Put the names of every Pac-12 basketball player into a pool and draft five guys to play a winner-take-all series against the Big Ten all-stars. Who do you take, 1 through 5?
1. USC 7-foot center freshman Evan Mobley. No contest.
2. Stanford’s towering, do-it-all senior forward Oscar da Silva.
3. Oregon’s score-from-anywhere senior guard Chris Duarte.
4. ASU’s never-give-an-inch senior point guard Remy Martin,
5. Colorado’s senior point guard McKinley Wright, a package of positive intangibles.
Sixth man? How about UCLA’s mini-point guard, Tyger Campbell, who was the best player on the court Saturday night, scoring 22 points as the Bruins beat Arizona 81-76, the fourth straight time the Bruins have won at McKale Center.
This is not a typo. UCLA is 4-0 at McKale, and to make it more impressive the Bruins didn’t play in Tucson during the 2018-19 season when the Wildcats went flat and finished 17-15.
This just doesn’t happen to Arizona basketball teams. Well, not for a long time.
For the first time in maybe 30 or 35 years, it’s unlikely you’d pick someone from Arizona among the Pac-12’s top five or six players.
But maybe that’s not all bad in what is essentially a throwaway season for the postseason-banned Wildcats.
How much damage can be done by losing a few home games?
Plus, if you picked the next five from the pool, it’s not a stretch to think that Arizona freshman forward Azoulas Tubelis, sophomore guard James Akinjo and freshman forward Bennedict Mathurin would get consideration.
But that’s a story for another time. That’s a story for next year.
Arizona’s Jemarl Baker Jr. looks for help as the entire UCLA defense surrounds him in Saturday’s game.
Pac-12 basketball is becoming a story of UCLA’s return to power. Every school in the league dreads that type of development. But this isn’t yet a vintage UCLA team, or even close. Over the last 30 or 35 years, the Bruins have shown up at McKale with 15 or 20 better teams than the one Mick Cronin deployed Saturday, a team without its best player, injured forward Chris Smith.
Not that the Bruins muted their celebration. They showered Cronin with water from their individual bottles, made a racket that echoed through the McKale Center corridors and carried on as if it were 1988 or 1998 and Arizona was a titan in college basketball.
“I’m happy as heck,” Cronin said in a Zoom interview. He tried to add some perspective by adding that “we don’t have any seniors” but a late-night celebration at McKale these days is like a college football getting carried away after it beats Nebraska.
Times have changed.
The Bruins aren’t waiting for next year the way Arizona is. The Pac-12 lacks a powerhouse — no team is ranked higher than No. 18 in the NCAA’s current NET ratings — but in just his second season at UCLA, Cronin appears to be taking advantage of Arizona’s decline and the league’s diminished stature.
Talk about good timing.
We’ve now had sufficient time to evaluate another rebuilding Arizona roster. What once was a roster of mystery guests has come into focus. It’s clear Arizona has got some valued pieces, especially Tubelis, who, given year-to-year progress, looks to be a difference-maker.
But what we don’t know in modern college basketball is if this group of non-seniors will hit the exits this spring and look for greener pastures. As UCLA has shown, the time is now in college basketball. Alas, Arizona doesn’t have a “now” because of its NCAA probation.
It also didn’t have a strategy that worked against Campbell and Cronin.
A year ago, UCLA completed its sweep against Arizona by implementing an attack-mode offense designed to create more free-throw opportunities. It worked. The Bruins outscored Arizona 29-10 at the foul line in that 65-52 victory.
So Cronin applied the same strategy Saturday.
“I really felt we were going to have to win the game at the foul line,” he said. UCLA went 27 for 32. Arizona, which wasn’t as aggressive with the ball and couldn’t contain Campbell, was 12 for 16.
Game over.
Campbell did whatever he chose with the ball, zipping off screens, driving unopposed toward the basket against players a foot taller, and still scoring 12 straight points at one time.
“I was just taking what they gave me,” Campbell said. “When I came off screens, they let me go downhill. I just got some really good looks.”
Visiting teams haven’t enjoyed many “good looks” in Tucson the last 40 years. Oregon State won five straight at McKale from 1979-83, and UCLA went 4-0 from 1981-84 before Lute Olson made it all go away.
From 2001-04, Mike Montgomery’s Stanford clubs won four straight at McKale.
But that was different. Two of those Stanford teams were ranked No. 2 and No. 4, and, besides, Arizona successfully traded punches with Monty’s best teams, going 3-1 at Stanford in that span, twice beating No. 1-ranked Cardinal teams.
Arizona gets its chance to punch back at the Bruins on Feb. 18 at Pauley Pavilion. It’ll need to step up to the heavyweight class to have any chance.
