Azuolas Tubelis leads Arizona past Cal 81-68 but Wildcats struggle again from 3

While dominating the first nine minutes of Arizona’s 81-68 win over California on Sunday, Arizona forward Azuolas Tubelis found the secret to finishing his scoring attempts.

Then he lost track of it again.

“I need to lock myself in my room and maybe try to find out how I miss those layups,” said Tubelis, who was 7 for 19 at Utah, then 6 of 7 in the first half Sunday … and 3 of 11 in the second half.

His teammates, at least from the perimeter, never really found the answer.

After making just 4 of 28 3-pointers at Utah on Thursday, the Wildcats hit 4 of 20 3s on Sunday, relying mostly instead on Tubelis to score 25 points and for center Oumar Ballo to come through with another 17 inside.

During their uneven performance against a winless opponent, the Wildcats (7-1) struggled to shake off their loss at Utah and also, maybe, a little-hard nosed instruction from UA coach Tommy Lloyd

“I knew it was gonna be a grimy game and I was on the guys pretty hard the last couple of days,” Lloyd said. “Anytime a coach kinda turns the heat up, you get some response, but you also get some some guys that are a little bit tentative.”

Arizona is hitting just 16.7% from long range in Pac-12 play so far. Kerr Kriiisa missed all four 3s he took Sunday while Pelle Larsson was 0 for 3 and Adama Bal missed both 3s he took off the bench.

But if it looked like the Wildcats’ confidence took a hit Thursday that it did not fully recover from on Sunday, wing Cedric Henderson disagreed.

“Not really,” he said. “’Zu and Oumar both played well. As far as shooting, being a shooter you're gonna miss your miss shots, you're gonna make shots. And you have to keep shooting with confidence. We work on it every day.”

They did keep shooting, with Ramey hitting 2 of 6 3s, and even Tubelis stepping out to hit another. But the Wildcats never really put together enough shooting to put the Bears away, at least not in the sort of way they dispatched three low-major opponents at McKale Center by an average of 28.7 points to begin the season.

The Bears weren’t a low-major team, but were winless and banged up. Picked to finish 11th in the Pac-12 this season in the conference's official preseason poll, the Bears have also been without several key players because of health issues, though forward Sam Alajiki back from concussion protocol on Sunday.

But Cal has a former five-star UA recruiting target in guard Devin Askew and plays a slow tempo that helped it stay in games against Kansas State (63-54), TCU (59-48) and Clemson (67-59).

“I knew it wasn't going to be a game where I felt good and it felt comfortable,” Lloyd said. “I’ve known coach (Mark) Fox for a long time. He’s a good coach. His team is struggling. I knew they were going to come in here and fight. I know fans and people are going to see the record -- and maybe our players too -- and think it's going to come easy and it's not how it goes. That is not how you want it to go.”

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That wasn’t how it went, even if Tubelis made it look initially like the Wildcats could run away with the game.

Stuck in Cal’s slower pace for the first four minutes, and missing two early 3-pointers, the Wildcats were tied 6-6 with Cal before Tubelis powered them on a 14-4 run over the next six minutes.

Tubelis began the run with two free throws and, after Ramey hit a 3-pointer, scored on a fast break feed from Kriisa and later hit an eight-foot hook shot. In between two inside baskets from Cal center Lars Thiemann, Tubelis then hit a 3 pointer, while later scoring two more inside baskets to make it 24-10 with 11:24 remaining.

By that point, Tubelis already had 15 points on 6-for-7 shooting while also picking up three rebounds.

But while Arizona led by up to 15 points in the first half, the Wildcats led just 42-33 at halftime. Cal shot 39.4% from the field and made only 2 of 10 3-pointers in the first half but Arizona hit only 3 of 10 3s and only 9 of 14 free throws.

Then, early in the second half, Tubelis missed his first three layups and the Wildcats followed his lead. Arizona made just 3 of 11 shots through the first media timeout and expanded its lead only to 49-39.

"Zu's a good player," Lloyd said. "He's just got to stay locked down. At the start of that second half, I think he missed a few bunnies and making layups is hard. It's something that we practice every single day. He just relaxed a little bit and smoked a couple of lay ins, and I think that kind of created a little uneasy feeling."

The rest of the second half continued to appear uneasy for the rest of the Wildcats, too. Three-pointers from Askew and Cal’s Kuany Kuany helped keep the Bears close, with the Wildcats still shooting just 32.0% through the first 14 minutes of the second half.

Askew wound up with a team-high 25 points on 9-for-19 shooting. Shadowed mostly by Ramey and Larsson– while Lloyd said also Henderson defended him well late in the game – Askew also converted a four-point play that cut the Wildcats’ lead to eight points late in the first half when Larsson fouled him beyond the arc.

In the second half, Askew hit a 3-pointer from the right wing after creating separation from Ramey, who appeared visibly upset. That shot cut Arizona’s lead to just 57-50 with 11:24 left before the Wildcats held double-digit leads for the final six minutes.

“Devin Askew is a good basketball player and he's got a lot of pride. He's a great competitor. And he has a ton of freedom,” Lloyd said. “For them to score and be productive, he's got to take some tough shots, and he made some tough shots.

“I thought we had stretches where we didn't look great on him and we had stretches where I thought we did a really good job.”

The same could probably be said for everything else the Wildcats did on Sunday.

Photos: Arizona scraps to 81-68 win over Cal in Pac-12 home opener