SAN FRANCISCO — So a bunch of media people wanna tell the Arizona Wildcats they won’t defend their Pac-12 championship this season?
Kerr Kriisa, not surprisingly, has an answer to that.
“We’re gonna look at the standings after the season,” Kriisa said Wednesday, after Arizona was picked to finish second behind UCLA in the conference’s official preseason poll. “Last year, we were picked fifth or sixth and even some people took us seventh so it doesn’t really mean anything.”
No, other than fostering a little preseason publicity for everyone involved and setting a gauge for the season ahead, it really doesn’t.
But the media has correctly picked the conference winner 17 times in 33 tries in the conference’s official poll, including five times in the Pac-12 era that began in 2011-12 — even though it slipped up badly last season by picking the Wildcats to finish in a fourth-place tie with Oregon State.
Arizona went on to win the conference by three games in coach Tommy Lloyd’s first season, while Oregon State flopped all the way from the 2021 Elite Eight to a last-place finish last season.
Predictions can be a hard deal, all the way around.
“Teams have changed. People have gotten better. And we still haven’t played a single game,” Kriisa said. “So for me, it’s funny that they can even make the vote.”
The vote, likely, was based on the fact that UCLA sprinkled in another two five-star players (wing Amari Bailey and center Adem Bona) to a strong returning core that includes all-conference veterans Tyger Campbell and Jaime Jaquez.
Yes, those guys are back, again.
“It’s funny when you take the group photo” at media day, Colorado coach Tad Boyle said, “and you see all the players and guys like Jaime Jaquez and Tyger Campbell? I’m like, ‘Damn. I can’t believe they haven’t graduated yet.’”
At the same time, Arizona lost three players to the NBA Draft, and the Wildcats are hoping returnees such as Kriisa, all-conference forward Azuolas Tubelis and guard Pelle Larsson can all step into bigger roles while working in a number of key transfers and freshmen.
“I know everyone is saying ‘Oh my god, we lost a lot, the three best players left,’” Tubelis said. “But we have new players. We have (Texas transfer) Courtney Ramey, Pelle Larsson, me, Oumar (Ballo).
“I think it’s a pretty solid team. We can win games for sure.”
That’s pretty much the way Lloyd appears to be looking at it, saying there’s going to be lots of improvement around the conference and that, to him, it’s more about week-to-week improvement in practice.
So far, after a month of full practices and heading into a public exhibition on Nov. 1, Lloyd said that part is going pretty well.
“I feel like we’re making progress and right on course,” Lloyd said. “I feel like the first group has kind of settled in and gotten comfortable with each other and some of the younger guys seem to be getting a better idea of what they need to be doing.”
With their first and only public exhibition coming up on Tuesday against Western Oregon, the Wildcats learned a little more about themselves last weekend in a private scrimmage against Saint Mary’s in Phoenix. The result is being kept private but is believed to have generally gone well for the Wildcats.
“It was great,” Lloyd said. “I think we were able to establish some of the things we were really looking to do and we got exploited in other areas that it would be great to learn from. Those closed scrimmages usually are a huge catalyst to getting better.”
Asked for specifics on what the Wildcats needed to improve on, Lloyd said it was mostly “normal basketball stuff” such as working on defensive positions in certain situations or improvements in rebounding and chasing after loose balls.
Tommy Lloyd and the Wildcats will play an exhibition game on Tuesday, marking the unofficial start of the 2022-23 season.
Saint Mary’s “is just really sound,” Lloyd said. “They don’t beat themselves. They have a conviction of what they want to do, so they really test your discipline and your toughness.”
The Wildcats also have started working in freshman combo guard Kylan Boswell, who has been cleared to participate in a limited basis on all drills after breaking his foot late last spring. Lloyd has said he doesn’t expect Boswell to play a significant role until well into the season, but Boswell is on track to be able to play in the Wildcats’ Nov. 7 season opener against Nicholls.
“He’s on a slow build,” Lloyd said. “We’re just trying to ramp him up and make sure that the foot seems to be healthy. Now it’s just about that physically, we give everything else enough time to get up to speed so he doesn’t have any other injuries.”
Of course, after Arizona’s otherwise dominant season ended in the NCAA Tournament when the Wildcats were out-toughed in an overtime win over TCU and a loss to Houston in the NCAA Tournament, all the Wildcats’ physical fitness was a key topic of the day.
Lloyd did not duck it.
“TCU and Houston are two really good programs, incredibly physical, (and) very, very well-coached,” Lloyd said. “I thought we were a really physical team as well. … I want to see if we can continue that at Arizona. We have some guys now who have shown that toughness.”
Including, it would appear, the two guys who showed up at Pac-12 media day. Tubelis and Kriisa had a little fun when asked about the physical improvements they showed during the Sept. 30 Red-Blue Game, with one questioner noting Kriisa’s ballhandling and the “bounciness” Tubelis had.
“I think my defense improved the most, and my shooting from the 3-point line,” Tubelis said. “That’s basically it. I don’t know. I didn’t work on my bounce, so I don’t know.”
Kriisa, who gained 10 pounds to 190 on his 6-foot-3-inch frame, also had a little fun when asked about his physique.
“First of all, thank you,” Kriisa said, smiling. “Finally, somebody notices because Coach doesn’t say that. So I finally get some credit. But I mean, yeah, we had a great summer with the coaching staff and coach Tommy and then I had a great (Estonia) national team summer.”
Now Kriisa and company are expected to have a good winter season ... if not a championship one.
They’ll see about that, too.
“UCLA is pretty tough this year,” Tubelis said. “But we are right behind them and they picked us fifth or sixth last year and we won the Pac-12. It doesn’t mean anything.”
