SAN DIEGO — The Star's Bruce Pascoe breaks down the starting lineups, storylines and stats as the top-seeded Arizona Wildcats prepare to take on the No. 16-seeded Wright State Raiders in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday.
What: No. 16 seed Wright State (22-13) vs No. 1 seed Arizona (31-3), NCAA Tournament first-round game
Where: Viejas Arena, San Diego
When: 4:27 p.m.
TV: TruTV
Radio: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM
Social media: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook
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PROBABLE STARTERS
Arizona Wildcats center Christian Koloko (35) invites more noise from an excited crowd during a rough second half against the Stanford Cardinal at McKale Center, Tucson, Ariz., March 3, 2022.
ARIZONA
G Justin Kier (6-4 senior)
G Dalen Terry (6-6 sophomore)
F Bennedict Mathurin (6-6 sophomore)
F Azuolas Tubelis (6-11 sophomore)
C Christian Koloko (7-0 junior)
WRIGHT STATE
G Trey Calvin (6-0 junior)
G Tanner Holden (6-6 junior)
F Tim Finke (6-6 junior)
F Grant Basile (6-9 junior)
C AJ Braun (6-9 freshman)
HOW THEY MATCH UP
How they got here: Wright State went 15-7 in Horizon League play to finish in fourth place and then beat Oakland, Cleveland State and Northern Kentucky to win the Horizon League tournament. The Raiders were given one of the last automatic bids and sent to the First Four, where they beat Bryant 93-82 on Wednesday.
Arizona went 18-2 to win the Pac-12 regular-season title by three games and then beat Stanford, Colorado and UCLA to win the Pac-12 Tournament last week in Las Vegas. The Wildcats beat Stanford 84-80 in the quarterfinals on Thursday and Colorado 82-72 in the semifinals on Friday and UCLA 84-76 in the championship game.
University of Arizona's Salim Stoudamire crouches at mid-court as he waits for Wright State to bring the ball down during the second half of the second round of the Preseason NIT at McKale Center, Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 18, 2004.
Series history: Arizona has only played Wright State once before, beating the Raiders 83-66 on Nov. 18, 2004, early in the season before the Wildcats reached their final Elite Eight under Lute Olson.
Wright State overview: The most consistently strong team in Horizon League play since coach Scott Nagy’s arrival in 2016, the Raiders finally jumped over the Horizon League Tournament hurdle this season after three straight years of losses. They beat Northern Kentucky to capture the conference’s automatic bid, and then captured the school’s first-ever NCAA Tournament win by beating Bryant in the First Four game on Wednesday near their home in Dayton, Ohio.
Wright State coach Scott Nagy runs his team through drills in a shootaround Thursday afternoon in San Diego.
The Raiders’ 22 wins come as no surprise. While they lost two-time Horizon League Player of the Year Loudon Love to professional basketball in Europe, they returned four starters, led by 6-6 junior Tanner Holden, who went from a conference all-freshman pick in 2019-20 to an all-conference pick the past two seasons. Big man Grant Basile is another focal point, a big man who can play either power forward or center. Both Holden and Holden know how to get to the line and take advantage of it: Holden draws 6.4 fouls per 40 minutes and makes 78.2% of his free throws, while Basile is fouled 5.2 times per 40 minutes and shoots 79.0% from the free throw line.
Grand Canyon transfer Tim Finke takes the most 3-pointers on the team, 4.8 per game but hits them at only a 30.6% rate, while he's also a trusted defender.
Point guard Trey Calvin is an efficient shooter who takes 38% of his shots from 3-point range and hits them at a 38.5% rate. He also steals the ball 2.6% of the time on opponents’ possessions when he’s on the floor.
Wright State's Grant Basile (0) blocks a shot by Bryant guard Charles Pride (5) during the first half of a First Four game in the NCAA men's college basketball tournament, Wednesday, March 16, 2022, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Overall, the Raiders don’t shoot a lot of 3-pointers, resulting in just 32.5% of their overall points. But they’re careful with the ball, ranking in the top 35 nationally for the lost percentage of shots that are blocks and turnovers that aren’t the result of a steal. They also rely heavily on their starters, allowing bench players to play just 17.3& of their minutes, the 356th lowest percentage in Division I.
The Raiders played only two high-major teams during the regular season, losing 96-52 at Purdue on Nov. 16 but beating North Carolina State 84-70 on Dec. 21 at Raleigh N.C.
He said it: “Every time I watch them, they seem to get better. Six game winning streak and winning their conference tournament, so they’re having success and they’re excited about it. When you get to the tournament, you’re going to get people’s best shot.
“They’re not careless. They take care of the ball and their primary ballhander (Calvin) does a great job of scoring and getting other people the ball. Holden does a great job, a slasher-cutter and leads the nation in free thros made and either one or two in attempts. So he presents a challenge within himself and Basile can score the ball from the outside and inside too. He can be a stretch four or a low-post scorer.
