Until Saturday night, last place basketball teams in the Pac-12 had played 44 games against Arizona at McKale Center and you can guess how inept they were — two wins, 42 losses.
The difference had been so monumental that Arizona could’ve mailed it in and won most of those games by 20.
In 1988, Cal, USC and Washington tied for last place. When they arrived in Tucson, got rolled by a combined 101 points.
Times change.
When last-place Washington walked onto the court Saturday night at McKale, Arizona indeed mailed it in. It didn’t even put postage on the envelope in a hapless first half, trailing 38-23. And remember: this is a UW team that lost nine straight games from mid-January to late-February.
The last-place Huskies pushed Arizona around so thoroughly, winning 69-63, that Sean Miller used the definition of a last-place team to describe his team.
”Our performance tonight was poor, poor,” he said. “We weren’t ready to play. We didn’t run as fast, jump as high. We struggled to get back defensively. The guys lost confidence. We struggled to catch the ball. We struggled to dribble the ball.”
Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?
When Arizona was beaten by those WSU last-place teams in 1984 and 2010, there wasn’t a feeling of helplessness. That’s because the ’84 and ’10 Wildcats were still in their break-in mileage periods under Lute Olson and Miller.
In fact, both of those seasons were ultimately viewed as promising; Olson’s 1984 team won six of its last eight games and completed an 11-17 season by beating the same last-place WSU team in Pullman by 18 points.
And when Miller capped his first Arizona season at 16-15, the Wildcats celebrated Senior Day with a thrilling 86-84 overtime victory over UCLA, completing a weekend sweep of the Los Angeles schools.
Times change.
If you’re looking for a promising, feel-good scenario about the 2019-20 Wildcats, you’ve come to the wrong place.
Arizona’s attempt at Senior Day on Saturday was muted. The pre-game ceremony was held when maybe 7,000 people were at McKale. It was emotion-free, and a few minutes later the Wildcats similarly played without emotion in a desultory first half in which they missed 20 of 25 shots and committed eight turnovers.
Miller’s sideline demeanor didn’t change much. He’s seen this don’t-show-up-on-time, toughness-lacking version of his freshman-laden team so often that he at times seemed disconnected — and he rarely does that.
”I feel terrible for our crowd and our fans,” he said. More? He said his club exhibited a “deer-in-the-headlights mode for 20 minutes.”
”You’ve got to take wins in college basketball,” he said “You’ve got to go get ’em.”
That’s probably the G-rated version of the post-game chat he had with his team, but if any of it is getting through, it doesn’t show.
Even fifth-year senior Stone Gettings, a Cornell grad, admitted that Washington “came out with more energy than us.”
Now — gulp — Arizona must prepare to play the Huskies again on Wednesday, an elimination game in the Pac-12 Tournament. It might be the first time in league history that the Vegas bookies put the odds on the 12th place team over the fifth-place team.
What made Saturday’s loss to the Huskies more head-shaking was that Washington was accompanied by a load of unfavorable history. The UW became the first team since USC in 1986 to go from first place to last place in one season.
Yet when coach Mike Hopkins deployed his favored 2-3 zone defense against Arizona on Saturday it was hard to see any difference between the Husky team that went 15-3 last year and the one that finished 5-13 this season.
”It’s hard to believe they were 3-13 before this trip began,” said Miller. “Watching them (beat) Arizona State on Thursday, we knew we were in for a fight.”
Really?
The Huskies have one dynamic player, 6-foot 9-inch freshman center Isaiah Stewart, who plays with a toughness and tenacity that Arizona’s three freshmen starters have not been able to discover.
”Stewart’s like a lion,” said Miller. “He’s a problem.”
But there are so many holes in this Washington team that you can see how it lost to Cal and was swept by a bad Washington State team. For example, Hopkins used sophomore Elijah Hardy at point guard for 27 minutes. He averages 10 minutes a game. He is shooting 28 percent from the field and 14 percent from 3-point range.
Yet Hardy played fearlessly, pushing the action against Arizona’s Nico Mannion and Josh Green, and although he shot poorly, 1 for 6, he seemed like a better option than the Arizona freshmen.
Miller used no alibis. “The buck starts and stops with me,” he said. “It was very disappointing.”
More than anyone, Miller knows why that buck stopped on Saturday.
He said: “If you have to get guys motivated to play at McKale Center — the last game of the year — you’ve got a lot bigger problem than what seed you’ve got at the Pac-12 Tournament.”
The madness of March used to be the most anticipated time of the year in Tucson sports. Now it is accompanied by a sense of dread.
