About 90 minutes after Gonzaga beat Arizona on Saturday, Nico Mannion walked off the McKale Center floor, practice gear on and a ball tucked under his right arm.
Having made only 3 of 20 shots against the Zags, the Arizona freshman guard had been trying to throw in a few more, fighting the momentum of a shooting slump that has plagued him most of this month.
Since putting on a masterful 11-for-14 shooting performance against Penn in the semifinals of the Wooden Legacy on Nov. 29, Mannion has shot just 24.1% from the field while making only 5 of 24 (20.8%) from 3-point range. That contrasts with the 55.7% overall shooting and 47.1% 3-point production that Mannion posted through the first eight games of UA’s season.
Mannion started suffering back spasms the weekend of the Wooden event. And although it is hardly unusual for teams to downplay injuries so that opponents don’t target a player’s weak spots, UA coach Sean Miller said Mannion is not sore anymore.
“He’s healthy,” Miller said after the Gonzaga game. “He definitely had an off night. I know this just because I watch closely — he had a lot of shots that he’s gonna make and has already made. They didn’t go down.”
Miller pivoted to discussing how Mannion’s assist-to-turnover ratio has actually improved during his slump — he has 33 assists to 10 turnovers during the Wildcats’ past four games — and how Mannion’s shooting was only one of many things that did not go right against Gonzaga.
Because Mannion has been so central to everything Arizona is doing this season, it’s not hard to imagine the Wildcats beating Baylor or Gonzaga if the point guard is closer to his usual self. In the Wildcats’ two losses, Mannion shot a combined 6 for 34, including 2 of 15 from 3-point range.
“You know, (Gonzaga) wasn’t necessarily his best night shooting. However, he did have 10 assists, and he had 11 against Omaha in 21 minutes,” Miller said. “So Nico is on the right track.
“No one feels worse, I’m sure, than him. But there’s a lot of other guys, a lot of the things we could have done better. There’s a lot of things that I could have could have done better.”
Mannion did appear healthy against Omaha three days earlier, when he hit 5 of 10 from the field in the Wildcats’ 99-49 romp. Mannion spoke in that postgame news conference of how differently he felt than he did at Baylor.
“So being able to get in a couple of practices (before Omaha), and we had two really hard practices, you’re ready for it,” Mannion said. “It was really good for me. Just feeling the ball in my hands makes everything a little easier.”
But Saturday, and maybe in part because of the tough defense Gonzaga’s Ryan Woolridge played on him, Mannion’s momentum went backward again. Within his 3-for-20 shooting against the Zags was a 1-for-10 performance from 3-point range.
With Mannion unavailable after the Gonzaga game, his close friend, Josh Green, was asked if Mannion might be lacking confidence or still hurting.
“We have a great training staff, and I’m sure they made the adjustments they needed to for Nico,” Green said. “I don’t know how his back feels. That’s one of the questions you would have to ask Nico, but at the end of the day he’s been putting in work, and it was just one of those days.”
Similarly, Miller said after the Gonzaga game that he didn’t think Mannion’s confidence has been thrown off by the injury.
“I don’t really think so,” Miller said then. “I mean, he believes in himself. I go on (performance in) practice, and he’s been shooting the ball well. He’s really practiced well. I thought he played great against Omaha.
“You know what? Sometimes, man, it’s just as much as we all want them to go in, they didn’t.”
