Wildcats move quickly but with structure in preseason practices under Tommy Lloyd

Even though Justin Kier was part of the 13th-most uptempo offense in the country at Georgia last season, there are still times when things move pretty fast for the Arizona guard.

It’s not that the Wildcats are any faster than the Bulldogs, but that new UA coach Tommy Lloyd has more wrinkles in his uptempo system. Since Kier is playing some point guard this preseason, that also means he’s now heavily involved with on-ball screens, which are common in Lloyd’s system.

“Last year I learned to play really fast and aggressive, but this year I’m learning to play fast and in control,” Kier said after the Wildcats’ practice Friday. “It’s a bit comparable, but I think we’re a little bit more structured-fast here, you know?

“We have some plays to get into secondaries (actions) but this is a little bit better pace and just kind of more control. So that’s a good thing and I’m learning that.”

It takes a lot of quick thinking, reacting to how the defense plays, and a lot of energy. Gonzaga ran the seventh-quickest tempo last season and Lloyd, the longtime Zags assistant who took over the Wildcats in April, has made it clear Arizona will be in that ballpark, too.

In fact, even though Lloyd said he hasn’t started sorting out a playing rotation yet, he said he could envision going nine or 10 players deep in order to keep everyone rested.

“I think we’re gonna be able to throw out a rotation that’s going to be able to keep bodies fresh,” Lloyd said. “We’ll keep them (performing well) on the court and absorb foul trouble because those things factor so much into winning more than maybe people think. I think that we’re going to be really competitive on a nightly basis.”

The Wildcats have 12 scholarship players and six walk-ons, though combo guard Pelle Larsson is still recovering from an August surgery to repair a broken foot. (Lloyd said again Friday that he anticipated Larsson “to be at 100% for the majority of the season, if not all.”)

But while running the Wildcats through just over two hours of drills Friday at the Richard Jefferson Gym, an event that was open to media and local coaches, Lloyd went with two teams of eight players each for some drills. Three of the eight players on each team would stand along the baseline and rotate in.

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“You can’t be going as hard as we’re practicing” without rest, Lloyd said. “Guys need a few reps to catch their breaths.”

Among Friday’s drills were those that emphasized transition offense, rebounding, feeding the post and even diving on the floor.

“You get tired,” junior center Christian Koloko said. “But we get breaks, water breaks. You get time to recover and then go back.”

While Lloyd said he ran the Wildcats particularly hard on Friday because they had been off for two consecutive days, in part because of Wednesday’s Pac-12 men’s basketball media day, he said he also cranked things up a little bit last week, after Arizona’s Oct. 2 Red-Blue Game.

“I kind of created a little bit of adversity for the guys and I wanted to see how we reacted when things got a little bit tougher and I was a little bit more critical,” Lloyd said. “That’s part of the learning process. I want us to struggle before we compete against somebody else because you don’t want your first struggles to come under the lights.

“It’s not necessarily yelling at them but just putting them in situations where they’re making mistakes, and then seeing how they respond from those mistakes. I mean, the game is a game of mistakes and making mistakes is not necessarily is a bad thing if you learn from them. You don’t want to make a bunch of mistakes in a row. You want to learn `OK, here’s where mistakes are coming. How do we avoid these situations?’ “

There’s still plenty of time for learning. The Wildcats have over three full weeks of practice remaining before their Nov. 9 opener against NAU, including a private scrimmage against Saint Mary’s on Oct. 23 in Phoenix and a Nov. 1 exhibition against Eastern New Mexico at McKale Center.

At this point, Lloyd said his base offense has been installed but there’s still more structure to blend into all that speed.

“When you play this way, there’s multiple options, so much movement,” Lloyd said. “You’re always fine-tuning. I think we’re bouncing back and forth between teaching the whole and breaking down some parts. You can kind of see us doing that in practice a little bit. But I think these guys are getting close to being ready to go out and compete against somebody else.”