On Kerr Kriisa's expected return, Ira Lee's healing, and the Arizona Wildcats' confidence

After Arizona beat Grambling on Friday, Arizona coach Sean Miller said freshman guard Kerr Kriisa will return after finishing play for the Estonian national team on Monday. 

But Kerr told Estonian media he is aware he may not be cleared to play at all this season by the NCAA clearinghouse and, when asked if Kerr might take his time coming back if he is not cleared (since the players are all taking classes virtually anyway), Miller put it this way:

“He's coming back at the conclusion of the tournament,” Miller said. “I don't have a crystal ball. I don't have the NCAA’s phone number. They don't tell me what they're going to do two weeks from now as it applies to amateurism and eligibility. All that we can do is send Kerr home to compete for his country. I talk to him every day, and wait on his return.

“I guess he has the option of not returning. But again, I can't really give you a wholehearted evaluation or answer of his mindset at the conclusion of the tournament.

“I wish he was eligible. We believe that that he could or should be, but you know that that's not up to me to comment on. I'm the coach of the team. And we'll let our compliance office and Kerr and his family deal with that with that issue. But we have our fingers crossed that at some point he can join us, like four or five other players from Europe that came here the same way (from the same club, Zalgiris of Kaunas, Lithuania) that he did.”

Kerr will play for Estonia against Russia on Saturday and against North Macedonia on Monday in the FIBA Eurobasket 2022 qualifiers. Both games are scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Arizona time and should be available on ESPN Plus.

Miller's answer about Kerr above was in response to me asking how exactly how he left things with Kerr before his departure, since international players can often hit snags in the clearinghouse process and anything can happen when a player leaves to go halfway around the world in the middle of the season (and in the middle of a pandemic.)

Besides, ESPN analyst Seth Greenberg said on his Courtside with Greenberg and (Dan) Dakich podcast on Tuesday that “Arizona lost their best recruit yesterday – he signed because he couldn’t get cleared by the NCAA. He went back and signed a professional contract.” 

(To which Dakich said, before laughing, “On top of the one he signed at Arizona?”)

Their comments are after the 43-minute mark of this podcast.

For entirely different reasons, the Wildcats also don’t know exactly when they’ll get Ira Lee back but a big step has been reached: Miller said Lee is now symptom-free, and will be gradually taking on more practice duties while UA continues to monitor him.

“We're being very smart with Ira,” Miller said. “This isn't his first concussion (Lee missed a month in 2017-18 with one). So we just want to make sure through the doctor's care, (athletic trainer) Justin Kokoskie and Ira that he can become symptom-free. He's at that point now. And we're going to implement him now back into what we do slowly so that hopefully he doesn't have any of those symptoms flare up.

“We missed him tonight, and one of the reasons we missed him is you can't have enough guys that have played in games before, and Ira, the one thing about him is he's very, very physical. He gives us depth inside. The best thing that he does is rebound, both on offense and defense and (he brings) somebody in who's 22 years old, has been through these things. He could have been beneficial to our team tonight.

“Moving forward, he's going to rejoin us here almost immediately (for practice work) but I don't have the answer of when he'll be able to play games, simply because I don't know how he'll respond towards being back out on the court.”

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Actually, the Wildcats don’t know when any of them will be playing again.

UA announced Friday evening that its Sunday game with UTEP was canceled because of COVID issues with the Miners and that it was exploring other opportunities.

If UA can’t find another opponent for Sunday or Monday, the Wildcats are next scheduled to play Colorado on Dec. 2 – but the Buffaloes will be without at least three players because of COVID trouble, including a positive test to starter D'Shawn Schwartz.

James Akinjo scored 19 points Friday but his most important stat might have been 38 – the number of minutes he played, with Kriisa out and Jemarl Baker mired in foul trouble and making just 1 of 8 shots. Terrell Brown helped out with the playmaking, recording seven assists to just two turnovers, while Akinjo just kept going.

“James has an inner confidence that our team needs,” Miller said. “I thought he had some really great moments tonight. We asked him to play almost the entire game. and I wish we could have given him a break but Jemarl Baker was in such foul trouble that we just wanted to keep James on the court because of his experience.

“I thought he wore down a little bit as we kept playing him without a break but 19 points and he was 4 for 9 from 3. James has invested a ton of time in his shooting. I think he's an improved shooter, and more than capable of having nights like he had here tonight.”

Akinjo has already drawn comparisons to Mark Lyons, the scoring-minded point guard who left Xavier to play a grad transfer year at Arizona in 2012-13. He had no problem with that comparison.

“I watched Mark Lyons a lot,” Akinjo said. “I loved him at Xavier and I watched him a lot when he got here with coach (Miller). I will agree with that. I think I do some things a little differently. I think his game is a little different than mine but in terms of personality, I think that's a fair comparison.”

Instead of going with Terrell Brown in a small three-guard lineup, Miller is leaning toward more size on the wings. He started 6-7 freshman wing Dalen Terry at small forward and mixed in 6-7 Bennedict Mathurin, even noting that he might play them together in some occasions.

“We have the ability to play with those three smaller guards,” Miller said, referring to Akinjo, Baker and Brown. “Jemarl was obviously in very bad foul trouble here tonight, so that wasn't in the cards and that's why James played 38 minutes, and Terrell played with James quite a bit. But having the ability to have Ben and Dalen with two bigs in the game, I thought tonight taught us that gives us more depth and allows us to maybe play two of our younger players who are only going to get better.”

While Miller said center Christian Koloko was outstanding on the glass, with nine rebounds, Miller said he did not “approach the game with great confidence” and that showed.

“He's one of our team's best defenders. He struggled tonight in that area,” Miller said. “We need him to be better. We need him to be more confident. We need him to be more aggressive. We started him because he's one of our team's five best players. He’s had a very good fall, but I didn't think that the way he practiced necessarily carried over into tonight's season opener.

"But you have to understand how young of a player he is, how inexperienced he is. He's going to continue to improve. I have no doubt about that. But we need him to be better and I think he will.”