'Right now, we're hungry': Wildcats staring down five questions as they open practice

Arizona Wildcats face key questions as they open practice

The NCAA is allowing basketball teams to start full practices earlier than ever, but the Arizona Wildcats have chosen to wait. 

Arizona will hold its first practice Sunday, five days after the first allowable date. That allows the team to use the maximum 30 preseason practices or scrimmages more compactly as it approaches its Nov. 7 regular-season opener against Houston Baptist.

Besides, the Wildcats have really been preparing for the 2018-19 season since July. NCAA rules have allowed increasingly bigger offseason workout windows in recent years,  permitting up to four hours a week of total team workouts in the fall before full practices begin.

Having revamped its roster with five new players, Arizona has taken advantage of the offseason workouts.

“Right now, we’re hungry,” sophomore guard Alex Barcello said in July. “Every day we step into our workouts with coach (Sean) Miller and the coaches and it’s very vocal. It’s loud and the energy’s up, no matter if it’s 6:45 a.m. or 4:30 p.m.”

What does change with the opening of full practices, however, is the sense of urgency. The Wildcats’ regular-season opener is less than six weeks away, and they’ll need to settle on a new starting lineup and start answering several questions in the weeks ahead.

Here are five of those questions:

1. Who’s the point guard?

Throughout most of his nine years as Arizona’s head coach, Miller has mostly stuck with one point guard: Guys such as Nic Wise, MoMo Jones, Mark Lyons, T.J. McConnell and Parker Jackson-Cartwright.

But an in interview with Blue Ribbon Yearbook and the Star last month, Miller indicated he may go with a somewhat different approach, with multiple guys capable of playmaking on the floor at the same time. Graduate transfer Justin Coleman, freshman Brandon Williams and Barcello are all capable of scoring and playmaking.

Miller said Coleman is Arizona’s “quintessential point guard,” and will be the point guard when he’s on the court, but that UA can mix and match others on the ball.

“One of the things we really tried to do this spring in recruiting was get high character experienced, players who have been through the battles and Justin has a unique story,” Miller said. “Even his first couple of years at Alabama he had big games. They really respect him in the SEC and most recently at Samford, he made his teammates better, he was an adept passer and yet he can keep you honest scoring the ball.”

Miller describes Williams simply as “a guard,” with his ability to provide skills, size and athleticism in just about any backcourt role.

“In today’s game, if you look at the next level and you think about the style that today’s guards play, he is that type of player where he can score and make people better,” Miller said. “Justin Coleman can do that but Brandon’s 6-foot-2, he’s strong and he has a big upside as an athlete. He can finish at the rim, he’s very good in transition and very good with the ball in his hands, and yet he can score and create his own shot.”

Barcello gives UA yet another option, and a shooting touch Miller said he didn’t turn to much last season because of Arizona’s other options. With Williams being 6-foot-2, 190 and Barcello at 6-2, 180, Miller said it’s possible all three guards play together at times.

“I don’t think it’s an either/or situation where if Brandon was in the game Alex cannot play or if Justin Coleman is playing then Brandon can’t play,” Miller said. “For us it’s about being able to put our best players on the court. If you look at our numbers, we might have more of a three-guard mentality because we have more of those guys this year.”

2. Who’s the alpha?

The Wildcats have experience with Duke transfer Chase Jeter, Coleman, Pitt grad transfer Ryan Luther and returning junior guard Dylan Smith, who started eight games last season and is UA’s leading returning scorer (4.3 points). But they also just might see the kind of Brandon Randolph they did during their 2017 trip to Spain and at times early last season.

That is, the aggressive, versatile wing who can score in a number of different ways and could be this team's leading scorer. Randolph scored 21 points on 8-for-13 shooting to lead Arizona in its first Spanish exhibition game, and was a rare bright spot in the Wildcats’ 25-point loss to Purdue in the Battle 4 Atlantis, scoring 17 points on 7-for-11 shooting.

Randolph’s playing time dropped mostly into the single digits once Rawle Alkins returned from a foot injury, and he finished averaging just 3.7 points per game for the season. But Randolph said he remained the same guy.

