In part because Arizona finally straightened out its 3-point shooting late Saturday, with Jemarl Baker and Nico Mannion hitting 3s in the final 64 seconds, the Wildcats lost by only four to Gonzaga.
But Sean Miller said it still didn't really feel that close.
“You look at the box score and it looks like an even game,” the UA coach said. “But they were a 10 to 15-point better team than us. A 10-point better team than us tonight. For sure.”
Yet in a way, Miller found something encouraging about how his guys made it a closer finish than that. Arizona actually trailed by 16 with just 2:12 to go but cut the lead all the way to two when Baker made a layup with a second left before the Wildcats fouled Ryan Woolridge, and the Gonzaga guard hit two free throws.
“They’re good year in, year out,” Miller said of Gonzaga. “It's remarkable, the talent they've been able to maintain, their team chemistry, the way they play. They don't beat themselves and to beat them, you have to be equal and not beating yourself and you know tonight we just, we didn't have enough shots going to have chance to beat them in.
"And I want to credit our guys I thought we fought to the very, very end, and that's easier to talk about the do, especially in a game like that because it was disappointing.”
About those shots… from 3-point range, Nico Mannion was 1 for 10, Dylan Smith was 2 for 8 and Josh Green was 1 for 4. Max Hazzard went 3 for 4 but only played 14 minutes against Gonzaga guards who had 3-4 inches on him.
Mannion was 3 for 20 overall, missing floaters and layups he normally makes. And except for a 5-for-10 shooting performance against Omaha on Wednesday, he hasn’t been fully himself since suffering back spasms against Penn on Nov. 29 in the Wooden Legacy.
About an hour after Saturday's game ended, Mannion went out to take some extra shots.
Nico Mannion just now heading back into the locker room after getting some extra shots up after the loss to Gonzaga pic.twitter.com/w8N110L4uH
— Matt Moreno (@MattGOAZCATS) December 15, 2019
Mannion wasn’t available for comment afterward – Zeke Nnaji and Josh Green were the players UA designated for interviews – but Green said Mannion has been working on the injury.
“We have a great training staff and I’m sure they made the adjustments they needed to for Nico,” Green said. “I don't know how his back feels. That’s one of the questions you would have to ask Nico, but at the end of the day he's been putting in work and it was just one of those days.”
Miller said Mannion was healthy and that his confidence wasn’t thrown off since the injury, either.
“I don't really think so,” Miller said. “I mean, he believes in himself. I go on (performance in) practice and he's been shooting the ball well. He's really practiced well this week, Monday, Tuesday. I thought he played great against Omaha (on Wednesday). He did a good job on Thursday, Friday.
"You know what? Sometimes, man, it’s just as much as we all want them to go in they didn’t.”
Miller said repeatedly that Mannion’s shooting was hardly the only thing that went wrong Saturday for Arizona.
“It's very important for me to say this: This loss doesn't fall on him and his shooting,” Miller said. “It's one of a number of things that we could have done better. I will tell you though, usually, if our team turns the ball over six times, we win. And if we have one more rebound than the other team or more, we usually win.
“We did both of those tonight, it's just kind of an outlier game in that our shooting hurt us and you're playing against a real team. I know Gonzaga has been great recently but I really think they have all the makings of a real good, excellent team again this year, obviously.”
UA outrebounded Gonzaga 44-43 and had just six turnovers, though three of them led to Gonzaga scores in the Bulldogs’ 12-0 second half run.
A big part of the reason why UA rebounded well against Gonzaga was pretty obvious: Zeke Nnaji had 17 rebounds (UA’s unofficial stat monitor said he had 18), and eight of them came on the offensive side. It was by far his best effort on the glass all season, and against a physical, crafty Zag interior.
“He was spectacular,” Miller said. “You’ve got to realize how hard it is to get 17 rebounds and 16 points in this game.
“We talked to him a little bit last couple of weeks -- he wasn't playing with that reckless abandon or fire. Well, he returned back to form tonight. I think that's a really good sign for our team.
"I have to do a better job of getting him better opportunities on offense -- off of rolls, in the middle of the lane, not just in the post. If you look at his 10 shots, he probably got four or five by himself on second shots. That's not enough. And that's, that's my responsibility, and we have to correct that for sure.”
Nnaji had nine points and seven rebounds against Omaha on Wednesday but found that wasn’t enough.
“I know I didn't have a good game against Omaha,” Nnaji said. “I really just needed to bounce back and get back to playing more physical. I give credit to my teammates because they're boxing out, especially on the defensive end, allowing me to get some easy rebounds.”
Arizona hit 9 of 10 free throws in the first half but took only three in the second. When asked if the Wildcats weren’t aggressive enough to draw more fouls in the second half, Miller said it hurt that Gonzaga threw out some zone defense in the second half and trapped Nnaji inside, prompting UA to take quicker shots and not work the ball inside enough.
“We can drive the ball, we can get the ball to the low post,” he said. “And again, I look at Zeke -- he had eight second shots, he took 10 shots. I'm going to say maybe five or six of his field goal attempts came on his own doing.
“Now, Gonzaga is post trapping. So you have to take that into consideration. It's not that Zeke didn't get it. But we have to be better at getting him the ball when they can't trap him, and that's one of many regrets that I have about tonight. When we really needed to be able to do that, we couldn't do it and that hurt us.
“But Zeke, look, when you're a freshmen, and you're playing in a game of that magnitude against those guys, and you have 16 points and 17 rebounds. That's one heck of a performance and I know we lost, but I want to make sure I point that out. Among the many things we could have done better, I thought he was just a monster out there. He was really a good player.”
Two hours after the game ended, after having filtered deep into college basketball stats, UA publicist Nathan Wiechers said he found Nnaji is the only player to have collected as many as 16 points and 17 rebounds against a Top 25 team this season.
Miller repeatedly complimented Gonzaga’s system, style and coach Mark Few, then said a twist on that style did the Wildcats in during the Bulldogs’ second half runs.
Namely, Few shifted 6-7 small forward Corey Kispert to power forward, giving them a smaller look. Kispert had 11 of his 18 points in the second half.
“They didn't really play how they usually do – they went smaller for longer periods of time,” Miller said. “When they play Kispert at the four, it really changes a lot and forced us to go smaller. And you know what? We're just not as advanced or ready with that group, as they are.
“That's not the only reason that the game went towards Gonzaga, but it is it is part of the reason. That line up right there just got us out of rhythm. I thought it was the difference in in score, to some extent.”
Didn’t make it any easier, Miller said, that guard Admon Gilder came off the bench to score 13 points, hitting all four 3s he took. Gilder entered the game shooting 31.3 percent from 3-point range.
“Coming into the game he had not shot well,” Miller said. “He hit a couple of corner 3s off the bench … that gives them additional firepower. But I just wish we were better and more equipped to deal with what they did, once they started shifting between small and big. We got out of sorts.”
