Fifth-ranked Wildcats make the grade after blasting Morgan State in nonconference finale

After his Wildcats made it to Christmas with only one loss for the second straight season Thursday, Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd gave them a midseason grade of “A.”

He didn’t really need to say who his standout pupils were. Once again in Arizona’s 93-68 win over Morgan State on Thursday, that much was obvious: Power forward Azuolas Tubelis and center Oumar Ballo.

In what was otherwise a second straight uneven performance from the Wildcats, who beat Tennessee on Dec. 17 but also struggled to put away Montana State on Tuesday, the Wildcats’ big men were typically efficient and energetic.

Tubelis had 26 points and nine rebounds while Ballo added 21 points, with Ballo hiting all eight field goals he took and Tubelis punctuating his 9-for-10 performance with what might have been one of the Wildcats’ top plays of the early season.

Midway through the second half, the Wildcats’ 6-foot-10 Lithuanian stole the ball out of the hands of 6-1 Morgan State guard Isaiah Burke on the perimeter, then dribbled down the left sideline and, when Burke tried to slap the ball away, picked it back up and kept dribbling as if nothing happened, proceeding downcourt for a dunk.

“I don’t know if he can recreate that again — you know, I’ve seen him try some of the things that haven’t worked,” Lloyd said, chuckling. “But ‘Zu is really coming on. He’s so consistent, he scores in different ways, (making) a couple of 3s today, he’s handsy on defense, he gets out in transition, he’s hitting the offensive glass.

“I love where he’s at, and I think he’s going to continue to improve.”

On Thursday, Tubelis’ acrobatics helped give the Wildcats some much-needed energy, too. The steal-and-dance-and-dunk gave them a 61-45 lead with 12:28 to go, and UA never led by less than 11 after that point.

With the high expectations of a team that picked up the No. 5 AP ranking after beating Tennessee, Arizona wasn’t even expected to have that tough of a time. Morgan State (4-8), after all, entered the game just 1-7 against Division I teams.

But the Bears had a couple of proven shooters in Burke and Malik Miller, the Bears’ do-everything 6-foot-4 senior wing. Miller led Morgan State with 23 points while Burke had 22, and both played a big part in the 12-for-25 3-point shooting that kept the Bears from getting blown out.

UA guard Courtney Ramey, in his fifth season of college basketball, didn’t find that sort of shooting all that surprising.

“When a team is coming into our building, they see us ranked top five in the country, and they want to knock us off,” Ramey said. “So they’re gonna play their best games and we’ve got to understand that. We can’t take away every shot that teams have. They did a good job hitting their 3s today. But I think it was good for us to battle back and just remain calm and stick to our principles.”

Burke was 6 for 12 from beyond the arc, and Miller made 3 of 4 3s while commanding UA’s attention immediately. Miller powered Morgan State to early leads of 9-4 and 11-6 almost all by himself, scoring 11 points through the first seven minutes of the game by making all four field goals he took, three of which came from 3-point territory.

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Morgan State wound up leading more often than Arizona did in the first half, during which the Bears hit 7 of 12 3-pointers, before UA took a 41-32 halftime lead.

“They hit a few shots and maybe had us uncomfortable,” Lloyd said. “These games aren’t going to be just 40-minute fast-break-frenzy, alley-oop dunk contests, you know?”

Well, the Wildcats did have some fun. Like when Cedric Henderson and Henri Veesaar raced down opposite lanes toward the basket, with Henderson passing to Veesaar, who then flipped it back to Henderson for a score that gave UA its first lead, 16-14.

Then, early in the second half, Ramey fed Ballo for an alley-oop dunk that capped a 10-2 run and gave Arizona a 51-34 lead.

But there were also the tough times for the Wildcats. Like when Miller or Burke made something happen, or the 3-pointer from Morgan State forward Khalil Turner that allowed the Bears to cut UA’s lead to just 67-59 with eight minutes left.

“With teams like that, you’ve got to try to take that confidence away early,” Ramey said. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t.”

But the Wildcats eventually started taking 20-point leads with more than five minutes left, despite playing their reserves heavily after halftime.

That was Lloyd’s plan. The UA coach has said recently that he wanted more from the reserves, and wanted to play them more, so he did. Even when the Wildcats’ lead wasn’t much more than a few possessions.

“I tried to cycle them in and get them some run with the main group (but it) maybe disrupted our normal subbing pattern a little bit,” Lloyd said. “All in all, I was really happy with how they finished the game.”

Now 12-1 overall at the end of nonconference play, the Wildcats are scheduled to take four days off before returning Tuesday to prepare for the resumption of Pac-12 play on Dec. 31 at ASU.

That’s when they will start figuring out what sort of grade they’ll get for the rest of the course.

“The finals are where it’s at,” Lloyd said. “We gotta see how we play in the Pac-12 and in the postseason. But from this point in the season, I think it’s an A. It’s pretty hard to argue that. I mean, probably not 100%. Maybe not an A-plus, but it’s a A.”