NCAA Tournament scouting report: No. 1 seed Arizona vs. No. 9 seed TCU

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. 9-seeded TCU Horned Frogs in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Sunday night. 

What: No. 9 seed TCU (21-12) vs No. 1 seed Arizona (32-3), NCAA Tournament second-round game

Where: Viejas Arena, San Diego

When: 6:40 p.m.

TV: TBS

Radio: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Social media: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Probable starters

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)

TCU

G Mike Miles (6-2 sophomore)

G Damion Baugh (6-4 junior)

F Chuck O’Bannon (6-6 senior)

F Emanuel Miller (6-7 junior)

C Eddie Lampkin (6-11 freshman)

How they match up

How they got here: TCU went 8-10 in the Big 12 to tie with Oklahoma State for fifth place, then beat Texas 65-60 in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament and lost to Kansas 75-62 in the semifinals. The Horned Frogs were given a No. 9 NCAA Tournament seed and beat Seton Hall 69-52 on Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Arizona went 18-2 to win the Pac-12 regular-season title and then beat Stanford, Colorado and UCLA to win the Pac-12 Tournament last week in Las Vegas. The Wildcats received a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed and beat Wright State 87-70 in a first-round game Friday.

Series history: Arizona is 0-2 against TCU but the schools haven’t played each other in nearly 70 years. TCU beat UA 63-48 on Dec. 30, 1953 in a holiday tournament at Dallas and 37-32 on Dec 29, 1939 in the “All-College Tournament” at Oklahoma City.

TCU overview: After pausing five times for COVID reasons in 2020-21– and losing 12 of their final 15 games – the Horned Frogs kept running into adversity this season. TCU lost starting guard Damion Baugh for three games early in the season because of an ankle injury, then lost standout guard Mike Miles due to injuries in both wrists for two games in early February while also going on an 18-day COVID pause around New Year’s. The Horned Frogs made some progress early in the Big 12 season, but lost five of seven games in February, before starting to rebound late in the season. TCU beat Kansas 74-64 at home on March 1, and lost at Kansas just 72-68 two days later, then went on to beat Texas in the Big 12 Tournament before losing again to Kansas, this time 75-62.

Despite everything, defense and rebounding have carried the Horned Frogs into the second round of the NCAA Tournament. With a notable physicality behind their Baylor-style “no-middle” defense — a scheme that that aims to prevent players from setting up inside and keep the ballhandler on the perimeter, with plenty of help defense and rotations — TCU is ranked No. 15 in Kenpom defensive efficiency. TCU allows opponents to shoot only an average of 31.4% from 3-point range (ranking 63rd nationally) and 47.5% from two-point range (84th).

TCU also leads the country in offensive rebounding percentage, getting back 37.8% of its missed shots, and ranks 78th in defensive rebounding percentage (74.1%).

Offensively, TCU doesn’t take a lot of 3-pointers, ranking 310th nationally in the ratio of 3s taken to overall field goals taken --- just 31.6%. That’s probably just as well, since TCU hits 3s at only a 30.5% rate (314th nationally) and as a result they get only 24.3% of their scoring from 3s. Instead, the Horned Frogs get 58.2% of their scoring off two-pointers and another 17.5% off free throws, even though they shoot only 67.1% from the line.

Point guard Mike Miles leads the team in scoring while he and guard Damion Baugh average about four assists per game. After three injury plagued seasons at USC, small forward Chuck O’Bannon has begun showing flashes of what made him a McDonald’s All-American – and bloodlines that include a father (Ed) and uncle (Charles) who played in the NBA. O’Bannon a legitimate inside-outside threat who has become TCU’s fourth-leading scorer. Texas A&M transfer Emanuel Miller is a physical, active power forward who was among the SEC’s top 10 scorers and rebounders last season. This season, he rebounds 10.4% of his team’s missed shots when he’s on the floor – the 165th best offensive rebounding percentage in the country, and he’s also blocked 3.1% of opponents’ shots when he’s on the floor despite being only 6-foot-7.

At center, the 6-11, 270-pound Eddie Lampkin has made big jump this season after showing up at 330 pounds as a freshman last season. Lampkin is a high percentage shooter when he gets the ball inside, making 58.9% of his two-point shots while he is the ninth-best nationally at swiping his team’s missed shots off the glass, with an offensive rebounding percentage of 16.4.

He said it: “TCU leads the nation in offensive rebounding percentage. They're an unbelievable offensive rebounding team. They come from a big-time conference in the Big 12. They play Kansas tough. They’ve played an unbelievable schedule, have great offensive rebounding, and they have a future NBA player (Miles) at the point guard spot. We have to match their physicality. We have to box out and rebound and we have to control their guards' penetration. They do a great job penetrating in the paint and scoring off the twos. They don't shoot a ton of threes, but they score off twos, they get to the foul line, and Lampkin is very, very skilled. They can hit him on short rolls, dump offs. You have to do a good job there.

"(O’Bannon) is a catch and shoot 3-point shooter, can cut, plays hard.

“I would say Colorado (compares physically in the Pac-12) just with their size with (Evan) Battey, (Tristan) da Silva and having (Jabari) Walker back. They have good size, the threes and fours. They don't play two traditional bigs but the guys that do play have great size.

“I think every game you you have to be prepared to knock down open shots. So hopefully we can do the things on offense to make sure they're open." — UA associate head coach Jack Murphy, who scouted the Horned Frogs.

Key players

TCU — Mike Miles

Overshadowed last season as a freshman in the Big 12 because of Cade Cunningham over at Oklahoma State, Miles helped lead USA Basketball to the U19 World Cup gold medal last summer and became a second-team all-Big 12 pick this season. He was the only player to rank in the top six in Big 12 scoring (15.0, fifth) and assists (3.9, sixth).

