Vengeful Vegas victory: Arizona trounces USC 70-49 in Pac-12 tourney quarterfinals, will face Oregon next

LAS VEGAS — Since they already proved long ago they can do the revenge thing pretty well, the Arizona Wildcats answered a few other questions Thursday.

Like, how well can they play defense?

In their 70-49 win over USC in a Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament quarterfinal game Thursday, the Wildcats held the Trojans to just 16 points in the first half, led by 20 less than seven minutes into the second half and held USC to just 35.7% shooting overall.

Also, can they run a successful offense against a zone?

The Wildcats initially struggled against USC’s switching defense again, as they did in a 78-65 loss in Los Angeles on Saturday, but continued their streak of never losing back-to-back games under third-year coach Tommy Lloyd by shooting 52% after halftime and using defense to help make the offense flow toward a victory over the Trojans this time.

All of that left time for them to address one final question: Why doesn’t Jaden Bradley like to dunk the ball?

UA’s ever-efficient sixth man answered that one only afterward in the locker room, capping a dazzling two-way sequence with an emphatic slam dunk that gave UA a 54-32 lead with 8:15 left.

While it technically wasn’t a dagger dunk that put USC away for good, it felt like one, with the “McKale North” crowd of overwhelmingly pro-UA fans inside T-Mobile Arena cheering wildly, USC calling a timeout to stop the bleeding and guard KJ Lewis jogging sideways down the court while flapping his arms to ask for more applause.

“Big moment,” Bradley said in his typically modest, understated way.

It was for UA fans and for the Wildcat players. Not just because they had the 22-point lead but because Bradley was also so taken in by the moment that he actually did dunk the ball.

“Everybody jokes about how JB never dunks the ball,” said Lewis, who led the Wildcats in scoring with 15 points. “But he’s sneaky athletic. So when he dunked it today, you could see everybody’s reaction was surprise. He’s got bounce.”

Asked during the Pac-12-mandated open locker room session why he thought Bradley didn’t dunk more often, Lewis shrugged. Then he looked over at Bradley, who stood in front of a nearby stall.

“Jaden, why don’t you want to dunk?” Lewis said.

Bradley spoke softly, but without pause. Most of the Wildcats and media had cleared out by then, so his words were still easily heard.

“Two points is two points,” he said.

We did mention that Bradley could be a little understated, didn’t we? Except his second-half sequence was anything but.

Bradley first drove through the USC defense for a layup to give UA a 52-32 lead with 8:39 left, using his aggressiveness whenever holes in the Trojans’ zone appeared, a microcosm of the more energetic attack the Wildcats brought to the USC game than they did on Saturday at the Galen Center.

Bradley said UA coaches have focused on pushing the pace, prompting him to realize he could drive in, then find teammates after a jump stop or just keep going to the rim.

“We got options off of that,” Bradley said.

Bradley decided to go all the way to the bucket that time, then turned around and made sure the Trojans didn’t.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

While chasing USC’s Isaiah Collier as he drove around Trojan center Joshua Morgan on the right side of the wing, Bradley then lunged with his right arm in to tap the ball out of Morgan’s hands.

The ball rolled to UA forward Pelle Larsson in the center of the lane.

“That’s something we work on in practice, swiping the ball and trying to get a steal,” Bradley said.

Then came the dessert. Larsson picked up the ball near USC’s free throw line, and fired it back to Bradley as he left on the break. Bradley threw down his emphatic dunk to gave UA a 54-32 lead.

Less than a minute after USC’s ensuing timeout, Trojans standout guard Boogie Ellis fouled out, having scored just six points on 2-for-11 shooting.

USC was all but done at that point.

The Trojans ended their underachieving season at 15-18, while Arizona’s win moved the sixth-ranked Wildcats to 25-7 and into a Pac-12 semifinal game Friday at 5 p.m. against fourth-seeded Oregon, which defeated fifth-seeded UCLA 68-66 later Thursday afternoon.

Even though the Wildcats struggled offensively early in the game, scoring just 10 points while turning the ball over six times in the first 10 minutes, they used defense to get by. The Wildcats held the Trojans to just 23.3% shooting in the first half while taking a 28-16 halftime lead.

“We just got a lot more stops,” wing Pelle Larsson said. “We were way more hungry on defense this time. We’re obviously a real good offensive team, but it’s defense we take pride in.”

Arizona finished the game shooting 45.6% from the field while holding USC to just 35.7% shooting and outrebounding the Trojans 44-30. They also scored 16 points off USC’s 14 turnovers while limiting the Trojans to just six points off their 18 turnovers.

On both sides of the court, things played out much differently than last Saturday at the Galen Center, when the Wildcats shot 38.7% and allowed USC to shoot 49.1%.

The Wildcats didn’t get stops very often Saturday, having been just 48 hours removed from their intoxicating regular-season-title-clinching win over UCLA at Pauley Pavilion. But they did get them Thursday.

Same defense. Not the same motivation.

“You’re gonna think this is crazy: We didn’t do one thing different,” Lloyd said. “We just did it better. That’s what it came down to. We just did it better. This time of year you’re not changing a bunch. It’s just `Do it better, with more effort and more conviction.’ And we did that.”

<&rule>

Photos: (1) Arizona defeats (9) USC 70-49 at Pac-12 Men's Basketball Tournament