BOISE, Idaho – The Arizona Wildcats’ season crashed to a halt Thursday, ensuring that it will be forever bookended by two seismic moments: a federal investigation that shook the program before practices even started and an embarrassing blowout loss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
Or, to put it another way, it went from the arrest and eventual firing of an assistant coach … all the way to this result, cheered loudly throughout Taco Bell Arena on Thursday: No. 13 seed Buffalo 89, No. 4 seed Arizona 68.
It may take a while for that all to sink in.
“It really doesn’t seem real right now,” UA senior guard Parker Jackson-Cartwright said.
But it was: A blur of easy Buffalo drives to the basket, and a storm of never-ending 3-pointers, 15 of 30 in fact, coming on top of a Bulls defense that tore apart the UA guards and contained the impact that star freshman big man Deandre Ayton could have inside.
The Bulls “were a team that, quite frankly, we didn’t match up well with,” UA coach Sean Miller said.
That may be true, but … wasn’t Arizona ranked preseason No. 3? Didn’t the Wildcats win the Pac-12 by two games and blaze through the conference tournament just a week earlier?
Who was this team, anyway?
“It kind of felt weird,” UA freshman guard Brandon Randolph said. Buffalo “came out of the gate and just destroyed us. They just kept coming at us and we obviously had no answer for that, so I’m gonna give them a lot of credit for that.”
Or, the way Ayton put it, Buffalo took a two-point halftime lead and then outscored the Wildcats by 19 in the second half, shooting and locking up the Arizona offense so well that, Ayton said, it was “curtains” before long.
Of course, the Wildcats had shown a propensity to let their defense slip, even as it appeared to improve during three Pac-12 Tournament wins last week. Despite being one of the country’s most efficient offenses all season, thanks in large part to Ayton’s dominance inside and Allonzo Trier’s overall consistency, the Wildcats defense often wavered.
They had allowed their opponents to shoot better than 50 percent in five previous games, including a homecourt loss to UCLA, a loss at Colorado and a blowout defeat against Purdue in the Battle 4 Atlantis.
They rattled off nine straight wins after the Purdue game, but never permanently fixed their defense. When Buffalo added some defensive pressure that the Wildcats couldn’t handle, it was all but over with nine minutes left, when big man Nick Perkins made a layup to give the Bulls a 72-48 lead.
“I’m not shocked but disappointed,” Trier said.
The loss was the biggest upset by seed the Wildcats have suffered in the NCAA Tournament since 1999, when 13th- seeded Oklahoma beat them 61-60 in a first-round game at Milwaukee, and the biggest they have suffered by margin of defeat since top-seeded Louisville beat No. 12 seed Arizona 103-64 in the 2009 Sweet 16.
This season, Arizona hadn’t been beaten this badly since it lost 89-64 to Purdue in the Battle 4 Atlantis seventh-place game on Nov. 24.
It was the third straight time the Wildcats have been upset by a lower-seeded team in the tournament, following a 65-55 loss to Wichita State in the first round of the 2016 tournament and a 73-71 loss to 11th-seeded Xavier in last season’s Sweet 16.
Arizona finished with a 27-8 record while Buffalo improved to 27-8 and will move into a second-round game against Kentucky on Saturday.
The Wildcats’ loss also meant that the Pac-12 had no teams left before the first round was even finished.
Wes Clark led Buffalo with 25 points while teammate Jeremy Harris led Buffalo with 23 points. Dusan Ristic had 16 points to lead Arizona.
Trier had 10 points for Arizona but was 4 of 15 from the field and missed all five 3-pointers he took, saying he was thrown off by Buffalo’s defensive pressure.
“If you paid attention to what was going on, every time I caught the ball, there were bodies standing right there when I’m trying to drive,” Trier said. “I mean, what am I supposed to expect? That they’re going to go wide and out and let me go drive around and shoot layups all day? They’re not gonna do that. They’re gonna do things that best help them win.”
Then there was the frustration Ayton felt. After scoring 32 points in each of his previous two games to lead the Wildcats to the Pac-12 Tournament title, he finished with 14 points and 13 rebounds on Thursday. That finished his career with a total of 24 double-doubles, a UA season record, but it was, of course, a hollow statistic.
Ayton took just 11 shots within the 3-point arc over 38 minutes played, saying he was a little frustrated he didn’t get the ball more often.
“But my guys were telling me that their guards were always behind me, that somebody was always under me,” Ayton said. “So they were hesitant to pass me the ball over the top, they were hesitating to pass me the ball down low.”
A week earlier, after scoring just 10 points against Colorado in the Pac-12 Tournament, Ayton said he had “butterflies.” But he said there was no such problem this time, saying he was “super ready.”
The first-round end meant Ayton won’t get a chance to experience butterflies in a Sweet 16 game or in the Final Four, while the program enters a period of great uncertainty without him.
While UA freshmen Randolph, Emmanuel Akot and Ira Lee all said they planned to return, the Wildcats have just six players on board as of now for 2018-19 while Miller has only one assistant coach.
Ayton, meanwhile, will leave early along with Trier and Rawle Alkins for professional basketball this spring. He’ll go on to be one of the top few picks in the NBA Draft, and he already has All-American and Pac-12 Player of the Year honors.
But Ayton also now leaves his college career with an empty feeling.
“I tried to make history for Arizona and go far in this tournament, tried to bring coach Miller to a Final Four,” Ayton said. “Unfortunately, I didn’t.”