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ARIZONA — Justin Kier

Regardless of Kerr Kriisa’s status, all of the Wildcats’ guards will be challenged in feeding or driving the ball inside, and they may have to rely more often on 3-pointers. Since Kriisa has been out, Kier has responded with careful 3-for-3 3-point shooting and averaged 5.0 assists.

Sidelines

Lloyd challenges fans

While overly optimistic scheduling kept many Arizona fans out of Viejas Arena for the opening minutes of the Wildcats first round win over Wright State, they didn't exactly create McKale West once they reached their seats.

That bit at UA coach Tommy Lloyd a little.

“The environment better be great,” Lloyd said, when asked what kind of crowd he expected Sunday. “You try to have a great regular season to set yourself up to get a good seed. If you get a good seed you're close to home. And this is supposed to be a great, advantageous fan base for us. And yesterday we didn't feel it.

“Listen, I know we've got a great fan base and I know some will take it personal but they've got to be better tomorrow. They've got to bring it tomorrow as fans.”

Lloyd said he realized financial barriers keep blue-collar fans out of NCAA Tournament games, and expressed disappointment that fans who did buy tickets couldn’t get in at the start of the game, because security and cleaning crews were still flushing out the arena from an earlier session of games that went long.

“You have people paying a lot of money for these tickets, and for them to come in 10, 20 minutes late for a game is crazy,” Lloyd said. “But our fans have got to be better. And you know what? The fans that are lucky enough to have tickets to this and financially be able to afford it, they need to get out of the seats tomorrow and bring it. They need to help us advance. That's my message to them: Don't sit back and wait. Help us.”

Cali frog pond

Whatever the case with UA fans, TCU might be well-represented with fans inside Viejas Arena on Sunday.

Not only is coach Jamie Dixon a Hollywood native who still carries a Screen Actors Guild card and has family living in Southern California, but some 13.4% of all TCU students are now from California. That number includes starting forward Chuck O’Bannon, the transfer from USC whose father (Charles) and uncle (Ed) once played for UCLA.

Of TCU’s 96,000 living alumni, according to the school, 2,400 of them live in Southern California.

“I know I'll have a lot of friends there, high school buddies, so that's a good thing,” Dixon said. “We'll have a lot of people here, and we have a lot of alumni in the San Diego area in the Orange County, south Orange County, and even from here in the Valley. So my friends will be here. My sister will be here. My parents won't be here, but they'll be watching. We'll be all right.”

Don’t blame me

When UA guard Dalen Terry competed against TCU’s Mike Miles and 25 other players for the chance to be on USA Basketball’s U19 World Cup team last summer, Terry was cut and Miles became the Americans’ second-leading scorer en route to the gold medal.

Oh, and TCU coach Jamie Dixon was the USA coach.

But USA Basketball has a longstanding practice of having a junior national team committee choose the actual roster, not the coaches. (Former UA coach Sean Miller was on the junior national team committee but did not go to the event last summer).

So when asked about Terry, Dixon made sure to mention how that process worked.

“I think we have a bunch of guys we’ve played with in that situation, but he is talented and athletic,” Dixon said. “It's a challenge. I guess you're trying to start some controversy, but I'm not going to fall in the trap. We're going to respect every guy out there. But ultimately, it wasn't my decision. They have a committee, and they do that to protect us from people like you."

Terry said he was initially “a little hot” about not making the U19 team, which went on to win the gold in a field. Team USA beat Bennedict Mathurin and Canada in the semifinals and Oumar Ballo and Mali in an pool play game but did not matchup with Azuolas Tubelis and Lithuania.

“It was a good experience,” Terry said. “USA U19, just to be on that list, I was thankful. Im not going to look at this any differently. I didn't make the team. It is what it is.”

Long time comin’

The win for TCU, coincidentally (or maybe not) was the first since 1987, when Dixon was actually a player for the Horned Frogs.

"Thirty five years. That's crazy. It's crazy," TCU forward Emanuel Miller said. "It's been a long time coming, I think. This program is slowly shifting the culture of TCU basketball. We're showing what TCU basketball is about right now."

Asked if he reminisced about the 1987 win after this one, Dixon said he really didn't.

"I hadn't really thought about it," Dixon said. "I get asked about it all the time. So I always try to defer that question when we've gotten to the tournament before and won games, and they've been heading towards postseason.

"Before the game, I thought about my parents who couldn't be here today because of health issues, and then I thought -- we drove by University of San Diego -- I thought of my sister tonight because she played there. So I thought of her. But I didn't think about myself or 35 years ago."

Mono-lingual

Arizona’s multi-national, multi-lingual group of players continues to receive more national attention the better they play, so maybe it was only a matter of time before Terry was asked his perspective. Terry is the Wildcats’ only American starter.

“Seeing people talk in different languages, it’s funny to me because I only know English,” Terry said. “l know a few words. Obviously, the bad ones.”

After the media crowd chuckled, Terry went on as he sat on the interview podium next to Lithuanian forward Azuolas TUbelis.

“Even 'Zu doesn’t speak that much," Terry said, looking at Tubelis. "What’s your language?”

“Lithuanian,” Tubelis said.

Terry replied, “He and his brother speak that sometimes but I didn’t even know what the language was. It’s just funny to me when they talk in that language beecause I can’t talk in a different language. It’s a blessing to be a part of a team like this.”

Numbers game

3 — NCAA Tournament appearances for TCU in in the last 35 years, since coach Jamie Dixon was a player for the Horned Frogs in a 1987 NCAA Tournament win..

5 — Games against No. 1 NCAA Tournament seeds that TCU has already faced, with three against Kansas and two against Baylor. The Frogs were 1-2 against Kansas and lost both games they played with Baylor.

30 — NCAA Tournament for Arizona in in the last 35 years.