Hot-shooting Stanford holds down Azuolas Tubelis, upsets No. 4 Arizona 88-79

STANFORD, Calif. — A week ago, Arizona forward Azuolas Tubelis powered his way to national player of the week honors by scoring 59 points over two games.

On Saturday, in the Wildcats’ 88-79 loss to Stanford at Maples Pavilion, they learned in another way how valuable he can be.

With Tubelis fighting foul trouble and unable to get the ball often when he was on the floor, Stanford outplayed the Wildcats inside and ripped apart the UA defense like nobody has this season.

Stanford shot 61.1% from the field, including 10 for 18 from 3-point range, shooting by far the highest of any UA opponent this season. The Cardinal’s shooting percentage was also the only time anybody had shot as well as 44% against the Wildcats since their Jan. 14 loss at Oregon, when the Ducks shot 53.1%.

With a team full of big combo forwards who scared the Wildcats in two close UA wins late last season, the Cardinal also outrebounded UA 34-25 and outscored the Wildcats 42-24 in the paint.

All that wiped out an Arizona offensive effort that actually produced 45.9% shooting, with guard Courtney Ramey hitting a career-high eight 3-pointers (on 16 attempts) en route to a team-best 26 points.

“I’m not going to take credit away from them but we had some (defensive) breakdowns,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “We just made some crazy decisions at the end of a shot clock and gave them a shot or an advantage when I didn’t think they needed to have that.

“We’ve just got to make better decisions as a coaching staff in how we prepare and when the players are out on the court,” Lloyd added. “In the moment we gotta make better decisions.”

But the Wildcats were also making those decisions on a night when, for once, things just looked different inside. The Pac-12’s leader in both scoring and rebounding entering Saturday’s game, Tubelis had posted double-doubles in eight of his previous 11 games, including a 23-point, 14-rebound effort on Thursday at Cal.

But on Saturday, Tubelis finished with season-lows of four points and no rebounds in 17 minutes for the Wildcats, never finding any sort of rhythm while collecting four fouls.

“Obviously, he’s our best player and the foul issues were tough tonight,” Lloyd said. “It just felt like we couldn’t get a favorable whistle in some situations. They were switching a lot of things and it seemed we were the ones always getting called for the foul, whether it’s a push off or whatever.

“That’s kind of tough to swallow when you’re an inside-out team and you’re the one getting called for offensive fouls. It kind of flips the script a little bit.”

Instead, the Wildcats turned into something of an outside-only team. Even a 27-minute effort from UA center Oumar Ballo produced only eight points and four rebounds, while the Wildcats opted to take more than half of their shots from beyond the 3-point line.

The Wildcats hit 14 of 35 3-pointers, and both the shots and attempts were season-highs.

“I just don’t know if that’s a winning formula for us,” Lloyd said.

The loss snapped Arizona’s seven-game winning streak, dropping the Wildcats to 22-4 and 11-4 in the Pac-12. Stanford improved to 11-4 and 5-9, beating a top 5 opponent for the second straight season after knocking off then-No. 5 USC last season.

Arizona trailed Stanford by 10 points entering the final three minutes but made a final push. Kerr Kriisa hit a 3-pointer to cut it to 81-73 and picked up a foul with 1:33 left, converting a four-point play.

But he missed another 3 after UA picked up a steal from Stanford, leaving the Cardinal up 83-77 with 1:15 left. UA did not recover.

Kriisa finished with 3-for-10 shooting, going 3 for 17 combined with UA’s win at Cal on Thursday after fighting off strep throat earlier in the week. While Ramey led the Wildcats in scoring, Cedric Henderson and Pelle Larsson each had 12 points.

Meanwhile, Tubelis played only eight minutes in the first half while picking up two fouls, scoring just two points before halftime, and was even more limited in the second half. He picked up his third foul with 14:13 to go and quickly sat out.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Then, when Tubelis was reinserted with 8:31 left to play, he picked up his fourth foul less than 90 seconds later, when Stanford had just taken a 67-66 lead.

Not only were fouls limiting him but Stanford successfully deployed tactics that kept the ball out of his hands. He took only two shots the entire game.

“They were switching the balls screens, fronting the post and they were loading up the help side defense,” Lloyd said. “That’s how they did it and they stuck to it. That’s one of the reasons we shot so many 3s.”

Basically, that inside-out attack has made Arizona a pick-your-poison kind of opponent, and Stanford chose to give up some 3s.

“The truth is, most teams can’t take away the inside, take away the 3s, block shots and get a bunch of steals,” Haase said. “It’s hard to do everything. So we had a plan of how we were going to try to protect the paint. Honestly, one of the byproducts of that was 35 3-point attempts for them.

“The plan did not include 14 made 3s for them but our guys were resilient enough.”

Even with Tubelis mostly out and Ballo somewhat limited, Lloyd still stuck with his seven-man rotation, declining to play either freshman big men Henri Veesaar or Dylan Anderson inside and going small. Ramey played 36 minutes while sixth-man Pelle Larsson logged 30 minutes, contributing 12 points and a pair of first-half steals that helped give UA a 44-41 halftime lead.

“I feel like we played the right guys,” Lloyd said. “I wish Zu would have gotten to play a little bit more but we’ve just got to play better. We’ve got to play smart. We go back and look at that film and we’re gonna see a lot of self-inflicted wounds and Stanford was good enough to take advantage of those tonight.”

After taking a three-point halftime lead, Arizona couldn’t pull away from Stanford throughout the second half. Stanford even took a brief 59-58 lead when Jones pulled up for a jumper in the lane and later went ahead 70-66 when Brandon Angel converted a three-point play.

Ramey hit his sixth 3-pointer early in the second half to give UA a 57-51 lead. His career high was seven while playing for Texas against West Virginia in 2020-21.

In the first half, Ramey had 14 points while hitting 4 of 7 3-pointers to help UA take a 44-41 halftime lead but cracks in the Wildcats’ defense were already starting to show.

The Wildcats shot 54.8% from the field before halftime but allowed the Cardinal to hit 60.7%. Both teams hit at least half of their 3-pointers, too: UA was 8 of 16 while Stanford hit 6 of 10.

By continuing the trend throughout the rest of the game, Stanford pulled off its first win over a top four team since January 2007, when it beat UCLA. The win for Stanford was also its first over a Top 4 Arizona team since January 2004 (when UA was ranked third) and its first over UA at Maples Pavilion since 2008-09.

Finally, in a sense, Stanford’s win was a considerably rougher version for Arizona than the Wildcats’ 84-80 victory over Stanford in the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals last season. In that game, Stanford forward Spencer Jones had 28 points while Tubelis had nine while taking just six shots.

On Saturday, Jones led Stanford in scoring again with 18 points while Tubelis took two shots.

“It was close the last few times we played but the difference this time was we knew when it got close, we were going to keep punching,” Jones said. “We weren’t going to hold on to the ball, slow down the possessions. We were going to go after them and take this game. And that’s what we did.”

Photos: No. 4 Arizona Wildcats fall to Stanford in Palo Alto