Scouting report: Arizona Wildcats vs. Utah Utes

The Star's Bruce Pascoe previews game day essentials, from projected starting lineups to storylines and series history, ahead of the Arizona Wildcats' game against Utah on Thursday in Salt Lake City.

Game info

What: Arizona (13-4, 7-4) at Utah (7-7, 4-6)

Where: Huntsman Center, Salt Lake City

When: Thursday, 5 p.m.

TV: FS1

Radio: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Social media: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Probable starters: Arizona

G James Akinjo (6-0 junior)

G Terrell Brown (6-1 senior)

F Bennedict Mathurin (6-7 freshman)

F Azuolas Tubelis (6-10 freshman)

C Christian Koloko (7-0 sophomore)

Probable starters: Utah

G Rylan Jones (6-1 sophomore)

G Pelle Larsson (6-5 freshman)

F Timmy Allen (6-6 junior)

F Mikael Jantunen (6-8 sophomore)

C Branden Carlson (7-0 sophomore)

How they match up

The series: Arizona is 35-30 against Utah overall and 14-2 against the Utes since they joined the Pac-12 in 2011-12. But Utah won 83-76 the last time the teams met in Salt Lake City, when Utah’s Parker Van Dyke scored 23 points with 7-for-10 3-point shooting on Feb. 14, 2019.

This season: Utah and Arizona are not scheduled to meet at McKale Center due to the Pac-12’s unbalanced 20-game schedule. The Wildcats were scheduled to play all teams twice except Cal and Utah.

Utah overview: Guard Both Gach (Minnesota) was the only Utah starter who left after last season, providing more stability than normal for a program that typically suffers heavy spring departures. But it hasn’t translated into more success so far. The Utes missed the first week of the season because of their own COVID-19 issues, beat Washington and Idaho State to start their season but were then beaten soundly at BYU (82-64) and later lost their next four Pac-12 games. But Utah may have found some momentum when it came back from a 19-point deficit with 8:22 left to beat Colorado last Saturday, thanks in large part to the 23 points Alfonso Plummer poured in over the final 15 minutes.

Plummer (13.6) and forward Timmy Allen (16.8) are the Utes’ top two scorers in an what is often a continuity offense that features cuts, screens and passes that return to the initial formation. Allen can either initiate the offense, find a home on the wing or post up. When Allen brings it up, that allows Rylan Jones to play off the ball but Jones is the Utes’ primary point guard, with a 3-1 assist-turnover ratio and 19 steals on the other end. Utah starts with well-built Swedish freshman Pelle Larsson at shooting guard, while Plummer and speedy combo guard Ian Martinez come off the bench. Larsson isn’t a frequent 3-point shooter, often cutting to the basket instead, but he’s a careful shooter who has hit 13 of the 24 long-range shots he’s taken. Plummer takes 6.2 3-pointers s a game and hits them at a 36.8% rate.

There’s size and depth inside, with Finnish sophomore Mikael Jantunen and 21-year-old 7-foot sophomore Branden Carlson. While Jantunen leads the Pac-12 in shooting percentage at 65.0, Carlson blocks an average of 1.7 shots per game, with the 31st best block rate (9.8% of opponent shots when he’s on the floor) in Division I. Defensively, the Utes are going with man-to-man more regularly than in the past under coach Larry Krystkowiak, though they’ll tweak it off the ball to make matchups more favorable and will occasionally use a matchup zone.

He said it

“Utah is the best team in our conference in scoring from 2 (54.6%) and they depend on the 2-point field goal the most. I think a lot of that is because of Timmy Allen. He scores so much inside the arc and then their forwards and big guys do the same thing so Alfonso Plummer, when he’s really shooting the 3, is the perfect complement to the rest of their team.

"When he has a big night, Utah is at a very, very high level on offense and whoever’s on him has to do a great job. You can’t lose them in transition. You have to really be alert after timeouts. They do a great job of creating open 3-point shots for him with their offense. We can’t break down. Against Stanford, in those types of situations, it was continuous breakdown and it led to just backbreaking baskets, 3-point shots by (Spencer) Jones, that if you don’t take those away, you’re not going to win. I think Plummer represents that same challenge for our team.” — UA head coach Sean Miller

Key player (Utah): Timmy Allen 

The versatile Mesa Red Mountain High School product was a second-team all-Pac-12 pick as a sophomore last season and is on pace to do at least as well this season. Allen is both an efficient inside scorer (47.2% from two-point range) but also gets the assist on his teammates’ baskets 23.7% of the time when he’s on the floor, the 253rd best assist rate in college basketball. He’s one of only six players nationally to be averaging at least 16.5 points, 6.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists.

