Arizona center Motiejus Krivas (14) cleans up a Dayton turnover under the Wildcat basket with a dunk in the first half of the teams’ NCAA Tournament matchup in a second-round NCAA Touranment game last season.

 Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

Arizona's Motiejus Krivas was one of 20 players named Friday to the watch list for the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Award, honoring the top center in Division I.

The Wildcats wound up placing four of their five projected starters on the Naismith's positional award watch lists: Krivas, Trey Townsend (Karl Malone power forward), KJ Lewis (Julius Erving small forward) and Caleb Love (Jerry West shooting guard).Β 

Krivas was joined on the Abdul-Jabbar watch list by Indiana center Oumar Ballo, who played ahead of Krivas last season at Arizona, along with preseason all-American Hunter Dickinson of Kansas and ASU freshman Jayden Quaintance, among others.

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Contact sports reporter Bruce Pascoe at bpascoe@tucson.com. On X(Twitter): @brucepascoe