"There’s no secret (to their ability to get to the line). It’s just that they’re able to create the contact and get the call because they’re active that way. They want to get to the free throw line and that’s a big part for them in terms of their scoring. A foul on them is another foul on you and then all of a sudden you’re getting in foul trouble and they’re scoring a high percentage of their shots.
"Finke is a good shooter from the outside, plays extremely hard and tough defender and so he’s kind of a glue guy for their team. He does a little bit of everything.
"They’re mostly a man to man team… but having played last night and traveling across the country, who knows? They may play a lot of zone too.”
-- UA assistant coach Steve Robinson, who scouted the Raiders
KEY PLAYERS
WRIGHT STATE
Tanner Holden
Wright State guard Tanner Holden (2) plays during the second half of a First Four game in the NCAA men's college basketball tournament against Bryant, Wednesday, March 16, 2022, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Everything the two-team Horizon League all-conference pick does well, he did even better on Wednesday in a First Four game against Dayton. After finishing third in Horizon League scoring at 19.9 points per game, Holden dropped 37 points on Bryant while collecting 11 rebounds and going to the line 16 times, hitting 14 free throws.
ARIZONA
Adama Bal
“I think he's got a really good feel for the game, a high IQ, and he's getting a little nastier," said UA coach Tommy Lloyd of Adama Bal earlier this month. "He’s getting a little more physical and he's a shot-maker.
The Wildcats' freshman from Le Mans, France, has played significant spot minutes over the Wildcats’ past three games, showing the length, athleticism and shooting ability that could make him a future standout. A first-round game against Wright State, in which UA’s guard rotation could still be limited by Kerr Kriisa’s injury, could provide an opportunity for further growth.
SIDELINES
Kriisa ‘bouncing around’
Arizona guard Kerr Kriisa eyes the bucket while taking some long-range shots during Thursday’s shootaround in San Diego.
Asked if he might be willing to rest Kerr Kriisa regardless of his ankle sprain on Friday, after the Wildcats beat Colorado and UCLA without him last weekend in the Pac-12 Tournament, UA coach Tommy Lloyd didn’t quite go there. But he did indicate Kriisa might play off the bench Friday.
“I'm going to give you guys the standard `It's going to be a game time decision,’ “ Lloyd said Thursday. “But that’s 100 percent from the heart. It’s true. He's made great progress. I'm sure he'll be bouncing around out there a little bit today (in practice). And we're going to -- our goal was to push it, see how close we could get him to playing. And I think he's close.
“We'll see tomorrow what it looks like and it could be a deal where he may play but he may not start. We'll just take it from there and see where he's at.”
While Arizona practiced privately at a local high school on Thursday, they later made their mandatory appearance at Viejas Arena, where Kriisa was seen going through the mostly light drills – and showing off a bruise on his right ankle that extended halfway to his knee.
Tail wagging the tongue
Arizona Wildcats guard Dalen Terry (4), left, guard Bennedict Mathurin (0) and guard Justin Kier (5) getting talk to the members of the press during a conference prior to the team's shoot around the day before going against Wright State Raiders in a first round game in the NCAA Tournament, San Diego, Calif., March 17, 2022.
So what do the Wildcats look like to the rest of the college basketball world? The first question of Arizona’s pre-tournament press conference Thursday might have been one indication.
“We’ve seen stuff like Kerr sticking his tongue out and Dalen (Terry) waving to the crowd,” asked a reporter from the analytics-oriented HoopsHD.com. “Do you win a ton of games because you're cocky or are you cocky because you won a ton of games?
Terry and Bennedicat Mathurin, sitting next to Justin Kier on the interview podium, looked at each other and smiled.
Then Terry took a stab at answering the question, unapologetically.
“It's our personality,” Terry said. “Stuff like that gets us going. It's nothing we do on purpose, just it's part of the game, me doing whatever I do and Kerr doing whatever he do, it's another edge for our team to keep winning.”
A long time ago in a place far, far away
Alabama's Jahvon Quinerly celebrates after a college basketball game against Maryland in the second round of the NCAA tournament at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis Monday, March 22, 2021. Alabama won 96-77. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
Maybe it’s fitting that Jahvon Quinerly showed up in San Diego in a completely different region than Arizona, preparing to face Notre Dame in a West Regional first-round game as a member of the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Since he committed to the Wildcats in August 2017, Quinerly and the Wildcats have lived in completely different and ever-changing universes.
Quinerly decommitted from Arizona after the FBI investigation was made public in September 2017, headed instead to Villanova, then transferred after the 2018-19 season to Alabama, where he has played two seasons and is now the Tide’s second-leading scorer.
Arizona lost Quinerly, Shareef O’Neal and Brandon Williams out of its prospective 2018 recruiting class, but pulled back Williams after an initial decommitment. UA's NCAA infractions case resulting from that FBI probe is still pending even today, after the school fired Sean Miller last April.