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Key player (Arizona): Bennedict Mathurin

Arizona will need that sprained ankle to feel pretty good in the mountains this weekend. Mathurin and Dalen Terry may be Arizona’s best chance to match up defensively with Allen, since the Wildcats’ other guards are considerably smaller than Allen or off-guard Pelle Larsson. The Wildcats also need Mathurin’s offense back at the level he was playing at before he rolled his ankle on Jan. 25 against ASU. In five games before he was hurt, Mathurin averaged 17.4 points and shot 51.9% from 3.

Sidelines

Travel partner lost (again)

As it did just before a swing to Washington over New Year’s weekend, ASU paused because of COVID-19 issues on Tuesday, meaning the Wildcats will again be without a travel partner to also face Utah and Colorado this week.

That means Colorado, as did Washington State, will have all week to prepare solely for the Wildcats. Utah, meanwhile, doesn’t have to worry about playing anyone else quickly after UA on Thursday.

The Utes were also scheduled to play a makeup game against ASU in Tempe on Tuesday, but postponed it before ASU paused.

“We just have to move on to the next one,” Utah forward Riley Battin said Wednesday. “It’s a good thing we didn’t travel all the way (to ASU) and now we’re just focused on Arizona.”

After postponing this weekend’s games at Colorado and Utah, ASU has now had six Pac-12 games postponed, making it unlikely the Sun Devils will be able to complete a full 20-game conference season.

COVID-19 also stopped Plummer

While waiting for his Wildcats to take on Washington in the first (and what became only) round of the Pac-12 Tournament last year, UA coach Sean Miller watched Utah’s Alfonso Plummer set a single-game tournament record for 3-pointers made with 11.

Plummer couldn’t do any more damage last season because COVID-19 concerns shut down the sports world the next day. But when Plummer emerged to throw in 8 for 13 shots from the field (4 of 6 from 3-point range) in scoring 23 points over the final 15 minutes of Utah’s dramatic comeback win at Colorado last Saturday, Miller was not surprised.

“Obviously his second half performance was just outstanding,” Miller said. “He willed his team to a comeback victory and it was a big win at Colorado for Utah.

“Looking back on that (March 11) day that was kind of like the last day of sports as we knew it. I didn’t realize he made 11 3-point shots in a game for the Pac-12…  tournament record. You make 11 3-point shots in the game — I mean they’re just there aren’t a lot of college basketball players walking around that are even capable of doing that.”

Miller found Temple coach John Chaney cunning, courageous

As an assistant coach at Xavier during the 2002-03 season, Miller was familiar with Temple coach John Chaney from Atlantic 10 competition. 

But it took a while until he really realized the full depth of the legendary Temple coach, who died last week.

On his radio show Monday and in his Zoom media conference Tuesday, Miller shared a story about how Chaney led the Owls to an upset of then-10th ranked Musketeers and eventual AP Player of the Year David West in the semifinals of the Atlantic 10 Tournament.

Chaney did it by first dragging out the second half of Temple’s game with Xavier a week earlier, at the end of the regular season.

“I’ll never forget he called a timeout, and he walked out into the middle of the court, and you know, Coach Chaney has a distinct voice — it’s loud and raspy and you know it’s him a mile away,” Miller said. “He got all three officials and his message — I’ll give you the PG version of it – was like ‘You have not worked in the last two hours of this game, and now you’re going to work harder than you ever have in the next two hours.’

“And I’ve never seen this before — they fouled on every possession for the next hour and a half, two hours. I think the final score was about a 30-point margin (96-65). It took two hours to play the last 15 minutes, and I didn’t know the backstory of it. I just kept shaking my head laughing and saying, ‘I cannot believe he’s going to do this all the way to the buzzer.’ “

A week later, Chaney’s payoff arrived: Behind a zone defense that Miller said appeared radically different than a week earlier, Temple beat Xavier 63-57.

“A lot of people don’t realize (Chaney’s zone) was never the same,” Miller said. “It was as if we were playing a completely different team. David had a hard time scoring. We never, never, never could get our feet on the ground.

“The backstory that I didn’t realize is that he told both his players and his staff (during the previous game) ‘Just stay with me. This is all part of a bigger puzzle.’ What he wanted to do was kind of build up our confidence, which he did, and let everybody anoint us as the greatest team ever in the Atlantic 10, which I think he said, to set us up with the big fat loss.

“I guess the moral of that article (written about Chaney’s ploy) and what I would describe is there will never be another coach like him. When he stood up for things, it was amazing. He was willing to boycott games and do things with coach (John) Thompson that not very many people would ever consider doing so. I’m just glad I had a chance to coach against him.”

Numbers game

2

Teams nationally who have never been outrebounded this season: Arizona and Utah State.

8

Arizona’s national rank in free-throw rate (43.3) — the ratio of free throws taken to field goals taken — a pace-independent measure of the Wildcats’ ability to get to the line.

56.6

Percent of Utah’s shots that are two-pointers, the highest in the Pac-12.