'Good players,' 'great guys': Tommy Lloyd's takeaways from Arizona basketball Mideast tour

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — When he first spoke publicly earlier this summer about taking his team on a 10-day journey through the Middle East, Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said he didn’t think the Wildcats would just be playing “a bunch of thrown-together, all-star makeshift teams.”

Well, the Wildcats wound up having to play two of those teams. Unable to play a second national team opponent as they had hoped, Arizona instead blew out the Israel Select and UAE Select before beating the Lebanon national team 85-71 in a much more competitive game on Saturday at Etihad Arena.

But as Lloyd has consistently indicated all summer, heading to Israel and the UAE was more about expanding his players’ minds than expanding their games.

“My goal on this trip wasn’t to go 3-0. My goal was to have a great experience,” Lloyd said Saturday, before the Wildcats began the long journey home. “And it was kind of to see where certain guys are at on the court and then build from there.

“All in all, I think it ended up being a success. I would have loved to play the Lakers and Clippers, the Knicks. I think that would have been a fun challenge for us. But whoever they put in front of us, we’re excited to play.”

As it was, the Wildcats had a chance to work in all of their seven new players, though freshman guard KJ Lewis missed the Israel Select game with a foot injury and forward Paulius Murauskas missed the Lebanon game because of a family issue.

They also demonstrated the sort of offensive pace and teamwork Lloyd prefers, while doing so in a notably balanced fashion. Seven Wildcats averaged in double-figure scoring over the three games, while point guard Kylan Boswell averaged 8.7 points — and committed only one turnover to his 15 total assists.

They also held their three opponents to 39.7% shooting while prodding them into an average of 15.3 turnovers a game, scoring 29 points off 14 Lebanon turnovers in their exhibition finale.

“Definitely, we’ve got a lot of weapons,” senior guard Pelle Larsson said. “We can attack from a lot of positions. I feel like at every position on the floor, we’re dangerous offensively.

“And defensively, you could see many deflections we got (against Lebanon), how much we were jumping around, rotating and talking. That’s definitely what makes us dangerous, I think.”

Among the several revelations on the floor during the trip was that Arizona may have more options on the perimeter than it has in Lloyd’s first two seasons, with sophomore guard Filip Borovicanin flirting with triple-doubles in the first two games and Lewis averaging 13.5 points and 4.5 rebounds in his two games.

Arizona also brought in high-level guard transfers Caleb Love (North Carolina) and Jaden Bradley (Alabama) to the backcourt while Boswell is expected to step into a more full-time point guard role after the Wildcats lost Kerr Kriisa to West Virginia. And then there’s Larsson, a guard who brings versatility and defense to just about anywhere on the court.

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After answering doubts back in May that he could still assemble a viable roster for 2023-24, Lloyd now has options.

“Listen, this is what I know: Guys who come play at Arizona are good players,” Lloyd said. “We have good players, and we have great guys. We have high character people and I think everyone puts the team first. It’s a joy to work with these guys on a daily basis.”

But, because it’s still only August, and because Lloyd dislikes discussing hypotheticals anyway, he indicated he wasn’t reading into the statistics from the trip and what they might mean.

There’s plenty of time ahead for that, anyway.

“I’m not going to draw any significant conclusions,” Lloyd said. “The only things I was looking to establish were the pace and effort we want to play with. We want to play with (an uptempo) pace and with physical effort on both ends of the court. We want to play with it on the glass.

“We haven’t gotten too far down the rabbit hole of sets and counter plays and all that kind of stuff. We’ll will cross that bridge when it comes. So I’m happy. I think it was mission accomplished.”

Exclusive coverage of UA hoops Mideast Tour — only in the Star and at Tucson.com/Pascoe