Asked if he kept up with Arizona or wondered what might have been, Quinerly said he hasn’t been following the Wildcats as much as he used to.
“I’m obviously focused on my season but I’ve got family who goes to Arizona, so I’m kind of in the loop every now and then,” Quinerly said. “They’ve got a really good team this year. But other than that, I haven’t really been following Arizona like that.”
Momentum vs. rest
Arizona forward Ryan Anderson (12) can't draw the charging foul from Wichita State forward Rashard Kelly (0) during the first half of their opening-round game at the NCAA Regional, Dunkin' Donuts Center, Wednesday, March 17, 2016, Providence, R.I. Kelly Presnell / Arizona Daily Star
The last time Arizona had a first-round NCAA Tournament game against a team coming off a First Four win, it didn’t work out so well.
Coming off a loss in the Missouri Valley Tournament semifinals, Wichita State beat Vanderbilt on a Tuesday in Dayton, Ohio, to pick up a No. 11 seed – then blew into Providence, R.I., as the hours went into Wednesday morning, and beat Arizona on Thursday.
It was an especially rough moment for UA graduate assistant Ryan Anderson, who was a standout forward on that team in his only season on the floor with the Wildcats (he transferred in 2014 from Boston College but had to sit out the 2014-15 season while rehabilitating his shoulder.)
“This is why I came here, for this game,” Anderson said after the game. “I worked two long years for it to get to here. This isn’t what I wanted. This isn’t what anyone wanted. But this is life. You don't always get what you want.”
Of course, today’s matchup is a lot different. Arizona was a No. 6 seed in 2016 and is a No. 1 seed this year, meaning the Wildcats won’t have to face an 11 seed but a No. 16 seed that Kenpom rates as the No. 175 overall team.
And a presumably tired one. The Raiders will still have the momentum of a win two days earlier, having beaten Bryant in Dayton, Ohio, but they didn’t reach San Diego until after midnight Pacific time early Thursday morning.
"The trip was kind of long especially after playing the game last night,” Wright State guard Tanner Holden said. “But we all got to rest up this morning, get breakfast, kind of relax a little bit as much as we could before coming here. We're just trying to recover as best we can and get ready to play tomorrow.”
So close, yet so far
Wright State's Tanner Holden (2) and Tim Finke, left, walk to the bench during the final seconds of the second half of a First Four game in the NCAA men's college basketball tournament against Bryant, Wednesday, March 16, 2022, in Dayton, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Wright State had to travel just 12 miles to play in Wednesday’s First Four game in Dayton but it might as well have felt like it was already headed to San Diego.
Wright State hadn’t played at Dayton since December 1997, in the last version of what was known as the “Gem City Jam.” Dayton and Wright State played eight times in the Gem City Jam until then, but never afterward.
“We'd love to play but it just hasn't worked out,” Wright State center Grant Basile said. “I'm not too sure the logistics of that. I know we all would love to play them. But I'm not sure.”
That appeared to be a careful way of saying that Dayton didn’t want to play the Raiders, who play in a lower-level conference.
Wright State coach Scott Nagy also addressed the situation delicately.
“I think it's hard for the administrations to get together,” Nagy said. “I don't want to say they won't play us or we won't play them. It's one of those in-town things that probably should happen. The fans would love to see it. Everywhere I go and speak that's what they want to talk about — why don't you guys play each other? But we don't. I think it's something that we would like to do and it would be great for the town.”
It’s a consensus: Mathurin second-team all-American
Arizona guard Bennedict Mathurin catches a pass at the team runs through Thursday’s public shootaround at Viejas Arena in San Diego. The Wildcats open NCAA Tournament play on Friday afternoon.
The United States Basketball Writers Association named Arizona’s Bennedict Mathurin, the third organization in three days to give him such an honor, meaning Mathurin is now a consensus second-team pick as defined by the NCAA.
On Monday, Mathurin was named a second-team All-American by the Associated Press and on Tuesday by the NABC.
The USBWA’s first-team honorees included Oscar Tshiebwe of Kentucky, Ochai Agbaji of Kansas and three Big Ten players: Keegan Murray of Iowa, Kofi Cockburn of Illinois and Johnny Davis of Wisconsin.
Joining Mathurin on the second team were Jaden Ivey of Purdue, Paolo Banchero of Duke, Jabari Smith of Auburn and Drew Timme of Gonzaga.
The NABC's third team included Former Wildcat guard James Akinjo, Collin Gillespie of Villanova, Chet Holmgren of Gonzaga, Walker Kessler of Auburn and E.J. Liddell of Ohio State.
Numbers game
7.1 — Percent of Wright State possessions that end in a non-steal turnover, the 30th-best such percentage in Division I.
16 -— Arizona wins in 22 NCAA Tournament games as a No. 1 seed.
215 — Made free throws this season by Holden, the most of any player in the country.
