Tommy Lloyd says UA bigs 'have to toughen up a little bit' after foul-plagued loss to Tennessee

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — As Arizona neared the end of nonconference play, coach Tommy Lloyd was able to tighten up his playing rotation without issue.

With no major injuries, the Wildcats were getting by even without still-absent reserve forward Kim Aiken in part because they simply did not get into foul trouble very often. Before their 77-73 loss at Tennessee on Wednesday, the Wildcats had no more than 22 fouls in a game and guard Dalen Terry was the only player to have fouled out.

Post players Azuolas Tubelis and Christian Koloko conveniently picked up four fouls only in games when the Wildcats still won easily, with Tubelis doing so against UTRGV and Michigan, while Koloko played 20 minutes in a blowout win over North Dakota State.

But in a tight game on Wednesday, Lloyd found himself using five perimeter players at times of out necessity.

Koloko fouled out after collecting just four points and three rebounds in 19 minutes. Tubelis played only 14 minutes and, while he stayed at four fouls, didn’t score at all until the final 2:01. Even Bennedict Mathurin, who led the Wildcats with 28 points, fouled out in the final minute, as did point guard Kerr Kriisa after playing 37 minutes.

In the end, Arizona was called for 28 fouls. Tennessee shot 27 free throws, hitting 18 of them. UA hit 12 for 18 from the line, meaning the Volunteers scored six more points at the line … in a four-point game.

Lloyd dismissed a question about those numbers, saying the “the team that complains to the refs first and complains the most usually loses.” Instead, he looked at his own guys, saying Tennessee forward John Fulkerson was more aggressive and tougher than UA’s bigs while collecting 24 points and 10 rebounds.

“They played fine in the second half when they settled in,” said Lloyd, who benched both Tubelis and Koloko in the first half after their second fouls. “But they’ve got to toughen up a little bit. They were getting pushed and shoved around on the glass and when you get pushed and shoved, you don’t get calls. You’ve got to fight back a little bit.”

Fulkerson went to the line 12 times, making eight free throws, but said that wasn’t his top goal going into the game. For him, it was more about getting off shots that would actually make it to the basket.

“One thing that we talked about was they were top in the nation in shot blocks, so we knew that shot fakes and pump fakes were going to be really crucial in this game,” Fulkerson said. “That’s just what I tried to do.”

Tennessee coach Rick Barnes said Fulkerson does it pretty well.

“He’s a hard guy because he’s slippery — the shot fakes, the step around and he can do some things,” Barnes said after the game. “He was terrific tonight.”

While Fulkerson didn’t manage to foul out Tubelis, the six points the Lithuanian scored in the game’s final two minutes pulled UA no closer than two points.

Koloko, meanwhile, managed to squeeze in a dunk and a rebound basket to tie the game at 62 with 5:07 in between his fourth and fifth fouls, but he was gone for good with 3:25 left.

Not surprisingly, Koloko’s fifth foul was a shooting foul that sent Fulkerson to the line. The Tennessee super senior made 1 of 2 free throws to put Tennessee ahead by two. Then, without Koloko around to bother him, Fulkerson scored another six points the rest of the way to help the Volunteers hang on.

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“Christian’s a good player,” Lloyd said. “But a lot of those fouls came on scramble plays or him jumping on a shot fake, things he’s got to get better at.”

As Kriisa goes, so do Wildcats

The Wildcats’ 15-point first-half deficit — and their near-comeback in the second half — could be at least partly correlated with Kriisa’s individual play.

In the first half, Kriisa had three turnovers with no assists while missing all four shots he took. In the second half, he hit 3 of 6 3-pointers, while dishing three assists to one turnover.

“In the first half, he was really tentative, and he’s got to get experience playing aggressive athletes like that,” Lloyd said. “And we’ve probably get to help with a plan that’s a little bit better for him. But obviously he was a force in the second half. He got us going there.”

The only problem was, Kriisa’s aggressiveness appeared to spill over into a second-half technical foul for words he spoke, and Tennessee’s Justin Powell then hit three free throws to give the Volunteers a four-point lead with 4:08 left.

“He’s gotta hopefully be smarter than that,” Lloyd said of Kriisa.

Merry chillin’

Other than guard Justin Kier, who hopped in a car with family to return to his home in Grottoes, Virginia, for Christmas, all of the Wildcats returned on the team’s flight back to Tucson and don’t plan to go much farther for their three days off.

UA athletic trainer Justin Kokoskie said most players will remain in Tucson before returning to practice on Sunday, though Koloko said he is planning to visit his sister in Los Angeles while Tubelis said he and his brother Tautvilas will spend Christmas with the family of Tautvilas’ girlfriend in Phoenix.

Kokoskie said that’s good news because the players may also be reducing their COVID-19 exposure risk by staying close to home.

“I’ve been meeting with the guys and asking them, ‘What are your plans?’” Kokoskie said. “That’s where the trust factor comes in. ‘Where are you going? What are you doing?’ Most people are just going to hang low in Tucson.

“A lot of us have invited them over to our houses and out to dinner to make sure they get a Christmas experience. But I’ll be honest — a lot of these kids want to stay focused and play basketball.”

Kokoskie said he also plans to make himself available, as always, to offer treatments to players during the break.

“Many times guys tell me, ‘Hey my legs are tired,’ so we’re gonna do some recovery stuff on Christmas Eve, possibly Christmas Day,” Kokoskie said. “At this point of the season — and I say this every year — every guy can point to something on their body that hurts. Of our top nine or 10 guys, every single guy has something ailing them. So there’s a good chance that even an extra day off can make a big difference.”