STANFORD, Calif. — Rawle Alkins practiced and felt fine Friday, which wasn’t just good news for the Arizona Wildcats.
It was also good news for the Pac-12 and, really, for all of college basketball.
UA coach Sean Miller said Friday that Alkins will play against Stanford, after soreness in his previously broken right foot kept him out Wednesday at Cal. That means both teams will be fully loaded for a nationally televised showdown in which the winner gets sole possession of first place in the Pac-12.
Arizona will have Alkins back at small forward, giving the UA a rotation of up to 11 players that includes five projected NBA draft picks.
Stanford, which was wrecked by absences earlier in the season, has all its firepower available in a tidy seven-to-eight-man rotation. It has enough size and experience up front that it might even be able to slow down Deandre Ayton for a second or two.
And CBS will be on hand to share the game all over the country via free television, with a Saturday afternoon tipoff that means even the East Coast might pay attention.
“It’s a big deal,” Stanford coach Jerod Haase said. “It’s a big-time game against one of the elite programs in the country.”
A few weeks ago, the Cardinal hardly looked worthy of hosting such an event. Stanford went just 6-7 in nonconference play and opened its Pac-12 season by coughing up a 17-point lead and losing to Cal, which hasn’t won since then.
But with guard Dorian Pickens (ankle injury) and forward KZ Okpala (substandard AP calculus grade) back in its lineup, Stanford has since won five straight games, including a home sweep of the Los Angeles schools, a road sweep in Washington and a win over ASU on Wednesday.
“If they had their entire team intact from start to finish, I think they would have two or three more wins overall, which is a big deal,” Miller said. “If you judge them on when they’ve had their entire team, I think they’re one of the best teams in the conference. …
“In the six games they’ve played in the conference, they’ve been exceptional. We look at them as we’re playing a team that is contending for first place.”
Of course, they are. It’s still only the fourth week of conference play, but the winner Saturday will take over first place in the Pac-12 at 6-1.
What Miller and the Wildcats are also bracing for is that the Cardinal just might be hanging around near the top of the conference entering March, when Stanford and Cal visit McKale Center on the final weekend of the regular season.
If the Cardinal will have staying power in the Pac-12, it’ll be because of an improved blend of experience, size and newfound athleticism in freshmen Daejon Davis, forward Oscar da Silva and Okpala.
“KZ Okpala is a tremendous athlete and I think he fills a void they really needed filled,” Miller said.
Miller said Davis, who initially signed to play for UA associate head coach Lorenzo Romar at Washington before the Huskies fired him, is a big scoring point guard who has improved with experience.
Then there’s the Cardinal’s veteran starters, all of whom Miller once tried to recruit to the Wildcats: Pickens, and forwards Reid Travis and Michael Humphrey.
Travis just might be the closest statistical answer anybody in the Pac-12 has to Ayton. Even though he’s four inches shorter than Ayton, Travis plays big and smart around the basket, with six double-doubles and a scoring average of 20 points per game that’s second in the league to only Ayton.
Stanford also has 7-footer Josh Sharma coming off the bench, and could throw some zone into its man-to-man defense or use other weapons on Ayton.
“We’re gonna find out,” Miller said. “Sharma’s very active and runs the floor exceptionally well.
“But think a lot of what stops and starts with Stanford is Reid Travis. He’s a handful. Twenty points a game, really gets to the foul line. Drives the ball exceptionally well. Rebounds. He’s physical and he’s been through the battles. I think he’s one of the top five players in our conference.
“So you add him to (Stanford’s other strengths) and you can see why they have such a great team.”
Yeah, well, Stanford will still have to defend Ayton.
How does that work? During a Stanford news conference Thursday, somebody asked Haase if he’d ever seen anybody like Ayton in college basketball in recent years.
“No. I mean ... no,” Haase said, generating laughter. “He’s a one-of-a-kind player. Whether it’s once in a decade or once in generation or whatever, his skillset, his size, his quickness, his physicality — he has so many so many weapons.”
What’s more, Ayton will have a full complement of talent around him, meaning too much attention on him and Ristic inside can make life easier for Parker Jackson-Cartwright, Allonzo Trier and, now, Alkins.
After breaking his foot on Sept. 26 and missing the Wildcats’ first nine games of the season, Alkins has played increasingly well since his Dec. 9 return but began to feel soreness again during practice on Monday. When he felt pain again Tuesday, the UA decided to sit him out at Cal.
But even as X-rays came back negative this week, Alkins wasn’t in the clear until the pain went away.
“He had some soreness in his foot, which we knew could happen,” Miller said. “When you get it, it’s important that we deal with it in the short term in a smart way and give it a couple of days to calm down.
“Then you find out if it’s more serious or not. If the pain doesn’t subside, maybe we have an issue that’s bigger that we thought. But it did subside, and he’s all set.”
So is everyone else, for what could be the Wildcats’ biggest game yet this season.
