Arizona men's basketball scouting report: Cal at No. 11 Arizona, 6:30 p.m. Thursday

Cal (8-12, 4-5) at No. 11 Arizona (15-5, 6-3) — McKale Center — 6:30 p.m. Thursday — Pac-12 Networks — 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

PROBABLE STARTERS

CALIFORNIA

G Jalen Cone (5-11 senior)

G Keonte Kennedy (6-5 senior)

F Jaylon Tyson (6-7 junior)

F Jalen Celestine (6-7 junior)

C Fardaws Aimaq (6-11 senior)

ARIZONA

G Kylan Boswell (6-2 soph.)

G Caleb Love (6-4 senior)

F Pelle Larsson (6-6 senior)

F Keshad Johnson (6-7 senior)

C Oumar Ballo (7-0 senior)

How they match up

The last time: After losing two of their final three nonconference games, Arizona returned from Christmas break to steamroller Cal 100-81 in its first Pac-12 game. The Wildcats went on a 20-2 run three minutes into the game, kept the Bears to just 26.5% shooting in the first half, and were never seriously challenged. Cal outscored Arizona 55-46 in the second half while UA coach Tommy Lloyd went deep into his bench. Caleb Love led UA in scoring with 22 points while, Oumar Ballo had 17 points and 11 rebounds and reserve center Motiejas Krivas had 18 points off the bench.

The last time at McKale Center: Cal hasn’t appeared in Tucson since the Wildcats beat them 81-66 on Dec. 4. 2022, when Arizona was coming off a humbling 81-66 loss at Utah three days earlier during the last of the Pac-12’s early December weekends. Arizona made only 4 of 20 3-pointers but relied instead on Azuolas Tubelis (25 points) and Oumar Ballo (17 points) for offensive firepower.

Series history: Arizona leads 75-31 overall and has beaten the Bears 14 straight times, dating back to a 74-73 loss at Berkeley during the 2015-16 season, when Justin Cobbs hit a game winner with 0.9 seconds remaining. With the Bears off to the ACC and Wildcats off to the Big 12 next season, Thursday’s game could be the last matchup of the two teams for a long while, barring a Pac-12 Tournament game this season or a matchup in a future in-season tournament.

What’s new with the Bears: While Cal isn’t quite on pace to make what new coach Mark Madsen called the “historic turnaround” he predicted after taking over the Bears last spring, Cal has actually won more games (four) over the previous three weeks than it did all of last season (three) – including a road win at UCLA on Jan. 6. After opening Pac-12 play with losses to UA, ASU and USC, Cal beat the Bruins and beat Colorado at home. Then, after losing at Oregon and to Washington at home, the Bears outlasted WSU in overtime and, last Friday, edged cross-bay rival Stanford 73-71 at home.

Cal has improved most dramatically on offense, with Jaylon Tyson (22.0) trailing only UA’s Caleb Love (22.8) in scoring during conference games, and the Bears taking care of the ball. Cal has averaged only 6.0 turnovers during its past five games, cutting down on opponents’ easy transition baskets, after Arizona scored 17 points on 12 Cal turnovers in the Dec. 31 game.

Tyson, who leads the league in scoring in all games with an average of 20.6 points, is probable to return Thursday after suffering a leg injury against Stanford, according to the Cal Sports Report, while the Bears also received more on the wing from Jalen Celestine in his absence with 12 points against Stanford.

Cal also has a strong inside-outside punch with center Fardaws Aimaq and guard Jalen Cone. Aimaq averages a double-double (15.3 points, 10.8 rebound) while shooting 52.1% from two-point range and blocking 3.1% of opponents’ shots when he’s on the floor. Averaging 14.2 points a game, Cone is a streaky shooter who puts up three-quarters of his shots from 3-point territory and hits them at a 31.9% rate. But he was 2 for 9 against UA on Dec. 31 and is shooting just 26% from 3 in nine conference games.

The Bears lost point guard Devin Askew for the season after Cal lost 71-69 to ASU on Dec. 31 due to a left foot injury that also cost him seven games earlier in the season. Askew wound up playing in only six games, while Cone shifted over to handle point guard duties.

He said it: “They’ve had some good wins and they’re just starting to feel very confident about the way they play and what they’re doing to get those wins.

“Their offense is built to score points and Tyson is the leading scorer in the conference, so he can put the ball in the hole, and Jalen Cone is an explosive type of scorer. If he gets on a roll, he can make several shots. He’s always a threat when he’s on the court

“They have a lot of other guys who come in and contribute. (Keonte) Kennedy is very athletic and makes plays. Their center (Aimaq) is a the big-time scorer and he’s physical around the basket. He can make good passes.

“(Jalen Celestine) is probably getting more opportunities, more reps and against us, he played well and he’s producing.

