Milestone signifies progress Oumar Ballo, Pelle Larsson making with Arizona Wildcats

Once Pelle Larsson picked up his phone after playing Thursday night, the secret was out.

“My mom texted me right after the game, so she made me aware of it,” Larsson said.

Frida Larsson told her son he needed only seven points to become a 1,000-point scorer in college, which Pelle became during No. 10-ranked Arizona’s 92-73 win over Utah on Saturday night.

A similar scenario was only slightly less obvious to UA center Oumar Ballo, who needed 17 entering Saturday’s game to reach 1,000. He said he was told in the second half that he was only four points away when Larsson hit the mark with 12:28 left.

Ballo’s teammates knew it, too. In fact, sophomore Kylan Boswell, who spent the weekend dishing eye-opening assists to Keshad Johnson (a 15-foot no-look bullet against Utah) and Larsson (a 70-foot, double-bounce spiral against Colorado), maybe pushed his luck trying to make it happen.

With Ballo sitting on 998 for his career entering the final six minutes Saturday, when UA led Utah 77-64, Boswell tried to hit him on the run but threw it too far for a turnover.

“I didn’t realize he was trying to get O his thousandth point,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “I didn’t like it because it was five-something minutes to go, and (it was) `Let’s run a little clock, unless we have something easy.’ ”

So it was Caleb Love, instead, who hit Ballo with an assist less than two minutes later, and nobody, as it turned out, may have been happier to see it than Lloyd.

Lloyd noted with a smile after the game that he wasn’t a “milestone guy” but spoke to the significance of Ballo’s achievement, having worked for two years with the Malian big man as a project at Gonzaga — and watching him bloom into an all-conference player last season.

Ballo sat out an academic redshirt season in 2019-20 at Gonzaga and then remained behind standout big man Drew Timme and eventually then-freshman Ben Gregg in 2020-21, scoring only 60 points as a redshirt freshman that season.

Then Ballo followed Lloyd to Arizona before the 2021-22 season and has scored 940 points since.

“He was obviously going through some tough times,” Lloyd said. “He and I were together, and for him to be able to flip it like this — I don’t think anybody three years ago would have said Oumar Ballo would score 1,000 points.

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“You know, it ain’t easy to score 1,000 points for your career in college and he’s going to do it in (essentially) three years. So it’s pretty special. I’m really really, really proud of him. He’s a great guy and he’s a force.”

Ballo noted simply that he didn’t play much at Gonzaga — just 151 minutes over 24 games — and expressed thanks for his opportunities since then at Arizona.

“Been a long and great three years and I’m grateful for it,” Ballo said.

Larsson also arrived at Arizona to join Lloyd after a year elsewhere in 2020-21, but his arrival came under different circumstances. Larsson actually started for Utah during the final 18 games of the 2020-21 season, collecting 204 points and playing much of the time at point guard.

So when Utah fired coach Larry Krystkowiak after the Utes went 12-13 during that COVID-limited season, the 6-5 Swede was a popular transfer portal entrant. Stadium ranked him the No. 51 rated transfer that spring, even though Utah’s rough season may have reduced his profile.

But less than a month after Arizona hired Lloyd, Larsson committed to the Wildcats.

“You know, I thought about it a couple days ago, and you almost get emotional,” Lloyd said. “Pelle took a chance on me. He did. I hadn’t won a game. Hadn’t coached a game. He was getting recruited by Kansas and us, and it was a battle. But he put faith in us. He came here and we’re lucky. Arizona is lucky and I’m lucky.”

Upon arriving in Arizona during the summer of 2021, Larsson said he wanted to stay in the Pac-12 because it featured more European-style finesse and that he realized what Lloyd was bringing over from Gonzaga and wanted to build in Tucson.

“Just looking at the rosters and the new coaches, it just was a great fit for me,” Larsson said then.

Some 784 points later, Larsson coincidentally surpassed the 1,000-point mark against his old team, though he didn’t make a big deal of it.

Larsson said hitting the milestone against the Utes was “kind of full circle, if you want to write that,” but noted that center Branden Carlson is the only Utah player left from that 2020-21 season. Then he kept his focus mostly ahead: UA has an open week before playing at Washington State on Saturday.

“It goes by quick,” Larsson said. “It’s been a lot of fun and you just hope you don’t really pay attention to the kind of stuff that just happened. I’m happy for O and, yeah, next game is Saturday.”