There’s a point during their first college basketball season, Sean Miller often says, when freshmen who play big minutes really aren’t freshmen anymore.
“I’d say right about now,” the UA coach said this week.
If the Arizona Wildcats are going to make a run at the Pac-12 regular-season title, it might better be now.
Despite standout efforts so far this season from freshmen Zeke Nnaji, Nico Mannion and Josh Green, the Wildcats have still not won a true road game in three tries — and they’re now staring at three straight road games, all of which have particularly tough challenges ahead: An intrastate rivalry crowd Saturday at ASU; arguably the conference’s toughest road environment on Thursday at Washington; and a Feb. 1 date at surprisingly resurgent Washington State.
Three games. One eight-day test.
“I think we’re ready to go,” Green said.
Green says the Wildcats have grown from experiences such as close games with Oregon and Gonzaga, from facing savvy veterans like Ducks point guard Payton Pritchard and nearly pulling some of those tough games out. The UA lost by five at Baylor, by four against Gonzaga, in overtime at Oregon, all forgivable losses for a team led by freshmen.
But maybe not anymore.
“I think going into the games now, there’s no excuses for us freshmen,” Green said. “We’re definitely used to the Pac-12 and college basketball in general.”
Only Stanford, with a backloaded conference schedule, has just one loss in the Pac-12 midway through the fourth week of league play after the Cardinal gave up a 20-point, second-half lead and lost in OT at USC last weekend.
Then USC took Oregon, the league favorite, into double overtime at Eugene on Thursday, and lost.
Overall, four Pac-12 teams have lost two games and another three have lost three.
Nobody really has an edge at this point.
At least until everyone plays a few more road games.
Arizona Wildcats forward Zeke Nnaji (22) goes up against Utah Utes forward Riley Battin (21) in the first half during a game at McKale Center on January 16, 2020.
“Winning on the road in college basketball is very difficult. It always has been,” Miller said. “It usually crowns the conference champion and it separates a fair season from a good one, or instead of a good year, a great year.
“And our team is well aware that we really haven’t broken through in our road games. In fairness to us, we’ve certainly played a couple of tough ones on the road and we’ve been in single-possession games ... but the more you do it, the more comfortable you get.”
That could be especially true for the Wildcats’ freshmen, who are not only the UA’s top three scorers but the team’s top three contributors in terms of uses per possession, a Kenpom.com stat that measures the number of times a possession ends with a player’s shot or turnover when he’s on the floor.
Mannion is used in 25.4% of possessions, while it’s 23.8% for Nnaji and 21.1% for Green.
The next most-used player is Chase Jeter (18.9%), who isn’t expected to play Saturday after reporting back pain last week.
Kenpom.com defines Dylan Smith (used on 16.4% of possessions), Jemarl Baker (17.8%), Stone Gettings (16.6%) and Max Hazzard (16.5%) as role players, with Ira Lee (14.9%) and Christian Koloko (15.8%) listed as having “limited roles.”
It’s an unusual dynamic, even by the standards of today’s one-and-done era. High-major teams now often depend on freshmen, but usually have a veteran or two also playing big roles.
“The difference for our freshmen is we need all three to play well all the time,” Miller said. “They carry a big burden. Some of the freshmen we’ve had in the past have been really terrific but they’ve been able to sometimes be a freshman in a game, and our team could still win because of the supporting cast.
“We believe in our supporting cast, and it’s very important that our supporting cast plays well, but who plays the most minutes, takes the most shots, has the most responsibility — it’s Nico, Josh and Zeke — and it’s been that way from Game 1.”
Josh Green (0) dribbles past a Colorado defender last season at McKale Center. The bouncy Australian could be the first Arizona Wildcat taken Wednesday night.
Mannion is not only UA’s second-leading scorer (14.0 points per game) but also averages 6.1 assists per game while having the 33rd best assist rate in Division I, as defined by the percentage of time (34.1%) he records the assist for his teammates’ shots when he’s on the floor.
Nnaji leads UA in scoring (16.7) and efficiency, being the nation’s ninth-most-accurate field-goal shooter at 66.3%. Then there’s Green, who averages 12.7 points while taking the second-most shots on the team behind Nnaji (10.2) and hitting them at a 43.8% rate. Green also posts a low turnover rate, losing the ball only 14.3% of the time on his possessions, the sort of thing that isn’t characteristic of a freshman.
Maybe that’s because Green really isn’t a freshman anymore.
None of them are.
“We’re really fortunate to have those guys all having incredible freshman seasons,” Miller said. “My hope is that they continue to get better and more comfortable because in each of their cases there’s a big, big upside.”
