Greg Hansen: No what-ifs allowed after Arizona's Sweet 16 loss to Houston

SAN ANTONIO — Instead of having a ball at the Sweet 16, Arizona had a bawl.

The Wildcats were Phi Jama Slammed, knocked back and knocked out.

Houston didn’t do anything fancy to beat Arizona on Thursday, 72-60. It didn’t dominate, it didn’t put on a dunkfest or turn the heads of NBA scouts.

“It’s not a beauty contest,” said Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson. “Victories don’t come with asterisks.”

No Cougar had a career-type performance or made you think back to the UA’s despairing NCAA Tournament exits authored by Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky or Duke’s’ Mike Dunleavy Jr. The Cougars don’t inspire fear. They just beat you.

“They were a little bit too much for us,” said Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd.

Fifteen minutes after Arizona’s mostly delightful 33-4 season ended, Lloyd entered a media interview pavilion followed by university president Robert C. Robbins, athletic director Dave Heeke and a trail of tears all the way back to Tucson.

If someone from deep in the heart of Texas wrote a country song about Arizona’s sad exit, the catch-phrase would be: The Madness moves so fast, all you want it to do is last.

In time, the ’21-22 Wildcats will be remembered fondly. They were the Fun Bunch. They re-invigorated Tucson and restored the dignity of an Arizona basketball program that had been smeared by an FBI and NCAA investigation for what seems like forever.

The end of this season isn’t what matters. This season was a much-needed beginning.

What happened Thursday in San Antonio wasn’t complicated. The Wildcats played on Houston’s terms.

Arizona’s winning style had been to race, like the Tour de France, averaging 86 points a game. Houston’s style is a night at the WWE. It allowed opponents an average of 59 points per game, which to put it in context, is lower than any Arizona defense since 1951.

This time the wrestlers won. No second-guessing. If you only score 60 points in an NCAA Tournament game, the Madness doesn’t last.

Lloyd didn’t walk into Thursday’s game blind or with a flawed game plan. Before the Wildcats left Tucson on Tuesday his practice session was full of football equipment, with blocking pads and other obstacles. Each player was banged around and warned that the Cougars weren’t about to let them run and dunk.

Sampson said he watched film of Arizona’s late-season victories over Colorado and UCLA and found one common flaw: “Those teams let Arizona be comfortable,” said Sampson. I wasn’t going to let them be comfortable.”

Lloyd saw it coming.

“Houston is one of those teams you are better served to play a couple of times,” he said 20 minutes after his first head coaching season ended, his voice even, his emotions in control. “They do the things they do well at such a high level.”

He suggested Arizona, or any team, would benefit from playing the Cougars multiple times, sort of like a baseball hitter facing an opposing pitcher three times in a game. But in March, nobody gets a second shot.

A lot of basketball analysts and many more fans don’t give Houston much thought because the Cougars play in an off-the-main-road league, the American Athletic Conference, with Tulane and East Carolina and South Florida. But if you study the Cougars’ five losses this year all came against post-season teams: Wisconsin, a No. 3 seed; Memphis, which reached the tournament’s second round; Alabama, which lost in the first round; and SMU, which reached the second round of the NIT.

“The key to beating Arizona is controlling the pace,” said Sampson. “We felt like we could hold them in the 50s.”

032622-tuc-spt-hansencol-p2 — Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said Houston is especially dangerous in March. “Houston is one of those teams you are better served to play a couple of times,” he said. “They do the things they do well at such a high level.”
Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

He wasn’t far off.

It’s not that Lloyd was out-coached by Sampson, even though Sampson has coached 1,037 college games, compared to Lloyd’s 37. To begin the second half, Lloyd changed his offense to attack the rim with vigor.

Twelve of the UA’s first 13 possessions in the second half included plays at or near the rim. Two feeds to Christian Koloko began the half with easy baskets. Lloyd then turned to Azuolas Tubelis. That didn’t work as well.

On six of the next seven possessions, Tubelis went pell-mell to the bucket. But Houston gummed up the paint with so many bodies — Sampson said he changed the way the Cougars defended ball-screens, correctly anticipating Arizona’s change in schemes — and the net result was two Tubelis free throws.

Once that strategy failed, it was over.

If you examine the long history of Arizona in the NCAA Tournament, you’ll discover that most of the painful exit losses have a common link: the failure to score enough, such as a 68-67 loss in the 1989 Sweet 16 when Sean Elliott’s team was ranked No. 1; or when Arizona’s 17-1 Pac-10 champs of 1993 only scored 61 in a shocking loss to Santa Clara; or when Lute Olson’s 1998 defending national champions only scored 51 in a baffling Elite Eight loss to Utah; or when Sean Miller’s Elite Eight teams of 2011 and 2014 scored just 63 points in last-second losses to UConn and Wisconsin.

032722-tuc-spt-hansensundaynotes1-p1 — Houston coach Kelvin Sampson gets his point across during a timeout in Thursday’s first half.
Kelly Presnell, Arizona Daily Star

Maybe Arizona could’ve forced Houston out of its comfort zone if the Wildcats had started more effectively. But the Wildcats shot 2 for 12 to start the game and fell behind 19-9. Bennedict Mathurin couldn’t get his motor started. Typical of Sampson’s Final Four team last season, and this year’s Elite Eight squad, the Cougars did most of the little things well.

They outscored Arizona on points-from-turnovers, 24-8. They outscored the taller Wildcats 26-18 in the paint. Koloko and Mathurin were outscored by much less-heralded Cougars Jamal Shead and Kyler Edwards.

So no, it wasn’t an upset of any sort.

Defensively, Houston prohibited any flow of offense. Kerr Kriisa and Tubelis combined to shoot 1 for 15. When two of your starters have, as Lloyd said “one of those weekends,” you can’t play the what-if game as Arizona has done so many times after seemingly premature NCAA Tournament exits against everybody from Wisconsin to Xavier to Illinois.

There were no what-ifs Thursday. Just an optimistic what’s next?