Arizona Wildcats will look to rise, shine Saturday to stave off Dayton's NCAA tourney upset bid

SALT LAKE CITY — Despite playing in a conference that routinely assigns them 8 p.m. or later game times, Arizona has actually tipped off four of its past eight games at noon local time.

That sort of conditioning could come in handy Saturday, when the Wildcats will face Dayton at 10:45 a.m. local time in Salt Lake City (that’s 9:45 a.m. in Arizona).

“You just gotta wake up a little bit early, wake your body up and kind of stay active as possible,” UA center Oumar Ballo said, “so you don’t wait until the first five minutes to the game.”

For many coaches, the hardest part about morning or noon tipoffs is getting players up in time to eat a pregame meal, since they ideally eat about four hours prior to game time. But four hours early Saturday means getting them up at about 6:30 to start eating.

“Probably won’t do it that early,” UA associate head coach Jack Murphy said.

But the Wildcats may get up around 7, eat and have a walk-through, then head over to the Delta Center about 90 minutes to tipoff.

They won’t be able to hold a full shootaround, but they had plenty of time after their first-round game Thursday afternoon and all day Friday to start preparing.

“You just have to kind of load up a little bit more the day ahead,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “ But this time of year, you’re playing a team you’re really not familiar with, and that works both ways. It’s a short prep so you kind of got to rely on what you do and what you do best.”

For Dayton, though, there might be one possible edge: The Flyers live in the Eastern Time Zone, so if they haven’t adjusted fully to Mountain Time, that means the game might feel like it’s actually starting at 12:45 p.m.

“It doesn’t really matter to us,” Dayton forward DaRon Holmes said. “The time usually is in our favor, so it’s not that big of a deal.”

Dayton guard Koby Brea was even less worried about it.

“Our group is super competitive,” he said. “We’re basketball heads. We would play the game 24/7 if we could. We’re excited to get another opportunity to do it.”

The flip side

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While Dayton’s big shooters could be the sort of matchup problem for Arizona that stretch-bigs from Stanford and Oregon State proved to be in UA losses earlier this season, Ballo is also confident about the other side of the matchup.

“Those people also have to guard me,” Ballo said. “It’s not like I’m the one who’s always guarding them. It’s give and take. And we have a really good game plan.”

Ballo indicated the same goes for the fact that Dayton has one of the slowest tempos in the country, ranking just 336th.

“If we get some stops, we can run,” Ballo said. “We know that they want to control the game, control a slow tempo, but we can dictate that with our defense. If we get a stop or rebound, we run and they cannot control that. Everything just depends on our defense.”

Murphy said the Wildcats have seen every sort of style at this point of the season, and guard KJ Lewis expressed confidence because of that.

“We’ve got a bunch of challenges out there for us but I know it’s nothing that we can’t handle,” Lewis said. “I think we’re gonna dictate the game with our physical presence on the defensive end. We can control Holmes by limiting his touches and obviously their 3-point shooters.”

Assist, Ducks

Several Arizona players said the Wildcats’ loss to Oregon in the Pac-12 Tournament semifinals helped them not only gain an extra day of rest but also by giving a reminder that they can’t ever lose their edge.

Arizona led the Ducks by up to 14 points in the first half and 33-23 at halftime, but Oregon erased its lead completely within the first eight minutes of the second half in UA’s 67-59 loss.

On Thursday against Long Beach State, Arizona trailed late in the first half but took a six-point lead at halftime — then rolled over the Beach with a 14-2 run over the first four minutes of the second half.

“The Oregon loss was definitely on our minds,” guard Jaden Bradley said. That gave us the motivation to come out and play the game we did. … We kind of huddled up, got together and we remembered that (second-half) start we had against Oregon. It wasn’t a great start.”

Photos: (2) Arizona Wildcats dispatch (15) Long Beach State 85-65, NCAA West Region