Greg Hansen: It was fun, fun, fun when the Wildcats put Wyoming away

Arizona junked its traditional pre-game video Wednesday, eliminating mention of Final Fours and Lute Olson flashing his national championship ring.

It went to the stock 60 minutes of dunks, 3-pointers and locker room celebrations, a pregame salute you can see at ASU or Stanford or anywhere.

But you know what? It works.

I’m not filing a complaint here. Not trying to cling to the past (but I sure miss hearing that “STEEEVE KEERRRR!’’ chant a few times a year). Arizona hasn’t gone to a Final Four for 20 years and the new leadership at McKale Center, from Dave Heeke to Tommy Lloyd, would probably like to create a more modern identity in a game that has so thoroughly changed the last 10 years.

It’s more about today and tomorrow than yesterday.

This UA basketball team is more like the epic Beach Boys song “Fun, Fun, Fun” than the old Tark vs. Lute days. Change? In Thursday’s 94-65 blitz over Wyoming, Arizona sophomore Dalen Terry was outfitted in what appeared to be beach wear underneath his high-cropped uniform shorts.

Terry wasn’t made available to answer media questions, but I was curious: had he been at the pool lately? Is this team that casual? Terry’s light-blue and yellow-ish undergarments looked like surfer dude apparel.

Said Lloyd: “I love Dalen; he’s got a great spirit.”

Game day at McKale has changed. So have the Wildcats.

UA coaches no longer wear expensive suits and shiny shoes; they wear informal matching Nike gear. They don’t stomp and shout. Old boundaries have been broken. In the first 10 minutes of Wednesday’s game, Arizona took 11 3-point shots. It shattered previously undefeated Wyoming’s strategy to slow down the nation’s fastest-moving team, taking a 35-14 lead with the new model of Arizona basketball: 8 o’clock lightning.

No school in Pac-12 history has played a full season at the lightning pace to match Lloyd’s 11th-ranked Wildcats, not even in the early nonconference season when many of the games are blowouts. But thus far, McKale Center fans can’t sit down because they are too busy celebrating Bennedict Mathurin’s breakaway dunks and a flurry of 3-pointers from Kerr Kriisa.

About the only semi-complaint came from UA sophomore forward Azoulas Tubelis, who noticed about 1,400 empty seats in the upper deck. Here’s a bit of reality: although undefeated, Wyoming had gone 8-0 against the No. 241 schedule in the country.

Wait ‘til January. Once the calendar flips and Pac-12 games begin, you’ll see no empty red seats at McKale. It could be a lot like 1994, a Final Four season, when Arizona created the nickname “Thunder and Lightning” for the nation’s most feared backcourt, Damon Stoudamire and Khalid Reeves.

Given the UA’s ability to solve and destruct Wyoming’s defense in, oh, 2 ½ minutes, the Damon and Khalid Show of the ‘90s almost came off as an old-fashioned crawl.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

After Mathurin hammered two dunks through the rim to give Arizona a 43-20 lead, Terry laughed all the way down court, unable to disguise how fun it has become to play basketball for Arizona. A few plays later, Kriisa attempted a between-the-legs pass that was intercepted. How many coaches in the Pac-12 would’ve quickly pulled Kriisa from the game and given him (a) a lecture or (b) a silent treatment?

Instead, the animated Kriisa played on, scoring 14 points in the first half. What’s semi-insane is that these are mostly the same guys from the staid and often underperforming Sean Miller team of a year ago.

So my only suggestion to the pre-game video crew is to think about using “Fun, Fun, Fun” as a soundtrack someday.

Now comes the full disclaimer: It’s early December. The between-the-legs passes and surfing gear may not be as entertaining Saturday afternoon at Illinois’ old Assembly Hall (now called the State Farm Center), which will be filled, with 14,907 fans, the first truly hostile environment Lloyd’s team will encounter.

“It’s got a McKale feel to it,” said Lloyd, who quickly acknowledged that his old school, Gonzaga, was 0-2 in games at Illinois.

It’ll be like a night at Oregon’s old Mac Court. Lloyd described Illinois coach Brad Underwood as “a guy that oozes toughness.”

We’re about to discover if Lloyd and his team do, too.

Illinois is ranked No. 14 in the KenPom.com analytics and has played a schedule exceedingly more difficult than Arizona’s path to Saturday’s showdown. The Illini have beaten Iowa, Notre Dame and Kansas State. One of its two losses, on the road at Marquette, came when the Big Ten’s preseason Player of the Year, double-double machine Kofi Cockburn, was injured and did not play.

Cockburn, who will be the best player Arizona has seen this season (by far), is a legit contender to be the national player of the year. Lloyd referred to Cockburn as “the Shaq of college basketball” but isn’t backing down.

He said that “there is nothing better than going on the road and kicking somebody’s ass.” Game on, right?

At its highest level, college basketball is more about surviving imposing road challenges than it is about entertaining hometown fans with 95-64 laugh fests.

As for the once-unbeaten and shocked Wyoming Cowboys, they’ll get their day at the beach Dec. 22, when they play Stanford in Honolulu’s Diamond Head Classic. It may take the Cowboys that long to get over Wednesday’s thunder-and-lightning treatment at McKale Center.