Men's basketball scouting report: UT Arlington at No. 3 Arizona, 4 p.m. Sunday at McKale Center

ARIZONA MEN’S BASKETBALL SCOUTING REPORT

Texas-Arlington (2-1) at No. 3 Arizona (4-0)

McKale Center

4 p.m.

Pac-12 Networks

1290-AM, Varsity Network

Probable starters

ARIZONA

G Kylan Boswell (6-2 sophomore)

G Caleb Love (6-4 senior)

F Pelle Larsson (6-6 senior)

F Keshad Johnson (6-7 senior)

C Oumar Ballo (7-0 senior)

UT ARLINGTON G Akili Vining (6-2 senior)

G Brandyn Talbot (6-5 junior)

F DaJuan Gordon (6-5 senior)

F Dwayne Koroma (6-8 sophomore)

C Shemar Wilson (6-9 senior)

How they match up

The series: Arizona has never faced UT Arlington, which is in the second season of a second stint in the Western Athletic Conference.

Game agreement: UT Arlington is facing Arizona in an unbracketed add-on game as part of the Acrisure Classic, in which Arizona will also face Michigan State on Thursday in Thousand Palms, Calif. The add-on game qualifies the Acrisure Classic as an NCAA-defined “multi-team event,” allowing the Wildcats to schedule two more games against the NCAA scheduling maximum for a total of 31 games.

UT Arlington overview: The Mavericks are all but starting over after an 11-21 season in 2022-23 that cost longtime head and assistant coach Greg Young his job at midseason. They returned just three players from last season while bringing in K.T. Turner, a veteran former assistant who has worked under John Calipari and Porter Moser.

They also lost a projected go-to player when the NCAA denied 2022-23 all-Ohio Valley first-team pick Phillip Russell a waiver to play right away this season. Russell, a 5-10 guard from St. Louis, has already played for St. Louis and Southeast Missouri but will now sit out this season as a redshirt.

Still, so far, the Mavericks are off to a promising start, beating Oral Roberts and Division II Texas Tyler while losing just 82-80 at New Mexico on Thursday.

While UTA has been an average shooting team so far, the Mavericks make up for it on the rebounding glass and with interior defense. The Mavericks have outrebounded their three previous opponents by an average of 15 while posting an offensive rebound percentage of 43.0 against their two Division I opponents, which ranks 10th nationally. But they’ll be challenged by an Arizona team that has held allowed opponents to collect just 17.6% of their missed shots.

In its two D-I games against Oral Roberts and New Mexico, UTA is allowing opponents to shoot just 28.0% from two-point range. Defensively they don’t turn over opponents often, however, with Oral Roberts and New Mexico losing the ball only on 9.7% of their combined possessions.

Big guard DaJuan Gordon (17.0 ppg, 13.0 rpg) and former Tolleson Union forward Shemar Wilson (15.3 ppg, 11.7 rpg) are both averaging double-doubles so far, with Wilson collecting 29 points and 11 rebounds on Thursday at New Mexico. Overall, the Mavericks have six players who have averaged at least one 3-pointer per game. Gordon has made only 5 of 21 3s so far but gets to the line by drawing an average of 5.1 fouls per 40 minutes and has made 10 of 11 free throws. Guard Akili Vining has made half of his 12 3-point tries, while Kade Douglas has come off the bench to make 6 of 14 long-range shots.

Key players

UT Arlington — DaJuan Gordon

The big Chicago guard is a prototypical product of the transfer portal and COVID era: He’s now playing his fifth season of college basketball for his fourth school, having stopped over at Kansas State, Missouri and New Mexico State before arriving at UTA for a grad season. He’s taken advantage early this season by scoring at all levels and getting to the line, though he hasn’t been efficient from 3-point range.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Arizona — Motiejus Krivas

What do the Wildcats really have here? UA already has a returning all-conference center in Oumar Ballo but, thanks in part to minor injuries that have limited him, the 7-footer from Lithuania is now actually averaging more points and rebounds than Ballo so far in four games. Krivas dominated a group of smaller post players on Friday against Belmont and may have another opportunity against UTA.

Sidelines

Lloyd seeks more energy from McKale fans

While the Wildcats technically managed to sell out their Friday game with Belmont by announcing a crowd of 14,688, about 2,000 seats appeared to remain empty. That’s a shortfall of energy UA coach Tommy Lloyd is trying to address.

