Azuolas Tubelis, Oumar Ballo lead Arizona Wildcats to 91-79 win over ASU in Tempe

TEMPE – Down 14-1 just over three minutes into a rematch with their instate rival Monday, the Arizona Wildcats set themselves up for the kind of chat with their coach that isn’t supposed to be pleasant.

Except Tommy Lloyd is their coach. So the Wildcats listened to a verbal lashing … then a verbal hug … and drilled ASU the rest of the way for a 91-79 win at Desert Financial Arena.

“Listen: I love those guys,” Lloyd said. “I tell them every time: ‘The reason I’m on you guys like that is because I love you.’ And I don’t want to do that 24/7.”

During what is now a 20-2 season with a 10-1 record in Pac-12 play, the Wildcats haven't made Lloyd do it a lot of the time. But the good times have been a little tougher for the Wildcats to find lately, with them losing by 16 at UCLA on Jan. 25 and having to grind out three wins after that with a slower tempo than they prefer.

At the start Monday, the tempo was fast but it was all about ASU. The Sun Devils appeared to be carrying over the momentum of their triple-overtime win over UCLA on Saturday, hitting three 3-pointers to go up 9-0, then taking leads of 14-1 and 16-3 while UA missed its first three shots and turned the ball over three times in the first three minutes.

020822-tuc-spt-uabk-p2 — Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, center, reacts to a flop call while the Wildcats' bench protests during Monday's first half.
Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star

“They were ready and we were not,” wing Bennedict Mathurin said. “No communication.”

So Lloyd communicated instead.

“I don’t come in these games wanting to get upset,” Lloyd said. “But in the heat of the moment, you’ve gotta do what you’ve got to do to get your team in the right spot … I just felt like I needed to get our guys attention and they’ve been doing a great job responding to that.”

While Lloyd was starting to get heated, calling a timeout with 16:51 left in the half with ASU up 14-1, the Wildcats still hadn't hit a field goal. Dalen Terry made the first when he drove the left baseline for a dunk with 16:36 left in the half – and before long, Arizona flipped the entire game around.

Finishing with a team-high 18 points, Mathurin capped an 11-0 UA run with a 3-pointer that pulled UA within 16-14 with 13 minutes left in the half and the Wildcats tied it when Oumar Ballo hit a layup with 11:07 left in the half.

It was the sixth straight game Ballo has had a significant impact, all since Tubelis sprained his ankle on Jan. 20 at Stanford.

The difference this time was that he did it with Tubelis appearing back nearly at full steam, and both of them turned in double-doubles to lead the way for Arizona.

Named the Pac-12’s Player of the Week earlier Monday, Tubelis had his second straight double-double, with 19 points and 11 rebounds on Monday after posting 18 and 11 on Saturday against USC.

Ballo's 13 points and 10 rebounds made for his first double-double since Dec. 18 against Cal Baptist, when he had 10 points and 10 rebounds in an easy nonconference game that wasn’t nearly as significant as this one.

It was especially significant this time the moment Lloyd subbed in Ballo less than five minutes into the half, with ASU leading 15-6.

“He was telling me to go and change the game,” Ballo said. “He didn’t like the way we were playing and he said we needed more physicality in the game.”

Ballo added exactly that and Mathurin, his old teammate at the NBA Academy Latin America, was glad.

020822-tuc-spt-uabk-p3 — Addison Arnold and the Arizona bench react to Wildcats guard Dalen Terry's dunk during Monday's second half.
Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star

“Seeing Oumar doing well is pretty amazing,” Mathurin said. “It makes me really happy because I’ve known him for a long time.”

In the end, Arizona wound up easily winning nearly all of the key statistical battles. UA outshot ASU 56.7%-42.3% and outrebounded the Sun Devils 48-26 while scoring 24 more points in the paint and 18 more on fast breaks. UA did give up 20 turnovers that led to 32 ASU points, however.

It just took the Wildcats until the second half to completely turn it into their sort of game.

Up 40-36 at halftime, Arizona started out the second half with the same sort of fury ASU had at the beginning of the game. Over the first four minutes of the second half, UA outrebounded ASU 9-1 and hit 7 of 12 shots while taking a 55-40 lead.

The Wildcats first went ahead by 21 after Ballo hit two free throws with 11:13 left to give them a 68-47 lead. Three-pointers from ASU’s Jay Health and Alonzo Gaffney cut UA’s lead to 17 but the Wildcats rattled off six straight from there and the game was never in question again.

Then they bused home to rest for a couple of days before making the long trip to Washington, where on Thursday they will face on a WSU team that has won five straight to improve to 14-7 overall and 7-3 in the Pac-12.

The Cougars have momentum. But so did ASU, which had beaten UCLA in triple-overtime on Saturday and blew through the first four minutes on Monday.

“Obviously they were riding a high from a great win against UCLA and they really punched us, man,” Lloyd said. “It was physical from the tip and our guys weren’t quite ready to go so we had to lock in.

“I’m really proud of them, though. That’s a gut-check win against your rival when you’re down 14-1. You could just say it’s not your day. But our guys bounced back and I told them at one point we were gonna win this by 20. And we were right there to do that.”