TEMPE β€” To help explain his Wildcats’ 22-point meltdown Saturday, Arizona coach Sean Miller pulled out of the weeds with a football analogy.

Asked why UA became less effective hedging ASU’s ball screens in the second half of the Sun Devils’ 66-65 comeback win, Miller used his answer to address the Wildcats’ entire defensive effort β€” and, by extension, their overall performance over what now has become five losses by five points or less this season.

β€œIt’s like I’m a defensive lineman and I’m rushing the quarterback, and then in the second half, you don’t get there,” Miller said. β€œYou’ve got to have toughness, and you have to have great wherewithal. Our defense was very, very good in the first half on a lot of possessions. Our defense wasn’t nearly as good in the second half. I would say that’s very similar to a lot of different games we played this year.

β€œIt’s called sustained effort. Not 16 (minutes). Not one half. Not at the end or at the beginning, but throughout. Game in, game out. Day in, day out. Every single play. It’s hard to create that. We struggle in that area and that’s why we’re not in the winner’s circle.”

While that might be a collective explanation, a look at five individuals might also help explain what exactly happened Saturday at Desert Financial Arena:

1. Nico Mannion

UA’s freshman guard was enjoying a triumphant homecoming to the Phoenix area early Saturday, hitting his fourth 3-pointer to give UA a 34-13 lead just 13 minutes into the game. A minute later, though, he was called for reaching, his second foul.

He sat out the rest of the half and, with UA taking a 22-point lead on Dylan Smith’s 3-pointer 20 seconds later, that didn’t seem all that bad for the Wildcats initially.

But by the time Mannion returned at the beginning of the second half ASU was down by just 13, and Mannion also lost his shooting touch: He went just 1 of 4 from the field the rest of the game.

Meanwhile, after picking up his fourth foul when UA led by just two with 10 minutes left, Mannion sat out more than five minutes. When he returned with 4:18 to go, the Sun Devils had just taken their first lead of the second half.

During those 11 combined minutes Mannion sat because of foul trouble, the Sun Devils outscored UA by nine.

That appears a pretty clear impact but neither Smith nor Miller put it quite that way.

Smith said ASU’s defense β€œdisrupted us when Nico was in the game as well” and that all UA’s guards needed to take better care of the ball.

When asked if Mannion’s absence hurt UA’s confidence, Miller quickly pivoted to talking about ASU guard Remy Martin, who scored the first seven points of the second half and finished with a game-high 24.

β€œI mean, obviously Nico is an important part of our team,” Miller said. β€œHim getting two fouls in the first half wasn’t a good thing for us. But I think the other part of it is you have to give a lot of credit to Remy Martin.

β€œHe’s a heck of a player. He’s a winner. He does it on offense. He does it on defense. He does it game in, game out. He’s got great confidence in himself. I thought he was the difference in the two teams today. He had 24 points on 17 shots. And he’s a load, he really is. He’s one of the best guards in our conference and he’s one of the best guards in college basketball.”

2. Max Hazzard

Despite hitting nine 3-pointers combined during UA’s wins over Utah and Colorado last week, Hazzard became the latest member of the Wildcats’ do-not-play club when he drove inside too quickly for a failed layup on UA’s last possession of the first half.

The missed layup gave ASU the ball with eight seconds left, and Martin hit a fast-break layup with two seconds left to cut UA’s lead to 13 entering halftime.

Miller was shown talking to Hazzard as they walked off the court into halftime, and Hazzard did not play at all in the second half.

β€œI just really lost confidence by the end of the first half,” Miller said. β€œThere’s a number of things as a coach that you have to get your guys to be able to do. When it’s your ball at the end of the half, it doesn’t matter where the game is played. You want to take the last shot. All right? You don’t want to go in there and jump into somebody at 13 seconds.

β€œIt’s like β€˜What team are you playing for?’ You take the last shot. That’s disciplined. That’s how you win basketball games. You got to take care of the ball and we have to go with the guys that are going to play that way.”

With a deep bench allowing him to permanently sub out players he deems aren’t playing the right way, Miller sat Ira Lee and Dylan Smith both out for the second half against St. John’s on Dec. 21.

Miller also kept Lee out for the first 16 minutes at Oregon State while using center Chase Jeter only sparingly during that Oregon trip: Miller did not play Jeter for the final 18 minutes of UA’s overtime loss at Oregon and then gave him just 18 minutes on Jan. 12 against Oregon State.

3. Chase Jeter

Two days after the Wildcats lost that OSU game by 17, Jeter reported back pain in practice, Miller said. Jeter missed the Utah and Colorado games but even though Jeter was cleared fully last week and returned to practice before the ASU game, Miller did not play him at all Saturday.

Miller said Jeter had only been through about β€œone and a half” full practices before Saturday.

β€œHe’s not quite ready,” Miller said. β€œHe’s learning how to practice right now.”

While it’s unclear how effective Jeter might have been, considering his slide before his absence, Jeter has been a relatively high-percentage scorer around the basket who has sometimes benefited from the defensive attention Zeke Nnaji gets.

4. Josh Green

Entering Saturday, UA’s third-leading scorer never had fewer than seven points and never shot worse than his 2-for-7 performance against St. John’s.

He was 0 for 8 from the field on Saturday, scoring two points on his two free throw attempts. Among other shots, Green missed a reverse layup that would have given UA a 62-59 lead with 4:13 to go and, on UA’s final possession, passed up a quick look on the perimeter to drive inside the lane and throw up a shot that ASU smothered as time ran out.

5. Sean Miller

The coach said he might have been to blame for playing only Nnaji inside during the Sun Devils’ final play, when Verge outfaked Jemarl Baker and drove left to the hoop.

He also blamed himself somewhat for a collective UA effort that didn’t prove sustainable, again.

β€œIt’s about performance. You have to grade our team and me as a coach,” Miller said. Against β€œGonzaga and Baylor, which I know are two of the best teams in the country, for a significant portions of those games, we played really well. But you don’t get rewarded for playing well for a part of the game.

β€œAnd some of playing well isn’t making a shot. It’s blocking a shot. It’s getting loose balls, getting rebounds. I’d say we had two or three rebounds where the balls in our hands and we couldn’t secure it.

β€œI wish I could help our guys break through. I’m the coach and it really starts with me, and I’m gonna try even harder than I am to give those guys as much confidence as I can. And to see if we can break through one day.”

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