Men's basketball scouting report: Southern at Arizona, 6 p.m. Monday at McKale Center

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)

SOUTHERN

G Antione Jacks (5-9 junior)

G Tai’Reon Joseph (6-3 junior)

F Tidjiane Dioumassi (6-4 junior)

F JaRonn Wilkins (6-8 senior)

C Festus Ndumanya (6-7 senior)

How they match up

The series: Arizona is 2-0, having beaten Southern twice at McKale Center: 69-43 on Dec. 19, 2013 and 95-78 last season.

Game agreement: Arizona and Southern were contracted to play a home-and-home series as part of the Pac-12/SWAC Legacy Series that was originally scheduled to be played this season in Baton Rouge, La., but was moved to McKale Center in exchange for the promise of a game there in a future season plus an undisclosed amount of cash (a public records request to UA for the game contract remains unfulfilled).

Southern overview: Former Tulane assistant coach Kevin Johnson took over a roster that lost its top five scorers after Southern fired coach Sean Woods following last season, and then was assigned to start this season with road games at TCU, UNLV and Arizona. The Jaguars have responded so far by hitting 42% of their 3-point shots in a 108-75 season-opening loss at TCU — and then traveling to Las Vegas to beat UNLV 85-71 just two days later. The Jaguars shot 56.7% overall and made 11 of 18 3-pointers (61.1%) against the Rebels while holding the home team to 42.6% shooting overall.

Picked to finish fifth out of 12 teams in the SWAC in the league’s official preseason poll, the Jaguars return starting center Festus Ndumanya from the team that made some late runs against the Wildcats in Arizona’s 95-78 win over Southern last season at McKale Center. But they reloaded the wings with volume scorers in Texas State transfer Brandon Davis and juco transfer Tai’Reon Joseph. Those two combined for 35 points in each of Southern’s first two games, with Davis coming off the bench to average 24 minutes a game. Davis hit 6 of 11 3-pointers at UNLV to help the Jaguars shock the Rebels in Las Vegas.

The Jaguars rotate Ndumanya in the center spot along with Brentay Noel and Delang Muon, while versatile forward JaRonn Wilkens can play either post spot. Most of the time, the Jaguars go with four perimeter players and they’ll go 9-11 players deep in their rotation.

He said it

“They’re very balanced, and they space very well. It’s pretty impressive. I watch a lot of games internationally and their offense is very much like it, an international kind of FIBA offense. They want to shoot a lot of 3s. They don’t necessarily play very fast, but they try to space you out and create a lot of different situations. (They run offense) off one action and create an advantage from there.

“Joseph and Davis have been absolutely on fire for them. Joseph is really good driving with his left hand, a good shooter who makes shots in the pick-and-roll, and he’s a good catch-and-shoot player. He’s playing with a lot of swag, a lot of confidence, so he’s a guy we have to limit.

“Davis is a knockdown shooter. He can get his space and he’s playing at a high level right now. .

“They’re really not afraid. I’m really impressed by their coach and now their players are putting it together. I thought they played a really good game against TCU and against UNLV; we know how hard it is to win hard it is to win on the road. So that’s a great wake-up call (for us).

“Last year I remember in that game (being) not very happy. We were up big and they came back. That’s the challenge for this team — when we take on those talented lower-major teams (to put) together 40 minutes.”

— UA assistant coach Riccardo “Ricky” Fois, who scouted the Jaguars.

Key players

Southern — Tai’Reon Joseph

Maybe it’s about time: Joseph is off to a productive start for the Jaguars after taking a whirlwind tour through college basketball that landed him back home, playing at a college that is just a 20-minute walk from his high school. He’s made stops at Austin Peay, Radford and Missippippi’s East Central Community College over the past three seasons.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

Arizona — Paulius Murauskas

While the Lithuanian freshman has shown promise as a big shooter on the wing, UA coach Tommy Lloyd says he’s been making a tough adjustment from small to power forward, and he didn’t play Murauskas at all at Duke. Murauskas and Filip Borovicanin could get the next three home games to prove they deserve a spot in the rotation before UA faces Michigan State.

Sidelines

Red-eye victory

After Arizona left Cameron Indoor Stadium with one of its biggest wins in program history Friday at No. 2 Duke, the party went on all night.

Not that the Wildcats wanted it to, exactly. It was that their charter flight home, initially scheduled to arrive at about 2 a.m., didn’t allow the team to pull up to McKale Center until about 4:30 a.m., thanks to baggage loading and other delays.

“We stayed on the plane forever,” assistant coach Ricky Fois said. “I don’t know why.”

The good news, according to Fois, is that it proved a learning experience of sorts. Fois spent two seasons as the director of player development for the Suns, traveling all over the NBA into the wee hours after games — sometimes with a game ahead the same day or the next.

“We have guys who want to play in the NBA,” Fois said. “That’s what the NBA is like.”

Attention, please

Fois and the other UA coaches, Southern’s 85-71 win at UNLV on Wednesday might have made their jobs a little easier.

It at least increased the odds that the Wildcats will shake off any head-swelling effects from their 78-73 win at Duke, alerting them to the fact that the Jaguars have already pulled out a tough road game.

“I don’t think you’re off on that,” Fois said when asked about the possibility. “For them to see that game, they’ve all been in that road environment, so they know what it takes. We have a mature group that would have been locked in regardless but ... that’s a pretty rare event in college basketball.”

Family ties

Southern coach Kevin Johnson might have played for and graduated from UTRGV, but everything around him these days has a certain familiarity to it.

Johnson is from Morgan City, just 65 miles south of Baton Rouge. His mother graduated from Southern in 1963, and he has an older brother who did so in 1980. Johnson also was hired last March to work for an athletic director, Roman Banks, whom he once coached as an assistant at Northwestern (La.) State.

So maybe it was appropriate that Johnson’s first win at Southern, an upset at UNLV, tugged at some basketball family ties.

Johnson became the 15th-leading scorer in UTRGV history while playing for Lon Kruger, sometimes even babysitting Kruger’s son, Kevin, the former ASU and UNLV player ... who is now the Rebels’ head coach.

“That was really emotional for me because of my relationship with the Kruger family,” Johnson said.

More energy coming

In the last of three social-media videos where UA coach Tommy Lloyd spoke publicly about his early class of 2024 signees — he hasn’t been available for direct comment since their signings except for a nine-minute press conference after the Duke game — Lloyd indicated that he was expecting an infusion of energy on and off the court from Nigerian big man Emmanuel Stephen.

“He’s such a fun personality to be around,” Lloyd said. “This guy has energy that’s gonna be infectious and on the court, he’s a tremendous shot-blocker who’s always changing a lot of shots. I think he’s really gonna impact the game on the rim and offensively, he’s developing.

“I think he has great potential to be a guy who can play above the rim, catching lobs and things like that.”

Stephen and guard Jamari Phillips signed their letters of intent last Thursday at Glendale Dream City, where they are playing their senior seasons together, while forward Carter Bryant signed his at Corona (Calif.) Centennial High School a day earlier.

Numbers game

3 — Teams rated in the Top 3 that Arizona has beaten in the Tommy Lloyd era — No. 3 UCLA in 2021-22, No. 2 UCLA last season and No. 2 Duke on Friday — making Lloyd the first coach in the 21st century to do so, according to OptaStats.

75 — Lloyd’s winning percentage against teams ranked in the Top 25 since becoming Arizona’s coach before the 2021-22 season (12 wins in 16 games).

50 — Percent Southern has shot from 3-point range over its first two games, at TCU and at UNLV.

— Bruce Pascoe