“It never affected me mentally,” Randolph said in July. “I know how good a player I am and I also know how good Rawle and Zo (Allonzo Trier) are.”

Randolph could thrive with a much bigger opportunity this season. Alkins and Trier are gone, as is the rest of UA’s starting lineup from last season. Randolph is one of UA’s older players, a 21-year-old sophomore. 

“Brandon may be our overall most talented returner,” Miller said. “I watch him move and he’s able to do things that the best players in college basketball do that look like him, they move like him. He had a great starting point coming here because he can really shoot the basketball and I don’t see that changing.

"Like a lot of freshmen, especially when you don’t have a big role, you can become inconsistent in games and he went through that spell in the Pac-12. But I have no doubt he can become one of the team’s best shooters, and our tact is to take what he does well and build around it.

“He knows what to do, how to do it, we can trust him. And he can play in today’s game defensively, too.”

3. Will Ira Lee miss any time?

The sophomore forward was arrested for super extreme DUI on Aug. 19. Arizona has not said if he is facing or will face discipline within the program. The school said in an Aug. 21 statement only that it was “reviewing the incident for team consequences.”

Whatever the school decides, Lee may face significant legal fallout.

If he is found guilty of super extreme DUI (blood-alcohol level of 0.20 or greater), Lee would face a minimum of three days in jail and nine days of house arrest and would have to wear a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet. If convicted of extreme DUI (between 0.15 and 0.19), Lee would face a minimum of two days in jail and seven days of house arrest. A standard DUI would cost him a minimum of one day in jail.

In an apology on Twitter, Lee said he was “already emotionally unstable and dealing with different personal issues” even before his grandmother died on Aug. 17. Lee told officers about his grandmother's death after he was pulled over.

“It is a regret I will have to live with for the rest of my life,” Lee said. “The only person I can blame is myself because I knew how unstable I was and instead of seeking for help, I turned to drinking, which led to a terrible mistake.”

UA’s statement on Lee noted that “students also have access to counseling and other support services.”

4. Do they want to defend?

A year ago, Miller was praising then-freshman Emmanuel Akot as one of the best freshman defenders he’s ever had, putting him in a league with Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Nick Johnson, and Aaron Gordon.

But Akot never turned into a significant factor on either end of the court last season, in part because of knee tendinitis. Arizona was limited defensively by playing 7-footers Deandre Ayton and Dusan Ristic, and it ranked just 83rd best in national defensive efficiency — the worst mark since Miller’s first UA season in 2009-10.

Akot “had some tendinitis and knee problems that really hindered him but we worked hard this spring and summer to put him in a better position,” Miller said. “I think he’s bigger and stronger. He’s always been a very clever ballhandler and passer.”

If healthy, the 6-7, 200-pound Akot can help revive the defense with both his ranginess and skills. He'll be playing more often at power forward, giving the Wildcats the ability to better match up with small or medium-sized frontcourts than when the 7-foot-1 Deandre Ayton was sometimes pulled to the perimeter by smaller forwards.

Losing Ayton (11.9 rebounds per game) and Ristic (6.9) obviously will put more pressure on the Wildcats to maintain what was a good rebounding team last season.

5. Is the elephant still in the gym?

Arizona entered full practices under clouds of controversy last season, with then-assistant coach Book Richardson having been arrested on federal fraud and bribery charges as part of the federal investigation into college basketball.

Richardson is gone, and Miller returned after denying a February ESPN report that he discussed a pay-for-play scheme. Arizona's recruiting also appears to have begun to rebound from the investigation’s effects, which cost the Wildcats five-star guard Jahvon Quinerly, four-star forward Shareef O’Neal and the consideration of several other five-star players in the class of 2018.

It's calmer now, but there could be drama in the courtroom ahead.The first of the trials related to the FBI investigation is scheduled to begin Monday in New York. Former Adidas reps Merl Code and James Gatto and sports agent Christian Dawkins are all facing significant charges. A federal complaint alleges that Code told Gatto that Arizona was offering $150,000 to a player — believed to be Nassir Little, now of North Carolina — and that Adidas needed to match the offer in order to keep the player from heading to Arizona.

Richardson’s trial is scheduled to begin in late April.