Arizona Basketball

Social media, national pundits weigh in on Arizona’s Sweet 16 loss

Everybody has an opinion, right? Let’s go to the reaction after Arizona’s 73-71 loss to Xavier in the Sweet 16 on Thursday night from San Jose, Calif. We’ll start with the players …

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Veteran college basketball writer Mike DeCourcy in the Sporting News:

“Against Xavier, Arizona struggled terribly to defend the Musketeers’ beautifully designed man-to-man offense; Xavier shot 52.5 percent from the field. The Wildcats yielded only 6 of 16 from 3-point range, but two of those came after Arizona had built an eight-point lead with 3:45 left. In a 71-all tie inside the final minute, the Wildcats ignored Trier and All-American Lauri Markkanen and ran a post-up play for Dusan Ristic, who had made 7 of 9 from the field but was poorly positioned on the catch and wound up air-balling his attempt.” The full story…

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Former Arizona State player and current Sun Devils radio analyst:

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Former Wisconsin Badgers Sam Dekker and Frank Kaminsky, whose teams beat Arizona in the 2014 and 2015 West regional finals in Anaheim and Los Angeles:

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National pundits:

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More from Seth Davis on SI.com:

“… even though Arizona was in great position to win this game, the Wildcats’ zone offense was pretty awful most of the night. If it weren’t for those 14 offensive rebounds, the game might not have even been all that close. And it was positively inexcusable to have a dynamic offensive weapon like 7’0” freshman Lauri Markkanen and allow him to go the final 11 minutes without taking a shot.” The full story…

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Former Arizona State and current Santa Clara coach Herb Sendek, an early coaching mentor of Miller’s:

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Wikipedia pranksters…

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Stats:

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Jeff Eisenberg, Yahoo! Sports…

“When the Wildcats reeled off 12 straight points to take a 69-61 lead with 3:45 remaining, they appeared to have punched their ticket to a fourth Elite Eight in seven seasons. They instead let an outstanding 32-win season to end with the pain of knowing they wasted a golden opportunity to get Sean Miller to his elusive first Final Four.” The full story …

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Perspective?

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