Oregon State’s Tres Tinkle, who turns 24 in June, played his first basketball game for the Beavers in November 2015. That was a few weeks before Nico Mannion, a ninth-grader, played his first high school game.
Tinkle has been one of the Pac-12’s most consistent and productive players ever, scoring 2,128 points, a total so profound that only one man in Arizona history, Sean Elliott, can top it.
Put it this way: if Tinkle had chosen to play at Arizona, his name would soon be in the Ring of Honor at McKale Center.
Yet if anyone knows how difficult college basketball is, ask Tres Tinkle.
After the Beavers routed Arizona 82-65 in Corvallis six weeks ago, the difficulty of the game became manifest to the Pac-12 player you’d least expect to fall into a career slump. Tinkle missed 36 of his next 41 3-point shots.
That’s 5 for 41. That’s 12 percent. But everybody in the league knows Tinkle is a franchise-type shooter.
So don’t tell me that Nico Mannion can’t shoot. He has gone 10 for 41 from 3-point distance in Arizona’s losses. That’s mathematically twice as good as Tinkle in the last six weeks.
Tinkle began Thursday’s loss to Arizona by going 1 for 7 at McKale Center. It wasn’t a make-or-break game by any measure, for either team. The Beavers are NIT fodder, if that. Arizona is improving against the lower tier of the Pac-12, but that label won’t apply to Saturday’s showdown against the Oregon Ducks.
Arizona’s Jemarl Baker takes an elbow from Oregon State’s Tres Tinkle, who was disqualified for the flagrant foul in Thursday’s 89-63 UA win.
Mannion was OK against the Beavers. He scored 16 points and swished two long 3s. It didn’t matter because Tinkle’s slump continued. He was 3 for 11, by far the worst of his seven career games against Arizona; he had averaged 19.5 points until Thursday.
Worse, Tinkle was disqualified from the game — a flagrant foul — for elbowing Jemarl Baker with 13:17 remaining and Arizona leading 52-30.
Frustration 1, Tinkle 0.
If Mannion is frustrated, it doesn’t show. He’ll need to be sharp against No. 14 Oregon on Saturday, which will be the game of the year at McKale. UA fans will expect Mannion to be on top of his game, which was understood when he agreed to play one season of college basketball here.
Big games are for big players, which has been the definition of Arizona basketball since 1986. No one said it would be easy.
Mannion’s work at Arizona has been under scrutiny probably unmatched by any player in school history, if that’s possible. That’s because Mannion “runs the show,” as teammate Ira Lee said last week. The pressure and game-to-game audits of Mannion’s predecessors such as Deandre Ayton, Mike Bibby and Aaron Gordon don’t compare because they were surrounded by more skilled and experienced teammates than exist on Arizona’s 2019-20 roster.
As Mannion goes, so go the Wildcats, and that’s not going to change Saturday against the Oregon Ducks or in the NCAA Tournament next month.
Point Guard U was built on the backs of five young men: Steve Kerr, Damon Stoudamire, Mike Bibby, Jason Terry and Jason Gardner. A few years before the creation of PGU, freshman point guard Eric Money was superb, averaging 19 points a game in the debut season of McKale Center. And a few years ago, Duquesne transfer T.J. McConnell restored the Point Guard U legend.
Arizona guard Josh Green is one of three freshmen likely to leave the Wildcats and head to the NBA Draft. One mock draft has him going 22nd, another has him at No. 25.
None of those players entered his freshman season at Arizona with as much of a carry-the-load burden as Mannion. Only Jason Gardner, as a freshman in 1999-2000, went through the fire in a way that compares to Mannion.
You say that Mannion can’t shoot?
In Gardner’s freshman season — Arizona won the Pac-10 title and earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament — Gardner had the following performances in four hurtful UA losses:
• At LSU: 1 for 10, which included 0-for-7 from 3-point distance.
• At UConn: 2 for 9.
• Against New Mexico at McKale: 2 for 11.
• Against Wisconsin in the NCAA Tournament: 3 for 11, which included 1 for 7 from 3.
Yet Gardner was selected the national Freshman of the Year, which is the reason his No. 22 hangs on the wall at McKale Center.
As Tinkle has discovered this season, even those who get their jerseys retired don’t always have a magic touch.
Gardner shot .378 from the field as a freshman. Mannion is shooting .393.
Bibby averaged 13.5 points as a freshman on Arizona’s 1997 national championship team. Mannion is averaging 13.6.
Terry played only 11 minutes per game as a UA freshman; Mannion averages 31.
Stoudamire didn’t start a game as a freshman. Neither did Kerr.
Arizona guard Dylan Smith (3), left and forward Zeke Nnaji (22) fight for a rebound with Oregon State forward Kylor Kelley (24) in the first half of their Pac12 game at McKale Center, February 20, 2020 Tucson, Ariz.
The Gardner-Mannion comparison is the only one that truly works at Point Guard U. But the Gardner of ’99-00 was surrounded by one of the most skilled starting lineups in Arizona history: future NBA draft picks Richard Jefferson, Michael Wright, Loren Woods and Gilbert Arenas. More? Luke Walton was the sixth man.
Can you imagine if Mannion had the luxury of someone with a basketball IQ like Luke Walton coming off the bench?
Mannion isn’t likely to make the all-conference first team next month. Those slots are apt to be filled by Oregon senior Payton Pritchard, ASU junior Remy Martin and Colorado junior McKinley Wright. Experience counts, even when you’ve got Mannion’s long-range tools and sound shooting mechanics.
But remember this: When Wright was a CU freshman, he started 14 games in which he failed to make a 3-point shot.
It takes time. For Nico Mannion and the Wildcats, the clock is ticking.
Arizona forward Zeke Nnaji (22) reacts to a foul call against Oregon State during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Thursday,…
