SAN FRANCISCO – Watching the ESPN replay of Arizona’s final possession in its 70-67 loss to St. John’s, it was hard to ignore the commentary of broadcasters Bill Walton and Dave Pasch.
And not for the usual reasons (like Pasch asking Walton exactly what he meant by saying he was “lit up” at the beginning of the game.)
“So what do you do here if you’re Sean Miller?” Pasch said as UA exited its final timeout, with 20.6 seconds left and UA trailing 68-67. “Do you go quickly? Try to get a basket quick?”
“You have to go right now,” Walton said. “Attack. What do you do -- run time off the clock when you’re down?”
“Depends on what kind of shot they can get,” Pasch said, as the Wildcats began passing in the backcourt. “Looks like they’re gonna do that.”
“OK,” Walton said. “This one better go down.”
It didn’t. The Wildcats ran 12 seconds off the clock before Nico Mannion, who missed a 25-footer earlier in the possession before an offensive rebound allowed UA to call a timeout and set up that final play, drove right of the basket off a high screen from Zeke Nnaji, threw up a floater that was similar – but not as difficult as his game-winner against Pepperdine -- and missed.
“You know,” UA coach Sean Miller said after the game, “when you lose tough games, a lot of times the spotlight's on the last play or plays. But every play is the same. It's being really good at the end of the first half. It's going into halftime, not down 14, taking care of the ball the first 20 minutes (when) we had 10 turnovers.
“So a big part of our loss today was the deficit that we had throughout the game. I can make the argument that we rallied and we played maybe our best basketball towards the end, whether the last play goes in or doesn't go in, that remains to be seen.”
On top of the turnovers, many early ones of which came on ill-advised passes after the Wildcats’ initially broke the St. John’s press, the other issues Miller griped about afterward included a five-rebound deficit to the smaller Red Storm players and, again, UA’s poor shot selection.
UA finished shooting 39.6% overall but made just 3 of 16 3-pointers.
“During the non-conference season, we've been able to get away with taking some quick bad shots,” Miller said. “I thought in the second half, we might have taken one or two, maybe two or three. In the first half, we shot insane shots, (past the line for) 3s by players that shouldn't be shooting them.
“Some of our 3-point shots in the first half, we were shooting NBA 3s. With the NBA line being on the court, we might have taken five or six NBA 3s and that speaks to our lack of poise, really our lack of confidence at the beginning of the game. But we certainly gained more confidence as the as the game grew on and we’ve gotta be that type of team for longer periods of time.”
Miller also griped about UA’s 22 fouls, sending the Red Storm to the line 34 times. Chase Jeter fouled out with more than four minutes left, while Josh Green and Max Hazzard each had four.
“If you look at the 13 non conference games we played, we foul at an astronomical level,” Miller said. “That has to change but some of our fouls are just a function of discipline. You have to be able to guard dribble penetration.”
Arizona is averaging 19.6 fouls per game, and ranks just 282 nationally in opponent free throw rate (free throws attempted divided by field goals attempted. The Wildcats' opponents overall take just 1.8 fewer free throws per game.
Finally, just in case anyone is wondering, Miller said wearing a windbreaker on the sidelines Saturday was a result of a pregame agreement to dress down a bit during the Basketball Hall of Fame-run event. Most coaches on both sides wore polos.
"In events like this sometimes the coaching staffs talk and I think that was our agreement," Miller said.
Our game story and notebook from Saturday are attached, along with the box score and UA's final nonconference stats.
