With four days off for Christmas break, Arizona guard KJ Lewis says he’s going to let his body dictate whether he touches a basketball or not.
Chances are pretty good he may not want to.
“I mean, this nonconference was rough,” Lewis said Saturday, after the Wildcats moved to 5-4 with a 94-41 win over Central Michigan. “I think we all need a little break and a reset.”
He won’t be getting any prodding from UA coach Tommy Lloyd. Lewis’ return home to Texas — all the Wildcats are expected to spend the break in their hometowns or visit somewhere with friends or family — is the only mandatory activity for the break.
“Rest, relax, love your family, hang out,” Lloyd said. “That’s the homework.”
At the same time, Lewis said he didn’t want to take too many days off, for fear of getting out of shape, and Lloyd did actually have one basketball requirement, one that was more mental than physical.
“Get hungry,” Lloyd said. “Get hungry because we know when we come back — we’re excited to be starting this Big 12 thing we’ve been talking about for about 20 months. We’re fired up.”
Arizona guard KJ Lewis (5) dives in but loses the race to a loose ball to Central Michigan forward Bryan Ndjonga (13) in the first half of their pre-conference season game, Tucson, Ariz., Dec. 21, 2024.
They’ll need to be. Arizona will enter Big 12 play at 6-5, without any wins over high-major teams, so they probably will need to finish at least a game or two above .500 during the 20-game conference season just to get a place on the NCAA Tournament bubble.
But after Lloyd fretted about Arizona’s “fractured psyche” after a stretch in which they lost 5 of 7 games, the Wildcats at least carry some momentum into their new conference with blowout wins over Samford (96-64) and Central Michigan (94-41) last week.
They also used the week to adjust further to the possible long-term loss of projected starting center Motiejus Krivas, pulling energetic freshman 7-footer Emmanuel Stephen out of a redshirt season, shifting some of Carter Bryant’s minutes from small forward to power forward and giving sophomore point guard Conrad Martinez extended playing time that could prove helpful down the road.
“It’s important for all those guys (to get experience),” Lloyd said. “Conrad is a good player. When I put my head on the pillow at night, I want to play him. I want to play him more.
Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd talks to the team during a time out late in the second half as the Wildcats run over Central Michigan in the second half of their pre-conference season game, Tucson, Ariz., Dec. 21, 2024.
“Big E – the staff’s been on me to give him some chances and now that we know big Mo’s not probably going to be back for a while, it makes sense to give him some chances.”
All that was visible publicly last week. But Lloyd said the momentum actually started a month ago despite UA’s close losses to Oklahoma (82-77 on Nov. 28), West Virginia (83-76 on Nov. 29) and UCLA (57-54 on Dec. 14).
Lloyd indicated it developed behind the scenes, during endless meetings and off-court activity between coaches and players, between coaches and coaches and between players and players.
“Sometimes, you’ve just got to talk things out,” Lloyd said. “Sometimes it is about getting a bunch of guys in a room and whether it’s video or pizza or whatever and we talk it out.
“There’s not too many times you meet just one time and you solve everything. You’ve just gotta stay on it. I think we’ve done a better job the last few weeks of being back on it.”
The Wildcats hadn’t lost five of seven games since they did so during the middle of Pac-12 play in the COVID-altered 2020-21 season, just before Lloyd was hired to replace Sean Miller, and hadn’t lost a game at all in November over Lloyd’s first three seasons.
Arizona forward Carter Bryant (9) jams home a basket against Old Dominion in the second half of their game, Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 9, 2024.
A 2-5 streak for a team with that sort of history can test players’ patience with each other, but Bryant said the Wildcats instead pulled together.
“The biggest thing is knowing that we that we do care for each other and love each other as brothers,” Bryant said. “We see each other in the gym every day, we see everyone pushing each other in the weight room. It’s understanding that there’s so much more to basketball than actually playing the games. There’s so much work, more work that goes in the unseen hours. It’s understanding that we just can’t splinter.”
The Wildcats’ losses became a “distraction” from those underlying values, Lloyd said, so he and his staff have lately been a “little more intentional” about rebuilding culture, whether it be via a video clip, a meeting or some other form of conversation.
“At the end of the day, your culture and your vibe is the most important thing, because that’s going to be the bedrock foundation of everything that you do,” he said. “In order to reset, you can’t just focus on the result. You’ve got to focus on the bedrock foundation, which is your culture.
“And I’ll just say this about culture: There’s no perfect culture, and any culture, especially within a highly competitive team environment, is something you’re working on every single day. There’s going to be some good days and there’s going to be some tough days. So, we’ve kind of scaled things down a little bit and gotten back to how we want Arizona basketball to feel.”
