LAS VEGAS — Beating Michigan in front of an ESPN audience Sunday not only means Arizona is expected to barge into Associated Press Top 25 poll Monday for the first time since Feb. 17, 2020, but it also means the rest of the college basketball world is now paying attention to Tommy Lloyd and the Wildcats.
Arizona played most of last season under the radar, good enough to probably make the NCAA Tournament but unable to go after the school decided to self-impose a one-year ban.
Then Lloyd came in, added to the core of talent that Sean Miller left behind, instilled his system, but has been drawing little national publicity .... until now.
After Sunday's game, Lloyd was asked if the secret is out.
“I don’t know,” Lloyd said. “Here’s the deal: You guys know I've been pretty low-key since I got this job and I've been trying to build this family from the inside out. I wasn't going to beg fans to come to games. I wasn't going to make proclamations that we're going to do this or that. But in my heart, I know what success looks like. I know what good teams look like and I knew we could be good. We just had to hang with it and deal with a little bit of adversity.
“And also, preseason rankings don't mean anything. It’s just a guess. And now we're starting to see teams play and we'll see what happens in the next month, where teams are ranked.
“But if the secret's out, it's out. We're just gonna keep approaching it and we’ve got a great week to get better and make a push of having a great December.”
When asked what having more attention or a national ranking might bring, Dalen Terry things won’t change.
“At the end of the day, it's just a number next to our next to our name when we play,” Terry said. “We want to still play the same way regardless. I don't want us to change our identity because we're ranked or anything. We’re gonna all still play the same way every single game.”
Sitting next to Terry on a table inside a T-Mobile interview room, Lloyd immediately piped in.
“I'll add to that: Arizona basketball earns everything it gets and that's the way we want it,” Lloyd said. “We don't want anything given to us. We're gonna go take what we're gonna get and that's the approach we're gonna have.
“I've been ranked before a lot and I know the journey is about getting better week-by-week and we just played five games in a short time span. We’ve got a bunch of film to go through and a bunch of things to get better at and get ready for Saturday's game” against Sacramento State.
With seven assists to no turnovers and four steals – plus one charge taken that knocked him down to the floor – point guard Kerr Kriisa was one of the Wildcats who drew non-local media queries after the game.
Obviously, Lloyd had no issues with talking about him again.
“Kerr is feisty. He's got swag,” Lloyd said. “He's competitive and he's got heart. He believes. Those are all amazing traits and I love how he's developing as a guard.”
Lloyd went on.
“I love the connection him and I have and our conversations. There's eye contact, there's listening and acknowledgement and then he's going out there and I thought he ran an amazing floor game today and really controlled that game.”
While several Wildcats carried live Instagram video of their postseason locker room celebration – Oumar Ballo, Terry and Benn Mathurin among them – the emotion was predictably much more sterile in the interview room afterward.
Christian Koloko even said it was “another day at the office,” while Terry calmly explained that he wasn’t surprised to see UA do the same things to Michigan that it did to low-major opponents earlier this month.
“Coach always says we gonna do what we do every time," Terry said, "so we just look at them like another another opponent and we just gonna play our own pace and our own style.”
Lloyd drew laughs when asked about his re-recruitment of Kriisa, who had entered the transfer portal after Sean Miller was fired on April 7.
“It was like, `Kerr, listen, I'm the most European American coach in the game – and if you're gonna walk away from this, you're gonna regret it,' " Lloyd said.
A week after Lloyd’s April 14 hiring, Kriisa made public his decision to stay.
Lloyd has said repeatedly since arriving at Arizona that setting a fast pace gives a team a chance to dictate the terms of the game, and Sunday was a prime example.
Michigan has a below-average tempo, and one of the country’s best defenses, but struggled to deal with the Wildcats’ constant push.
Lloyd credited his personnel, the starting lineup of which returned from last season.
“Pace is the way we attack teams,” Lloyd said. “We attack teams, breakout pressure, get into our flow, and these guys were built for it. You can just see -- you know, Dalen, he told me he was a point guard and now he's really becoming one.
“Like that last ball-screen read he had, where he dug his heels in the ground, pass faked and then hit C-Lo (Koloko) for the dunk. That was elite. Kerr has an understanding, and you see Benn's growing in that area. It's so much fun when you have multiple ball handlers and decision makers on the court. It makes it really hard to guard and a fun style to play in.”
Only one scholarship player is still with the team since the Wildcats were last ranked, Koloko, and he's a whole different sort of player than he was then.
Koloko raised his personal bar again Sunday, throwing in 22 points while collecting seven rebounds and blocking four Michigan shots.
It should be pretty clear even to his mother what kind of impact he had. Henriette Koloko watched her son’s games for the first time ever this weekend.
“She doesn't know much about basketball, Koloko said. “But I remember last time after the game (Friday against Wichita State), I went to talk to her and she said we missed a lot of goals. We missed a lot of free throws. But she said 'A lot of goals.' I was like, `No, we call those free throws.’ So it was a little bit funny.”
There appeared to be almost twice as many Michigan fans as Arizona fans inside T-Mobile Arena, and the Wolverines fans were much louder earlier in the game. But the Wildcats brought their fans energy, while the Michigan fans grew quiet, especially when it became clear early in the second half that they probably weren’t coming back.
Still, Terry said he felt the UA fans helped the team.
“I'm gonna give a shout out to the fans,” he said. “I felt like we were in McKale. I felt we were playing with the same type of fans, same type of energy. I feel like that's the reason why we won, too.”
