This is what we know about Arizona’s men’s basketball team through seven often painful games:
Who is the best player? Ummmm.
Who is the starting center? Ummmm.
Who is the go-to shooter? Ummmm.
Who is the defensive stopper? Ummmm.
Are transfers Trey Townsend, Anthony Dell’Orso and Tobe Awaka any better than previous (underwhelming) transfers Chase Jeter, Ryan Luther and Stone Gettings? Ummmm.
Of 16 Big 12 teams, who is the only team with a losing record? Uh, Arizona.
Is Arizona tough enough to successfully run the Big 12 gauntlet? Ummmm.
What is the worst statistic of the first seven games (other than three losses)? When Arizona trailed West Virginia 59-49 Friday, the Mountaineers had 19 points off turnovers. Arizona? Zero.
Arizona lost to West Virginia, 83-76, Friday at the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament, dropping to its first losing record in 15 years.
A polite way to describe Tommy Lloyd’s fourth Arizona team is that it is a work in progress.
It has four nonconference games until Big 12 competition begins on Dec. 30 to address and fix issues related to (a) chemistry, (b) perimeter defense, © offensive flow, (d) clutch shooting, (e) interior offense and (f) a personnel rotation that has been choppy.
There is also a long-range problem. When the NCAA Selection Committee determines its March Madness field for 2025, Arizona’s November stumbles will carry weight.
What many thought would be a 10-1 or 9-2 nonconference season will likely end up 6-5, unless Arizona beats a 6-1 UCLA team Dec. 14 in Phoenix. After that, a brutal 20-game Big 12 schedule appears so menacing — no gimmes, not even ASU at McKale — that a 10-10 finish might be a generous forecast for the Wildcats.
That would put Arizona at something close to 17-15 on Selection Sunday.
Good news: Of the last 60 Big 12 teams that finished .500 or better in the conference games, 59 made the NCAA Tournament.
A historic parallel: One of Lute Olson’s most troublesome starts was in the 1989-90 season. The Wildcats faced a rare Nov. 30/Dec. 2 start to the Pac-10 season, losing on the road at Oregon and getting blown out 84-61 at Oregon State against Gary Payton.
It was such a bad start — there was just one nonconference game before the Oregon trip — that Olson was assessed a technical foul at halftime of the OSU game for kicking a basketball lying nearby, running up to it like an NFL place-kicker, and barely ticking it off his foot. He almost stumbled and fell. Yes, it was a bad start.
Worse, extremely difficult road games against Duke, UNLV and Pitt awaited. Arizona lost all three.
Yet in March, the Wildcats were Pac-10 champs, 25-7 overall, earning a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament thanks to the continued development of first-year starters Jud Buechler, Sean Rooks and Matt Othick.
As Tommy Lloyd hopes to find over the next three months, missing a few buckets early in the season — or, as Lute Olson in 1989, a kick — doesn’t have to be costly in March.
