LAS VEGAS — Five moments that defined the Pac-12 Tournament, which culminated with Arizona’s 83-80 win over Oregon on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena:
1. Miller gives it to Alford. A revenge plot nearly three weeks in the making. Alexandre Dumas couldn’t have scripted it better.
Sean Miller’s calculated timeout as the game clock dwindled to 0.9 seconds in Arizona’s 86-75 win over UCLA was a reminder that Miller never forgets a slight. He claims he was just returning the favor for UCLA coach Steve Alford’s similar late-game timeout in the Bruins’ 77-72 win over the Wildcats in Tucson on Feb. 25.
Arizona must have stewed over this for weeks.
And it did appear that the Wildcats played with a bit of extra juice against the Bruins, and then the next day in an 83-80 title-clinching win over the Oregon Ducks, who beat Arizona in February in Eugene, 85-58.
2. Boucher goes down. Who knows if Arizona ends up cutting down the nets on Saturday night if Chris Boucher plays for Oregon? The Ducks’ big man was lost for the season with a torn ACL suffered in Oregon’s Friday night semifinal win over Cal, drastically changing the course of the tournament.
A year after earning a No. 1 seed and an Elite Eight berth, Oregon has got to do some quick roster maneuvering and fast. Boucher was the Pac-12’s best shot-blocker, and one of the best in the nation, and his absence was palpable against Arizona. In their first matchup this year, Boucher had 12 points, four rebounds and two blocks.
3. Trier makes his return. The single biggest factor in this Pac-12 Tournament didn’t happen in March, but in late-January.
Allonzo Trier’s mid-season return from a suspension made an already good Arizona team potentially great, as the Wildcats were already 17-2 without him.
But Trier scored 23 points on Saturday and hit several clutch late free throws when no other Wildcats could, finishing 10-for-11 from the foul line on the night.
4. Arizona shuts down Dorsey in first half. A onetime Arizona commit, Oregon’s Tyler Dorsey has done some of his best work against the Wildcats. He scored 31 points in two games against Arizona last year, including 19 in the Pac-12 semifinals, and one of his six 20-point games this year came against the Wildcats, too, when he torched them for 23 in their 27-point win.
Two of his other five 20-point games? Thursday and Friday in the Pac-12 Tournament, when he had 21 against Arizona State and 23 in the semifinals against Cal.
On Saturday, however, the Wildcats keyed in on Dorsey, and while Dillon Brooks dominated the ball for the Ducks — and finished with 25 points — Dorsey was quiet in the first half, finishing with just two points.
5. USC falls to UCLA in rubber match. The Pac-12 was largely considered a three-team conference this year, with Oregon, Arizona and UCLA seemingly far ahead of the pack. In fact, despite having three teams among the top 10 in the country, the league will likely have just four NCAA Tournament bids.
The one other March Madness-bound squad — USC — was the only other team with a chance to make a surprising Pac-12 tourney run.
But UCLA finally toughened up against a Trojans squad that handed the Bruins one of their three regular-season losses this season, and UCLA escaped with a 76-74 win.
Bennie Boatwright missed a 3-pointer with 37 seconds left, and Jordan McLaughlin and Elijah Stewart both missed layups in the final 20 seconds to end any USC threat.
