Before the Arizona Wildcats start another season against traditional tip-off opponent NAU on Tuesday, maybe itβs time for a quick review of how the last opener went.
Canceled. Of course.
Like so many teams throughout college basketball, the Lumberjacks slogged through pandemic obstacles much of last season, failing to appear at McKale Center on the first night of the season because of COVID issues. They returned for a rescheduled game 11 days later, but the Wildcats blew them out by 43 points and the Lumberjacks didnβt start really playing well until late in their Big Sky season β when they then missed another two weeks because of more COVID issues.
Final damage: A 6-16 record and, the Lumberjacks hope, a forgetful memory of it all.
βWe had some tough times,β said NAU coach Shane Burcar, who took over the Lumberjacks on an interim basis when Jack Murphy left to become UAβs associate head coach in June 2019. βI mean, we missed over 30 days of practice. Itβs nothing more than an excuse for some people but thatβs a reality.β
The particularly frustrating part for Burcar was that the Lumberjacks hit their stride in late January before the second pause.
βWe beat Northern Colorado on a Friday night, and we were just starting to get going, you know?β Burcar said. βThen we went on another 17-day pause, we play two of the best teams in the league for our last four games and we got beat.
βI can say with all the confidence in the world that we could not reach our full potential. But weβre not the only team who had that. It was happening all over the country.β
The Big Skyβs own COVID-inspired decision made it tough in another sense, too: Instead of having teams play two different opponents every weekend in a Pac-12-style format, the Big Sky had teams play the same opponent twice each weekend at the same site, meaning teams would mostly face others only twice at home or twice on the road.
Burcar, a native of the hockey-mad Upper Peninsula of Michigan, said it felt comfortably like a college hockey schedule.
βFor the Big Sky, it saves travel, it saves money,β Burcar said. βI liked it. I really did. I wish they would do it every year like that.β
But the draw of that format also sent NAU directly off its last COVID pause and on the road to face third-place Weber State, where the Lumberjacks lost two games.
NAU then finished the regular season by taking on two more losses, both against first-place Southern Utah, one on the road and the other at home.
The Lumberjacks did manage to upset Portland State in the opening round of the Big Sky Tournament, giving them something to celebrate at the end of it all, but a quarterfinal loss to Eastern Washington left them with barely more than a handful of wins for the season.
Afterward, at least for a while, things looked worse, too. The Lumberjacksβ two best players, Cameron Shelton and Luke Avdalovic, transferred out of the program.
Shelton, a first-team all-Big Sky pick who averaged 19.2 points, headed to Loyola Marymount while Avdalovic, who led NAU with 16 points at McKale Center last season and shot 43.3% from 3-point range over the season, headed to Pacific.
But Burcar said he remains on good terms with both the players and their families β βthatβs just the opportunity theyβre allowed to have and more power to them,β he said β and he also used the transfer portal to NAUβs advantage.
With opportunity to sell, Burcar landed a part-time starter at Virginia Tech in 5-foot-9 junior Jalen Cone plus several other key pieces that will immediately factor in the Lumberjack rotation.
βThese are guys were counting on no matter what,β Burcar said. βI wouldnβt say we improved our roster with this player-for-that-player, but weβre just trying to improve the roster for our team, for what gives us the best chance to win in 2021-22.β
Cone could be the kind of newcomer who winds up earning all-conference honors and maybe leading the Lumberjacks back above .500 this season. But Burcar said it all starts with veteran big man Nik Mains, the Scottsdale product who is a brother of UA walk-on forward Jordan Mains.
Averaging 8.8 points in a greatly expanded role last season, Nik Mains is one of those increasingly rare commodities in college basketball β a fifth-year player who has never entered the transfer portal.
βHeβs kind of an old-school player who stayed at the same school and has developed through the years,β Burcar said. βHeβs having a great career for us. He doesnβt miss practice. Heβs an everyday guy. Those are guys you try to build a program around.β
However, as Jordan Mains told the Star through a UA spokesman, βI am 2-0 against my brother in college,β because the Wildcats beat the Lumberjacks in 2019-20 and 2020-21.
βI wish Nik was 2-0 against Jordan,β Burcar said, chuckling.
Chances are, that number will change to 3-0 on Tuesday. After all, Arizona has beaten NAU 34 straight times.
But at least this time, the odds are much better that the Lumberjacks will be able to actually show up.
