No. 4 Arizona Wildcats lose 100-82 to Stanford in New Year's Eve shocker at Maples Pavilion

STANFORD, Calif. — About 20 minutes after suffering one of the worst regular-season losses in his head coaching career, Tommy Lloyd lined up in a cemented Maples Pavilion corridor just inside from the loading dock and, well, unloaded.

In a three-minute postgame address, he referred to the Wildcats’ 100-82 loss Sunday to Stanford as an ass-kicking, or some variant of that analogy, 10 times.

That’s about one “ass-kicking” every 20 seconds. Which apparently is what Lloyd felt the Wildcats received Sunday, after watching Stanford shoot a school-record 16 3-pointers and blow the Wildcats’ defense apart inside and out with 58.1% shooting that far surpassed what any UA opponent had shot all season.

After Lloyd repeatedly credited Stanford for playing “great,” working hard and playing through ups and downs that have them at 6-6 even after Sunday’s New Year’s Eve stunner, his “press conference” went like this:

On Stanford’s 16-for-25 3-point shooting: “I mean, listen, they kicked our ass by 20 points. They could have made six less 3s and still beat us by two. They beat us in every way, shape and form. I don’t know what it was. But it was everything.”

On the difference between Stanford’s 88-79 win over Arizona last season, when it held Oumar Ballo and Azuolas Tubelis significantly inside but allowed guard Courtney Ramey to hit eight 3-poimters, compared to how the Wildcats did Sunday when they made only 7 of 26 3s: “I think they limited everybody. We got our ass kicked. It felt the same to me. I didn’t feel any difference.”

On how Stanford heavily relied on its two freshmen, guard Kanaan Carlyle and wing Andrej Stojakovic, getting a career-high 28 points from Carlyle and another 16 from Stojakovic, the son of former NBA All-Star Peja Stojakovic: “Kicked our ass. Kicked our ass. They’re good players. Kicked our ass. Whatever. Outplayed our guys. I don’t care who it was. They outplayed us.”

On the Arizona defense that Kenpom rated the No. 2 most efficient in Division I entering Sunday’s game (the Wildcats now rank seventh): “That’s an absolute lie. I mean, our guards have been getting their asses kicked in these games defensively. They need to figure it out. And our staff needs to help them.”

On how much of Arizona’s performance might have been attributed to mental preparedness, after the Wildcats carried the No. 4 ranking and a dominant win at Cal into Sunday’s game: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I just know about results. We got our ass kicked. Our guards got their ass kicked again. So they gotta figure it out.”

And, finally, on whether those defensive struggles carried over to Arizona’s relatively inefficient offense, which shot 43.8% overall, set up only 10 of 32 field goals with assists and hit just 7 of 26 3s: “We got our ass kicked at both ends of the floor. Do I need to say ass-kicked again? Because we got our asses kicked, OK?”

In one aspect, the result wasn’t really that much of a surprise. Stanford has been a difficult matchup for Arizona throughout Lloyd’s two-plus seasons with the Wildcats, handing Lloyd three of his 14 losses at Arizona while also scaring the Wildcats in each of the past two Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals.

They had even seen big Stanford wing Spencer Jones bother them many times before, with Jones throwing in 28 points in UA’s 84-80 win over the Cardinal in the 2022 Pac-12 Tournament and another 18 points in the Cardinal’s win over Arizona at Maples last season.

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On Sunday, after struggling with two injuries earlier this season, Jones scored 21 points while hitting 5 of 6 3-pointers.

But none of those games or performances were like this.

Trailing 44-35 at halftime, the Wildcats fell behind 60-43 after Jones hit three 3-pointers over a 70-second span early in the second half, the first coming after UA’s Kylan Boswell turned the ball over with an offensive charge as he drove to the basket with 17:51 left.

A 3-pointer from Boswell cut the Cardinal’s lead to 60-46, but the Wildcats couldn’t dig out of the hole. Midway through the second half, Arizona guard KJ Lewis fouled Carlyle from behind the 3-point arc, and Carlyle hit all three ensuing free throws to give the Cardinal a 77-57 lead with 9:46 left.

Arizona cut Stanford’s lead to 80-69 by the time Ballo scored inside with 7:15 left, but the Wildcats never cut it to single digits the rest of the way. Stanford took another 20-point lead, 95-75, when Jones drove in for a layup with 2:57 left and the Cardinal coasted the rest of the way.

In the first half, Arizona shot just 41.2%. Johnson hit a 3 off a turnover from Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud to cut the Cardinal’s lead to 22-19 midway through the half, but Stanford pulled ahead 29-21 toward the end of the half, getting a boost from a four-point play by Carlyle, who drew a foul from Caleb Love on his fallaway 3-point shot.

Arizona never took a lead, only tying the game once at 12-12.

“I think it was a team thing,” Lewis said. “We just weren’t all on the same page. But credit to them. They moved the ball well. They found the open man. They finished and they made tough shots.”

They … OK, you know the story by now.

The loss was Arizona’s third in its past five games, dropping the Wildcats to 10-3. Stanford, which lost 76-73 to ASU on Thursday, improved to 6-6.

Arizona is scheduled to return home next weekend to face two top competitors for the Pac-12 title, Colorado (on Thursday) and Utah (Saturday).

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Photos: Stanford upsets No. 4 Arizona Wildcats to close out 2023, men's college basketball