to do with Krivas and his preseason foot injury, then played an aggressive early schedule that included a road game at Wisconsin during the second week of the season, a home game with Duke during the third week and a three-game, three-day grind in the Battle 4 Atlantis over Thanksgiving week.

They were lost at Atlantis, suffering back-to-back losses to Oklahoma and West Virginia to drop to 3-4. Arizona was still trying to figure out whether to start Krivas or Tobe Awaka at center, KJ Lewis or Anthony Dell’Orso on the wing, as well as where, when and how to use the talents of freshman forward Carter Bryant and sophomore 7-footer Henri Veesaar.

“We’re gonna wear it,” Lloyd said of Arizona’s 1-2 Battle 4 Atlantis finish. “We own it. We’ll take responsibility for it and see if we can make the necessary changes to flip it.

“This is not the product we want to be putting out on the court right now.”

But it wasn’t until after the UCLA game, after Krivas was ruled out for the rest of the season later in December, that the Wildcats began figuring it out.

They settled into a more cohesive rotation with the extra minutes and responsibilities Krivas left behind, starting Awaka at center, Veesaar playing more often at both center and power forward, and Bryant playing more at power and small forward.

Playing a softer schedule for six weeks following the UCLA game helped Lloyd and the Wildcats to firmly mold things into place and, before long, they were on a 11-1 run and tied for first place in the Big 12.

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They learned how to win and learned how to play together.

“We started off with a losing record, and it’s easy to kind of split off that, start thinking about next year, start thinking about your next move,” guard Jaden Bradley said. “I feel like this team, we came together and we smiled. After a loss, it’s not easy, but we smiled, came together, and we knew it was going to be brighter on the other side.”

After losing to UCLA, Arizona finished up nonconference play with a 32-point win over Samford and a 53-point rout of Central Michigan on Dec. 21. They also won their first five Big 12 games, sweeping an early road swing to Cincinnati and West Virginia, though they were humbled in a 70-54 loss at Texas Tech on Jan. 18.

“After the game with UCLA we lost, we really came together,” Veesaar said. “We just kind of really thought about what we need to do. I feel like that was so special.”

UA’s loss at Texas Tech appeared another turning point, driving home the need for toughness. Arizona was blown off the glass, with Texas Tech outrebounding the Wildcats 50-34, and holding them to 31.0% shooting.

“Hopefully we can learn from it,” Lloyd said after that game. “I’m sure we’re going to be in this situation again.”

They were. But the Wildcats showed a more resilient side while ripping off six straight wins after losing at Texas Tech. They beat then third-ranked Iowa State at McKale Center on Jan. 27 after guard Caleb Love hit a 60-foot buzzer beater at the end of regulation and hit two 3-pointers in overtime.

Then they won 81-72 in a fiery game at ASU in which Love and ASU’s B.J. Freeman were ejected, hit 15 of 17 free throws before a crazed crowd at BYU on Feb. 4, and came back to avenge their loss at Texas Tech with an 82-73 win on Feb. 8 at McKale.

While they lost a costly Feb. 22 game with BYU, the Wildcats’ late schedule included a win at Baylor, another win over the Sun Devils and two nearly wire-to-wire games with league champ Houston: a 62-58 loss at McKale Center on Feb. 15 and a 72-64 loss in the Big 12 Tournament final at Kansas City on March 15.

“The season was a roller coaster,” Bradley said. “I’m so proud of the guys. It didn’t start off well.”

During the Big 12 season, the Wildcats also developed into what college basketball analytics guru Evan Miyakawa called the No. 1 “least streaky” team because of how few 10-0 runs they both went on and gave up.

Unlike that group on Dec. 14 in Phoenix, the Wildcats proved steady, generally winning games they were expected to and losing those they were not.

Ultimately, they also mostly lived up to expectations.

The preseason expectations, not those lowered ones they generated back in December.

“The UCLA game was easily winnable, and if we won that game, people are probably not saying what they were saying,” Lewis said after the Wildcats’ Sweet 16 game. “But after the Christmas break and coming into the conference, we always knew that it was a new season, and if we took care of business like how we did, we’d set ourselves up to be in this position.”