Game info

Who: Arizona Wildcats (7-3) vs Baylor Bears (5-3)

Where: McKale Center, Tucson

When: 9 p.m. Saturday

Watch: ESPN2

Listen: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Follow: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Probable starters: Arizona

G Justin Coleman (5-10 senior)

G Brandon Williams (6-2 freshman)

F Brandon Randolph (6-6 sophomore)

F Emmanuel Akot (6-7 sophomore)

C Chase Jeter (6-10 junior)

Probable starters: Baylor

G King McClure (6-3 senior)

G Makai Mason (6-1 senior)

F Mark Vital (6-5 sophomore)

F Mario Kegler (6-7 sophomore)

F Tristan Clark (6-9 sophomore)

How they match up

Series history

Arizona leads Baylor 5-3 in the all-time series but the teams haven’t played each other in 21 years. In the last matchup, the defending national champion Wildcats won 83-68 on Dec. 8, 1997, at Waco, Texas, as part of an unusual two-game nonconference swing in which they also beat Texas 88-81 two days earlier.

Game contract

This is the first of a two-game series Arizona and Baylor agreed to in May 2016. Baylor will host a return game with UA at Waco, Texas, on Dec. 7, 2019. No payments were exchanged.

Baylor overview

The Bears are retooling after losing four starters from a NIT team last season, while part-time starting guard Jake Lindsey is out all season after undergoing hip surgery. But the Bears are balanced and go deeper now that guard Makai Mason is back after missing three early games with an ankle injury and wing Mario Kegler has returned from a six-game suspension for an unspecified violation of team rules.

The team’s lone returning senior, guard King McClure, provides leadership and has scored 20-plus points in three games already this season, while Mason arrived as a grad transfer from Yale and has scored in double figures over four of the five games he has played for Baylor so far. Kegler is a versatile wing who transferred from Mississippi State while forward Mark Vital is a high-motor rebounder and dunk artist who grabs 11.6 percent of Baylor’s missed shots when he’s on the floor, the 164th best offensive rebounding percentage in the country. In the post, Tristan Clark is a feared rim protector, scorer and rebounder who has blocked 24 shots and changed countless others.

The Bears aren’t a great shooting team, hitting only 30.1 percent of 3-pointers and just 67.7 percent from the free-throw line, but their missed shots often still lead to scoring, thanks to an offensive rebounding percentage of 35.1. With a mix of man-to-man and zone defense, Baylor is also one of Division I’s top 60 most efficient defenses. Thanks in large part to Clark, they block 19.9 percent of opponents’ two-point attempts.

He said it

“They’re an elite shot-blocking team, an athletic team, have many different players, balanced scoring ... and they certainly can beat you on second shots. They also have a way of blending both zone defense and man and we haven’t faced a lot of zone this year, so we’re obviously preparing for that. They have great length in their zone. ... It’s a pivotal game for both conferences and both teams, and hopefully we’re going to be ready.

— Arizona coach Sean Miller

Key player: Tristan Clark

Baylor

The sophomore from San Antonio is not only an efficient scorer, leading the country in field-goal percentage (75.9 percent) but he has a way of making opponents look inefficient: Clark blocks 12.7 percent of opponents’ shots when he’s in the game, the 16th best block percentage in Division I.

Key player: Ira Lee

Arizona

The hard-charging sophomore wasn’t a factor at Alabama last Sunday while playing just six minutes, but the Wildcats will need him in the game and on the glass against a good-rebounding opponent. If he’s effective off the bench, Lee can take some pressure off Chase Jeter and help negate Baylor’s depth advantage, too.

Game notes that “belong in the Smithsonian”

Because the ever-effusive Bill Walton will be working his first Baylor basketball game Saturday on the ESPN2 telecast, the school honored him by splashing “Waltonisms” and Grateful Dead song titles throughout its official game notes.

For example, a list of accomplishments of Baylor head coach Scott Drew was introduced by noting that Drew “Is doing things we’ve never seen from anybody — from any planet!” The rim-protecting prowess and inside scoring of Tristan Clark was headlined “He’s like a four-armed Dikembe Mutombo around the basket!”

Similarly, a paragraph about Baylor’s nonconference success was entitled: “Incalculable numbers of remarkable happenings,” and the headline for a recap of the Bears’ win over South Dakota on Nov. 27 read: “Cosmically Synergistic Magnificent Harmonic Convergence.”

Respecting the #EMOY

Sean Miller’s “film room” series took a humorous twist on Friday when the school released footage of the coach reviewing and “grading” equipment manager Brian Brigger’s performances.

Miller commended Brigger for going hard after a “loose ball,” a discarded basketball that was rolling around next to the postgame handshake line, then went over clips of his pregame tweets featuring the uniforms the Wildcats will wear that day.

Brigger said he often encodes a meaningful number with the jerseys shown in the tweets, putting the No. 3 jersey next to No. 2 before the Wildcats played UConn because, he said “three plus two equals five” and No. 5 was Brandon Randolph, who is from nearby Yonkers, N.Y. (as it turned out, Randolph was a hero that day by scoring 20 points and hitting all nine free throws he took).

Miller had Brigger explain his “EMOY Salute,” an enthusiastic arm gesture Brigger started when Lauri Markkanen hit a key 3-pointer in UA’s 67-62 win at Cal during the 2016-17 season. And, in terms of “checking ego at the door,” Miller asked why Brigger was called EMOY — equipment manager of the year — in the first place.

Brigger pleaded that it wasn’t his idea, but instead one of student managers who came up with it several years ago. “They loved my enthusiasm,” Brigger said. “They thought I was probably a little crazy and just wanted to come up with some slogan.”

In all seriousness, Miller indicated he loves it, too.

“Your enthusiasm, your passion, brings a smile to players’ faces,” Miller said. “The season is a grind, so the more people you have that have that positive energy, it makes things go, and a lot of times it’s the difference between a championship program and just a good one.”

Hibernating Bears

While Arizona and many other college basketball teams took a week or so this month without games, in order to rest and finish up fall semester academics, Baylor went to an extreme: The Bears haven’t played since they lost 73-61 at Wichita State on Dec. 1.

“It was kind of weird to have a two-week break where there were no games,” Baylor guard King McClure told reporters in Waco on Friday. “It kind of felt like a summer again. But I’m actually kind of glad we did it, because I could see the team getting better and starting to form.”

King and Baylor coach Scott Drew both said it helped the Bears continue to have some extended practice time after guard Makai Mason (ankle injury) and Mario Kegler (suspension) missed games last month.

“The two weeks have been tremendous,” Drew said. “We’ve had finals, which has limited practice some. The days we’ve been able to practice we’ve been able to get some chemistry, get some cohesiveness. We’ve been able to have the guys who have been playing in games play together, practice together. We’ve tweaked a couple of things offensively and defensively.”

Numbers game

1

Baylor loss in the Bears’ last 29 December games against unranked opponents.

52

Straight homecourt nonconference wins for Arizona.

92.3

Brandon Randolph’s free-throw shooting percentage, tied for the 14th best mark in Division I.

500

Number of games Scott Drew will have coached at Baylor after Saturday’s game (he’s won 301 of 499 so far).