Offensive rebounding offers small consolation for poor-shooting Arizona Wildcats

Only eight teams in Division I are better at creating second chances to score than the Arizona Wildcats.

That’s good news for UA men’s basketball coach Tommy Lloyd. It’s just that he prefers first chances.

In Arizona’s 82-67 win over USC on Wednesday, the Wildcats missed 42 of 70 shots against the Trojans, including 16 botched layups, giving them an automatic opportunity to pick up plenty of offensive rebounds.

They took advantage of that, and now also rank 10th nationally in raw offensive rebounding average (14.3 per game).

But their 21 offensive rebounds against the Trojans also represented a dominating 42.9% offensive rebounding percentage, the true measure of a team’s rebounding effectiveness.

Arizona now collects an average of 38.0% of their missed shots, the ninth-best offensive rebounding percentage nationally, and leads the Pac-12 by grabbing 37.1% of their missed shots in conference games.

For additional context, Texas A&M leads Division I with a 44.2% offensive rebounding percentage, with No. 1 UConn just ahead of UA at 38.1% — while 353 teams are less effective than the Wildcats.

But, again, that’s not enough for Lloyd. Partly because the Wildcats rank only 51st in their two-point shooting percentage (54.1).

“I want it to balance out,” Lloyd said. “I don’t want to miss so many shots, so there’s not so many offensive rebounds available. I would rather have 12 or 13 offensive rebounds and six or seven more makes.

“I mean, it’s great we’re offensive rebounding. It’s better than not offensive rebounding, but we need to start making some shots.”

They weren’t making enough in part because, Lloyd said, the Wildcats appeared “stagnant” at times against a USC team that, like Washington State did in its 73-70 win over Arizona last Saturday, threw out a mix of zone and man-to-man defenses.

Playing in a highly charged atmosphere that included new UA football coach Brent Brennan, NBA star Kevin Durant and an ESPN crew of Jay Bilas and Dave Pasch, Lloyd said the Wildcats were also “taking some crazy attempts” while trying to score or draw a foul.

“If you have a layup, you’ve got a responsibility to deliver for your team,” Lloyd said. “ I don’t care what (defense) they’re in. I mean, it’s a layup. And layups aren’t easy. They’re not. But good teams make layups.”

In just one example Wednesday, with 12:30 left in the second half, senior forward Keshad Johnson tried to feed guard Caleb Love with an alley-oop heave as he drove the baseline, when a simpler pass would have done the trick. The pass fell behind Love and bounced off the bottom corner of the glass, resulting in a turnover.

So it’s not just errors coming against zone defense, Lloyd said, but also those made in transition.

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“When you shoot a layup, you have responsibility to make it or get fouled. Those are your two options,” Lloyd said. “You don’t get any extra points for dipsy-do or jumping in the air and trying to do some crazy thing. And you know what? These referees, either they don’t see the foul or they don’t fall for it — and probably both things happen — so we’ve just got to do a better job.”

Johnson, who wound up with his second double-double this season with 10 points and 13 rebounds, said the Wildcats focused too often on drawing a foul that may or may not be called.

“It’s the nature of a basketball player that when you get into the paint sometimes you expect the foul, you want to draw to foul, and that takes away from you actually going to finish,” Johnson said. “We’ve just got to get better on that. We’ve been working on it, but we’ve just got to keep a stick to it.”

Still, even with all that going on, the Wildcats still led USC 45-35 at halftime and were never seriously threatened in the second half.

Partly because the Wildcats wound up scoring 22 second-chance points off their 21 offensive rebounds, giving them enough for their 15-point win margin. Oumar Ballo picked up seven offensive rebounds, while Johnson had five and freshman Motiejus Krivas picked up another three.

The glasswork was enough for Wednesday, at least. But when Wildcats finish the regular season on March 9 at USC, possibly with the conference title on the line, USC could have back the two leading scorers it went without Wednesday: Guards Isaiah Collier (broken hand) and Boogie Ellis (hamstring issue). Starting center Joshua Morgan, who was limited off the bench Wednesday after missing two previous games with an illness, also figures to be at full strength.

“You gotta remember, ‘SC is shorthanded,” Lloyd said. “Could we beat ‘SC at 100%? I don’t know.”

Rim shots

While Lloyd didn’t change his starting lineup or vary his rotation much after warning that “everything was on the table” after UA’s loss at WSU, he started Jaden Bradley over Kylan Boswell in the second half Wednesday but said he hadn’t decided on any final moves yet.

“I just tried to shake it up a little bit,” Lloyd said. “JB has been playing well and having a really good impact on our team. It’s no slight on Kylan. And sometimes when you don’t start a kid, it’s hard to up his minutes when they’re basically sitting the first four minutes of each half. Then they’re down to (a maximum of) 32 instead of 40.”

Larsson left the game briefly in the second half after rolling his ankle on USC’s Kijani Wright, slapping his hands on the floor in frustration, but found it wasn’t a significant injury.

“I just kind of tripped on him, so I think it just scared me more than anything,” Larsson said.

UCLA is just 8-10 after losing four starters from last season, but the Bruins will visit McKale on Saturday after pulling out a second straight win on Wednesday at ASU, coming back from a 15-point deficit to beat the Sun Devils 68-66.

“It’s gonna be a battle,” Lloyd said. “That’s a program that has a ton of pride. They have a coach who knows how to get his team to play hard and they’re going to be prepared.”