Arizona basketball: Henri Veesaar's redshirt status, some love for Caleb, Koa Peat's top 10

In the increasingly transient world of college basketball, Henri Veesaar has reason to be especially impatient.

The Arizona sophomore is from Estonia, meaning that even if he doesn’t jump into the NBA Draft over the next year or two, he also holds an EU passport that gives him leverage to sign with a European club at any time for the more common non-import roster spots.

So even though Veesaar has agreed to sit out the rest of the season after injuring his elbow last October, he may not need or want a redshirt season. He may not need or want to be a Wildcat for five seasons.

“Those are all conversations we’ve had,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said.

But that’s the direction he appears to be going, according to what Lloyd said Thursday. While Veesaar hasn’t been available for comment since injuring his elbow in a golf-cart mishap last October, Lloyd said the two have come to an agreement that Veesaar will likely stay out of games in order to keep the option open for a fifth season of college ball in 2026-27.

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” Lloyd said. “I can’t tell you what one or two years looks like from now, but based on where we’re at and Henri’s situation, Henri and I agreed that we thought this would be the best thing for his long-term development.

“It’s just to give him the option, if he wants it, to lengthen his career at Arizona. If Henri makes another choice a year or two down the road, he has the right to make the choice that he thinks is best for himself.”

The decision is not irrevocable. Because Veesaar hasn’t played in any regular-season games, he doesn’t have to worry about qualifying for a medical redshirt waiver and will become a standard redshirt automatically by sitting out the rest of the Wildcats’ games this season.

And, if the Wildcats and/or Veesaar change their minds, he can be put into action at any time. Most likely, that would happen if the Wildcats run into significant injury issues, though Lloyd indicated Veesaar might be good enough to break into what has been a relatively tight eight-man rotation.

“It’s one of those deals where you watch him in practice the last couple of days and you think maybe we shouldn’t, because he’s playing pretty well,” Lloyd said. “But I think probably the best thing for his long term development is to do it this year, just with how this the injury and how the season’s played out.”

Lloyd said Veesaar is “actually going to work even harder” while continuing to practice fully and travel with the Wildcats the rest of season.

“He’s had to adjust and he’s handled it with great maturity,” Lloyd said. “He’s working really hard and it’s not going to be a year off for him by any stretch. He needs to continue to make a big jump and be ready to be a significant contributor next year.”

Some Love, finally

A two-time honorable mention all-ACC pick who is on pace to make the Pac-12’s 10-player all-conference team this season, Arizona senior Caleb Love said he had been surprised that he hadn’t received a Player of the Week honor from either conference until Monday.

“But I think everything happens for a reason,” Love said Thursday, when UA chose him to comment at its weekly news conference. “I probably didn’t deserve it at the time or wasn’t playing at the level that other players — we had a lot of great players in the ACC the past few years. So I’m just grateful to get the accolades.”

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Love actually beat out a competitive field of nominees for this week’s award that included Cal’s Jayson Tyson, ASU’s Jose Perez and USC’s Kobe Johnson.

Tyson averaged 22.5 points and 6.5 rebounds in the Bears’ loss at USC and win at UCLA. Perez averaged 17.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists while playing a key defensive role in the Sun Devils’ home wins over Utah and Colorado. Johnson averaged 17.0 points, 6.0 rebounds and 5.0 assists in the Trojans’ wins over Cal and Stanford.

But Love averaged 19.5 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.0 assists while shooting 59.3% between UA’s wins over Colorado and Utah. Also having dished assists that led to baskets putting both Pelle Larsson and Oumar Ballo at the 1,000-point mark for their college careers, Love says he wants to help make his teammates look better.

Having led North Carolina in scoring last season with an average of 16.7 points, Love is now leading the Wildcats at 17.7 while his field goal percentage has improfved from 37.8 to 44.4, his assists have risen from 2.8 to 3.1 per game and his turnovers have dropped from 2.4 to 1.7.

“He was a high impact guy (at UNC) who just probably needed to refine a few things and more than anything, he was open to those refinements,” Lloyd said. “He wanted to make some changes, he wanted to get better. His open-mindedness to the process was what kind of struck me and he’s literally been that every day he’s been here.”

It’s been a while

While guiding his Cougars to their first win at USC since 2014-15 on Wednesday, Washington State coach Kyle Smith found himself a little fuzzy headed after a 3-pointer helped expand the Cougars’ lead.

“I might be the worst coach in country,” Smith said on his bubbly postgame radio interview. “I thought we were only up two. I look up the scoreboard and we were up four! I was like`Oh this is great. This is great!’ In my mind somewhere I chalked up a couple (for USC). Whatever. It’s just great.”

The Cougars, who will host Arizona on Saturday in Pullman, held USC to just 38.0% shooting while receiving 26 points and 11 rebounds off the bench from University of Idaho transfer Isaac Jones. WSU also received 17 from Division II transfer Jaylen Wells in what was his first start of the season after sitting out a month of preseason practices and WSU’s regular-season opener because of injury.

“He’s a good player,” Smith said of Wells. “He missed five weeks and we’re finally catching up to it. In the end he just gives us one more guy who can make a basket out. He puts more pressure on their defense.”

Peat cuts list to 10

Five-star Gilbert Perry class of 2025 forward Koa Peat announced via On3.com a list of 10 schools under consideration that includes Arizona.

Peat also listed ASU, Baylor, Texas, Houston, Michigan, North Carolina, Duke, UCLA and Kentucky.