“There’s a gap between our season-ticket holders and actual people that are scanning tickets and coming to the game. That’s the gap we need to fill,” Lloyd said. “You obviously always want to sell every ticket possible in our program and for the most part, we do a great job over the course of the season doing that.

“But we also need to make this an incredible experience and the more people that want to come participate in it, the better experience it’s going to be. So those people that have season tickets that aren’t coming…let’s figure out why. You have tickets. You spent the money. Thank you. Of course we need revenue, but we also need energy and atmosphere and those types of things are important, too.”

Bringing up the topic at his postgame news conference Friday without a prompt, Lloyd said he wasn’t making a “money grab” as much as an “energy grab,” pleading with fans to help make McKale Center a special atmosphere.

UA notably draped free “McKale Magic” rally towels over every seat before its Nov. 6 opener and held a 24-hour flash sale last week in which fans could buy tickets for $10 to either the Belmont, Texas-Arlington or Dec. 2 Colgate games, in addition to the UA-Utah football game on Saturday.

“We need more effort and energy out of some of our season ticket holders, whether they have to move them to their friends or give them back to the school for someone else to go,” Lloyd said. “We need people that have season tickets to make sure people are sitting in those seats during games. That would be my ask for the fans. I’m being a little bit nitpicky but we coach our team with high standards. I think we should have high standards for our fans, too, because this is one of the most special places to play in the country.”

Lloyd’s plea was reminscent of how he prodded fans to be more vocal after a quiet reception during the Wildcats’ first-round NCAA Tournament win over Wright State in San Diego during his first season of 2021-22.

Lloyd said after that game of fans that “they’ve got to bring it” to UA’s second-round game against TCU two days later, and fans’ ensuing rowdiness turned out to be critical for the Wildcats. They needed overtime to beat TCU and reach the Sweet 16.

Arizona job hunter

After averaging nearly a double-double for Phoenix College in 2019-20, former Tolleson Union forward Shemar Wilson sought help from a business-networking social-media site to find his next home.

Under his name on a LinkedIn profile are the words: “A Phoenix College basketball player that works hard each and every day.” A more detailed description below went further:

“As an athlete, I am a hard worker. My work ethic and motor can’t be matched by others,” the LinkedIn bio said. “I tend to be the first one in the gym and the last one to leave.

“From me you will be getting a high character guy who can be a leader at times. From me you will be getting someone who is all about winning and is willing to do whatever it takes to win. A guy like me is someone you want to have in your program.”

Wilson’s LinkedIn page states that his goal was to be conference player of the year in 2020-21, but Phoenix College didn’t compete that season because of COVID. Still, Wilson’s freshman-year success – and maybe his self-marketing efforts – led to a spot with Texas-Arlington.

He averaged 13.5 minutes mostly off the bench for UTA as a sophomore in 2021-22 and moved full-time into the Mavericks’ starting lineup last season, when he averaged 10.9 points and 7.8 rebounds.

This season, Wilson has become the Mavericks’ second-leading scorer … and a prospect to become a professional — in basketball — somewhere next season.

Pac-12-style weekend

If preparing for conference play and the postseason is what nonconference play is all about, then the Wildcats nailed it this weekend.

Following their late Friday game with Belmont with a late Sunday afternoon game against UTA is the sort of tight weekend turnaround Arizona will face again in its final Pac-12 go-round this season.

The Wildcats will open conference play with a Friday night game at Cal on Dec. 29 and then play Stanford on New Year’s Eve day, while the Wildcats will have at least four weekend turns of less than 48 hours between games in conference play (some gametimes remain TBA).

Yet, at least the way Lloyd explained it Friday, that wasn’t really part of the equation in setting up this weekend. Belmont had to be played late on Friday because the UA volleyball team was playing at home earlier that evening, while playing the UT Arlington game after Sunday would have cut down on prep time for UA’s game with Michigan State on Thursday in Thousand Palms, Calif.

“It was probably the dates that worked,” Lloyd said. “I wouldn’t overthink that.”

Numbers game

5 — Players or more scoring in double figures in each of four games for the Wildcats, the only team to have as many in four games this season.

10 — Years since Arizona outrebounded an opponent by 30 (the Wildcats were plus-31 against Fairleigh Dickenson in 2013-14) before the Wildcats did it both against Southern and Belmont this season.

24 — The age of Texas-Arlington’s Aaron Cash and Akili Vining, giving the Mavericks two of college basketball’s oldest 18 players. BYU is the only other D-I school with more than one among the top 20 oldest.

— Bruce Pascoe