TEMPE — Arizona shuffles newcomers in and out of its program, most of them one-and-done, and so the Wildcats are familiar with the proverbial “freshman wall.”
Aaron Gordon ran into it; so did Stanley Johnson.
Lauri Markkanen isn’t immune to it, either. In Saturday’s 73-60 win against Arizona State, the Finnish frosh pulled his fourth straight oh-fer from 3-point range.
Fellow freshman Kobi Simmons played just five minutes against the Sun Devils due to foul trouble, and didn’t attempt a shot.
Then there’s Rawle Alkins.
The bruising 6-foot-5-inch wing has broken through the freshman wall, Kool-Aid Man style.
Alkins has been the stabilizing force while the Wildcats’ other freshmen have struggled. He doesn’t even need to score, either.
“I just do whatever coach tells me,” Alkins said. “I’ll do whatever it takes to win.”
He scored Arizona’s first two baskets in Saturday’s win over Arizona State and grabbed two offensive rebounds within the first two minutes. He finished with 11 points and a career-high 15 rebounds.
“If you’re Rawle and you get 15 rebounds in a college game like this,” UA coach Sean Miller said, “I think that says a lot about him.”
Alkins’ consistency dates back to his high school days. He spent his junior season at Christ the King in New York — the same school that produced Arizona star Khalid Reeves in the 1990s — before transferring to Word of God Academy in North Carolina. Alkins averaged more than 20 points in each of his last two high school seasons, and was rated a five-star recruit.
Alkins visited Arizona during a loss to Oregon that broke a 49-game homecourt winning streak. He saw how the Wildcats’ players, coaches and fans reacted to a rare home loss.
“Winning is the only option there,” he said.
Alkins has scored 15 or more points only six times this season, but he’s done a whole lot more than that, even when he’s not scoring. Alkins ranks third on the team in rebounds, 10 times grabbing more than seven boards. He’s a sneaky-good distributor, too: He’s collected three or more assists 11 times this season.
On defense, he’s had at least one steal or block in 23 of Arizona’s 31 games.
“That’s big,” UA guard Allonzo Trier said. “We need that from everybody. Whether it’s Rawle, whether it’s Lauri, those guys need to make big plays and impact the game in different ways. Whether it’s scoring, and even if you are scoring, it doesn’t mean you don’t make an impact on the defensive end or rebound the basketball. We’re trying to put it all together.”
Throughout the season, Arizona’s trio of five-star freshmen has provided the Wildcats with flashes of brilliance. Markkanen is a projected Top-10 NBA draft pick. And Sports Illustrated recently tabbed Simmons, a 6-foot-5-inch combo guard with a smooth shooting stroke, as a potential first-round pick.
If Markkanen and Simmons are the flash, Alkins is the substance. Over his last 11 games, Alkins is averaging 9.5 points, five rebounds nearly two assists and one made three-pointer per game while shooting 50.6 percent from the field. Markkanen is shooting 40 percent (and just 26.1 percent from 3-point range) during that span, while Simmons has finished with 10 points or more just twice.
“Honestly, I don’t think about scoring the ball as the main focus,” Alkins said on Saturday. “I think about making the right plays, making the right decisions all the time. I don’t come into games thinking ‘I’m going to get 20 tonight;’ sometimes it just happens. I go with the flow of the game, I try to do whatever it takes to win and I don’t want to be known as a one-dimensional player.
“I want to be known as a guy that can do it all, do a little bit of everything,” he added. “A lot of a bit of everything.”
