For more than 30 years, Arizona’s best basketball teams always had the answer for the biggest of the big games at McKale Center, for the best of the best.
The Wildcats beat Shaquille O’Neal’s LSU team. They beat Michigan’s Fab Four. They beat a Duke team with Christian Laettner and Bobby Hurley. They beat Jerry Tarkanian’s future UNLV national champs. They beat Oklahoma when it was a Final Four program. They beat No. 2 and No. 3 Stanford and one of Tom Izzo’s Michigan State powerhouses.
But on Friday night at McKale, Arizona had no answers. No inside game. No outside game. Duke dominated defensively. Duke had the best player on the floor, freshman Cooper Flagg. Duke, Duke, Duke.
Duke guard Cooper Flagg gestures after hitting a 3-point shot against Arizona during the second half at McKale Center on Nov. 22, 2024.
Duke even had an answer when Arizona introduced one former Wildcat superstar after another: Mike Bibby, Derrick Williams, Chase Budinger and Gilbert Arenas all were imported to add to the big game setting.
Alas, sitting behind the Blue Devil bench were four national championship players: Grayson Allen, Marshall Plumlee and Tyus Jones, as well as Mike Dunleavy, who led Duke over Arizona in the 2001 national title game.
How’s that for getting beat at your own game?
The game had so much advance billing that three Final Four referees — Roger Ayers, Marques Pettigrew and Doug Sirmons — were assigned to call the game. They were superb. Arizona and its sensitive fans couldn’t blame anything on the refs.
Tommy Lloyd has built Arizona’s program on flash and dash. They’ve already scored more than 90 points twice, and it’s not yet Thanksgiving. But on Friday, they struggled. Their body language came off more like ASU or Cal. They barely scored 55. It was humbling. It was a signal that Lloyd hasn’t yet figured out his transfer-rich club, uncertain of his rotation, unable to succeed against a team that started three freshmen.
Arizona has now lost back-to-back games by 15 and 14 points. The last time an Arizona team lost consecutive games by double figures was when Russ Pennell was Arizona’s interim head coach in 2009.
When Duke arrived in Tucson on Thursday, the Blue Devils drove to Pima Community College to practice at the Aztecs’ facility. Coach Jon Scheyer assigned one of the many Blue Devil student managers to guard each door, not allowing outsiders to watch their beat-Arizona practice. It was as if they were guarding a secret, the basketball equivalent of a nuclear weapon.
A day later, they dropped a bomb on McKale Center.
