TEMPE — Since leaving Lithuania last summer, Azuolas Tubelis has had more than 60 full practices with the Arizona Wildcats to figure out how the American college game works.
Yet sometimes those long hours of lesson-learning can’t compare to the sort of things he can pick up over a single game.
Or even small fractions of a single game.
Like the final 32 seconds of Arizona’s 84-82 win Thursday over Arizona State.
In that short span, on top of learning how to cope with the Sun Devils’ athletic big men, Tubelis found himself square in the middle of three key plays, all of which were controversial and memorable in their own ways.
With 32 seconds left, Tubelis moved his foot over a bit after planting a screen and slightly bent his left knee, helping send both UA’s James Akinjo and ASU’s Remy Martin to the floor. That drew an offensive foul for a moving screen. ASU got the ball with the game tied at 84.
It drew vehement protests from Akinjo and coach Sean Miller, even though ESPN’s replays turned analyst Bill Walton from confused into certain.
“That’s a screening foul,” Walton said, after the network played it back several times.
With eight seconds left, Tubelis was under the basket when Martin drove inside for a potential game-winner. The television shot did not indicate Tubelis committed a foul, appearing to show him going straight up while Martin wrapped around him and couldn’t get a viable shot off. Statisticians even gave Tubelis a block.
A Star photographer caught several sequences of the play, including one that showed Tubelis’ left arm draped over Martin’s right arm, with the ball falling away from the basket off Martin’s fingertips.
Arizona forward Azuolas Tubelis (10) stuffs Arizona State guard Remy Martin (1) on his last second, last gasp drive for a win with the scored tied 82-82 in the final seconds in the second half of their Pac 12 game at Desert Financial Arena, Tempe, Ariz., January 21, 2021.
ASU coach Bobby Hurley posted a photo of the play to Twitter. He did not add any words to the tweet, though he had plenty to say during his postgame address Thursday.
“After watching it live and again on film, clearly (Martin) was fouled by a player in the restricted area,” Hurley said. Tubelis “did not leave his feet, his arms did not go straight up, and the guy should have been whistled for a foul and (Martin) should have been put on the free throw line. … They swallowed the whistles and that kid gets knocked on his (butt).”
But even with a possible break on the Tubelis no-call, Arizona again lost the foul game, committing 23 fouls and sending ASU to the line 29 times. The Sun Devils were 21 of 29 from the line, scoring six more points than UA (15-17) from free throws.
Arizona guard Terrell Brown Jr. (31) forces Arizona State guard Josh Christopher (13) to throw his pass into the arm of teammate forward Azuolas Tubelis (10) in the first half of their Pac 12 game at Desert Financial Arena, Tempe, Ariz., January 21, 2021.
Tubelis committed only two fouls, but Christian Koloko fouled out in just 16 minutes and Dalen Terry picked up four fouls over 22 minutes. So there were learning experiences for a lot of the Wildcats in that sense, once again.
“We fouled in both halves too much,” Miller said. “It’s plagued us. We’ve got to look at what we can do to plug those holes, maybe foul less. Some of our fouls were just young fouls, inexperience, fouling on an offensive rebound when ASU has inside position. They just kind of have to see it for what it is — recognizing they’re in the bonus, ‘so I’m really not going to go for the ball.’ I think we had a foul at three-quarter-court once or twice.
“But you forget in this game a year ago, we had I think 10 guys that played. Eight of them are not here. We’re very inexperienced. Every time we play a game, we have an opportunity to get better and improve but I thought tonight was a hard-fought battle if we would have lost. We would have lost in a very tough, tough game.”
But they didn’t lose because, well, Tubelis popped up again after being credited for a block on Martin, who had driven inside with eight seconds left (and six still on the shot clock).
Martin’s haste meant James Akinjo had time to run a final play, racing downcourt to get to the 3-point line with about three seconds left.
Akinjo said he looked up, saw Tubelis running alone near the left side of the basket and sent it up in the air. The ball was wide left of the rim but in easy range for Tubelis to scoop up and put in the basket.
“It was a lob,” Akinjo said. “An alley-oop to Azuolas.”
Was it? The official game statistics recorded a missed 3-pointer from Akinjo, and an offensive rebound by Tubelis, while UA Miller played it somewhat down the middle.
“If it was a pass, it was one heck of a pass,” Miller said with a slight grin. “If it was a shot, it was still one heck of a pass.”
Either way, of course, it didn’t ultimately matter to the Wildcats as much as this: They won, and Tubelis picked up the first game-winner of his career, running around the court with a wide grin on his face, silencing the increasingly noisy 100 or so family and staffers cheering for the Sun Devils while teammates mobbed him.
“I feel amazing because it’s my first game-winner,” Tubelis said. “I saw that the ball was going short so I just caught it and finished.”
It was a triumphant end to an evening in which Tubelis initially struggled, having gone scoreless in the first half while missing all four shots he took and having to deal with ASU’s perimeter oriented forwards.
Tubelis credited his teammates for continuing to look for him but Miller credited Tubelis’ resiliency during another night of learning.
“Azuolas was not himself in the first half and I think some of that you have to credit ASU,” Miller said. “They’re an athletic, quick, fullcourt team. The game is a little bit different playing them because the tempo of the game is really up and it might have caught Azuolas by surprise, even though we’ve tried to prepare him for what was to come.
“Maybe from about the 15-minute mark of the second half to the end of the game, he really became himself. Obviously the game winning offensive rebound or pass, whatever it was, that was a huge play.”
The kind of play, with the kind of stakes, you just can’t replicate very easily in practice.