“They didn’t play a second game over (last) weekend so they could add wrinkles to their system. We’ve just got to be prepared to go out and play our best basketball every night.”

— UA assistant coach Steve Robinson, who scouted the Bears.

Key players

Cal – Jaylon Tyson

After quickly bolting Texas midway through his freshman year, then leaving Texas Tech after alleging then-coach Mark Adams used racial comments in discussing their relationship, Tyson has finally found a comfortable home with the Beras. Now the Pac-12’s leading scorer and a candidate for the Julius Erving (small forward) Award, Tyson is a 36.7% 3-point shooter who is particularly adept inside the arc, where he shoots 54.3%, draws 5.0 fouls per 40 minutes and hits free throws at a 78.6% rate.

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ARIZONA — Filip Borovicanin

At this point of the season, it looks like the Wildcats’ rotation is pretty locked up at eight players. But the Wildcats’ sophomore wing had his most significant game of the season at Cal on Dec. 31, with six points on 3-for-5 shooting and three assists, and the Wildcats might want to keep him warm in the event of injuries or foul trouble down the road.

SIDELINES

No time for complacency

Arizona has beaten California nine straight times at McKale Center and the Wildcats’ easy dispatch of the Bears on Dec. 29 in Berkeley suggests they may wrap up the Pac-12 series with a 10th straight home win without too much trouble.

But it’s also true that Arizona has lost three timnes since Dec. 19, and that Cal has won four of its past six games.

“They’re not the same team we faced in December,” UA assistant coach Steve Robinson said. “We can’t come into any of these games with some false impression of what we think they are. We go into the game with the thought that all those guys are high-level players.

“On any given night, they’re all capable of having a career night and we have seen that, whether it’s (Oregon State’s) Jordan Pope scoring baskets or whoever. We can’t just hope that guy’s gonna miss shots. We have to work hard enough to try to make him miss shots.”

Yeah, but… Arizona blew away Cal with a 20-2 run early in the Dec. 29 game in Berkeley. Couldn’t that make it a challenge for coaches to get that sort of message across?

“If it is a challenge, we don’t have mature competitors,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “I hope not. I hope our guys don’t need a rah-rah speech. I hope they understand what we’re playing for and what position we’ve put ourselves in. I hope there’s a sense of urgency to take advantage of that.”

Arizona enters Thursday’s game tied atop the Pac-12 standings with Oregon at 6-3, but four other teams have only four losses: Colorado, Washington State, Stanford and ASU.

Lloyd: ‘I’m all in’

Reiterating his stance last week that he wants to stay at Arizona for the long term, Lloyd said it was probably just a “small oversight” that a contract extension proposal for him was pulled from an Arizona Board of Regents meeting agenda last week.

Lloyd said last week that an agreement was reached to discuss a contract extension later this season instead of adding a year to his contract now and more after the season.

“We’re definitely working hard behind the scenes to make sure that we find an agreement and I’m excited about it,” Lloyd said. “I’ll just say this: Last night (Tuesday), we had a social with over 200 employees from the athletic department for happy hour at Culinary Dropout. We had a great time, and this is a special place to work.

“I think people inside this building realize that and it’s on us right now to take the next steps as an organization and make it an unbelievable culture. So that’s what we’re going to do and I’m excited to be part of it, lead it, follow it, whatever you want. I’m all in.”

Tunnel vision

Cal and Stanford are making their final visits in Pac-12 play to McKale Center this weekend, and it’s unlikely the Wildcats will face either of them in any sort of home campus games anytime soon. But when Lloyd was asked if he could see either of them appearing anytinme in the foreseeable future, he wasn’t about to look that far ahead.

“The foreesable future I see is we’re playing them Thursday and Sunday,” Lloyd said. “Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m just gonna kind of focus on where we’re at now.”

Playing a 12-game schedule in the Big 12 plus multi-team events and the one-off neutral site games will inevitably leave the Wildcats with only a slot or two for high-major home-and-home series. Of other Pac-12 schools, Lloyd said UA has talked the most with UCLA about setting one up.

Numbers game

7: Points Oumar Ballo needs to score 1,000 as a Wildcat. Ballo hit 1,000 for his college career (counting 60 points at Gonzaga in. 2020-21) on Jan. 6 against Utah.

13: Double-doubles posted by Aimaq, the most in the Pac-12 and fourth-most nationally.

25.5: Cal’s average 3-point attempts per game, most in the Pac-12 (Bears rank third in made 3s per game at 8.6).

52.6: Pelle Larsson’s shooting percentage over UA’s last four games, when he’s also averaging 14.8 points.

— Bruce Pascoe

Photos: No. 9 Arizona Wildcats win at Oregon 87-78, Pac-12 men's college basketball