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What’s wrong with the Arizona Wildcats basketball team?
Um … maybe nothing?
The ninth-ranked Wildcats have been a frustrating bunch for more than a month, with inconsistent effort, shoddy perimeter defense and at least one player – hi, Kylan Boswell! – struggling with his shot or his confidence, or both.
But, after their lowest point – an 83-80 loss at Oregon State on Thursday – the Wildcats came back with a no-drama 87-78 victory at Oregon, pulling themselves into a first-place in the Pac-12 with the Ducks.
“We needed it,” coach Tommy Lloyd said on his postgame radio show on Wildcats Sports Radio 1290. “I mean, we’ve been fighting and we’ve been scratching and clawing. It just hasn’t been coming easy and I’m really proud of our guys for hanging with it.”
To use a word that coaches love, Arizona looked so “connected” early in the season on its way to two weeks as the No. 1-ranked team in the country that its recent struggles have been as alarming as they were surprising.
I’m no longer sure that the Cats are the dawgs we thought they were after the Game 2 win at Duke this season, but they can be. The Wildcats need to let the victory against Oregon game point the way toward March (and perhaps early April).
“Our attention to detail and effort and energy was high-level today,” Lloyd said. “I feel like it was maybe the best all-around game we played all year.”
Caleb Love scored a career-high 36 points against the Ducks, but it wasn’t all about him. The defense played much better than the 78 points allowed suggests. Lloyd successfully experimented with different looks, including a five-guard lineup. Lloyd, who is now 76-16 in his third season at Arizona, STILL has not lost consecutive games.
Most importantly, Boswell, who had gone scoreless in two of the four previous games, scored 14 points and was aggressive by taking 12 shots.
With others calling for a lineup change at point guard, Lloyd stuck with Boswell. He is 9 of 44 from the field in Arizona’s five losses. Boswell is 62 of 137 in the victories.
“Kylan is a really good player,” Lloyd said. “I mean, he’s got to go through this stuff. He’s a better player now, believe it or not, than he was at the start of the year. It just doesn’t always feel like it because he’s getting real experiences. …
“He’s a high-character, amazing kid and for him to play the way he did at that pace and force, it was really special.”
The trick here is for Arizona to continually recreate the high energy and effort it showed at Oregon, no matter who the opponent is, no matter how many fans are in the seats when it goes on the road.
Maybe that doesn’t happen every game – it’s a looong season, folks – but the recent level of relaxed play was unacceptable.
Against the Ducks, the Wildcats never trailed and thwarted various comeback attempts, including when Oregon nabbed potential momentum with a 70-foot buzzer-beating basket before halftime.
“I thought our guys did a much better job overall,” Lloyd said. “There’s still a few possessions I’d probably like to have back. But this team, when it has a sense of urgency and now is the moment, I think we’re pretty good.”
Whether times are good, bad or in between, creating and maintaining chemistry is a daily battle for college basketball coaches at the highest level. It’s a never-ending struggle, a tug-of-war among egos, expectations, money, and outside influences, each with their own agenda.
It’s a looong season in which it just mostly matters how you stick the landing. Getting too worried about a loss in December or January is rarely a good use of emotional energy.
“There’s been some ups and downs, but it’s part of the journey,” Lloyd told reporters after the game.
“You’ve got to be a mature enough competitor that you’re not riding the emotional ups and downs of ‘play bad, then respond and play good.’ I mean, you want that response when you play bad, but, ultimately, I want us to be more consistent. I just thought we had a way more consistent approach today.
“Obviously, Caleb played really well, but I just felt overall we were in control of what we wanted to do on both ends of the floor.”
Top photo: Arizona Wildcats guard Caleb Love celebrates a dunk vs. Oregon. (Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard-USA TODAY NETWORK)
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