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Many an Arizona fan, including myself has fallen prey to the individual breakout performance from the Red-Blue Game. Beau Muhlbach anyone?
But,who cares. Let’s overreact a tad.
If the Red-Blue game was any indication this is going to be an enjoyable, loose team to watch. Off a rebound the team is pushing it and not just pushing it to run to halfcourt and pause but to take advantage of numbers.
A lot has been made about the obvious players like Benn Mathurin and Azuolas Tueblis and where they stack up but games like this are where you want to look at some of the unknowns.
Eastern Washington transfer Kim Aiken Jr, 3 point specialist and UA leading scorer? That might not be a title we hear all season but he certainly looked sharp shooting the ball from distance, making four quick early three pointers. Not to mention a nasty follow up dunk.
Generally you don’t bring in upperclassmen transfers without the hope of them playing early and with Aiken’s savvy and apparent shooting you can probably pencil him in for 15-20 minutes per game.
French freshman wing Adama Bal might not get a ton of run this season, but he’s long, athletic and has a nose for the ball. And is particularly dynamic when he attacks the hoop. He appears to be a keeper long term.
Center Oumer Ballo is obviously big but doesn’t have a ton of quick twitch to his game. It take far too long to gather and when playing against long teams like Oregon and UCLA that is going to be a problem.
Dalen Terry is going to play thirty minutes per game this season and with the exception of maybe Kriisa, is the biggest beneficiary of the coaching change. Terry handled the ball more in this game than he did all of last season. And I’m not sure that’s even a slight exaggeration. He figures to be a jack of all trades type.
Christian Koloko certainly looked improved but its also difficult to assess his offensive impact as he wasn’t featured offensively and didn’t play much in the second half.
In the postgame, Tommy Lloyd was clearly happy with the pace and where his team is at right now.
We won’t know the extent of the accuracy of these observations until Arizona plays against another team but overall this appears to be a team that can compete for the third spot in the conference.
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