Hill and Parrom cap regular season by leading Arizona in productivity

ARIZONA PRODUCTIVITY RATING
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GLOSSARY:
G: Games played. S: Number of starts.
BP: Bench points. A player gets three points if he is first off the bench, two if second and one if third. Shows Sean Miller’s rotation.
ASU: Productivity points against ASU
AMIN: Minutes played against ASU
PP: Productivity Points (Points, assists, rebounds, steals, blocked shots, FGs made, FTs made added together and then subtracted by missed FGs, missed FTs, personal fouls and turnovers)
TMIN: Minutes played overall
PR: Productivity rating per minute played (Productivity points divided by minutes played)
NOTE: Player must average at least 10 minutes a game to be listed in primary rotation

PAC-12 STANDINGS [table “” not found /]

Solomon Hill leads Arizona with a .610 productivity rating After 30 regular-season games and a total of 1,702 minutes played between them, seniors Solomon Hill and Kevin Parrom are fittingly the top two productivity players for Arizona. Hill and Parrom capped their careers at McKale Center with 43 productivity points in 60 minutes in the Wildcats’ 73-58 win over arch-rival ASU on Saturday afternoon. Productivity points factor positive stats (for example, points, rebounds and assists) subtracted by negative stats (turnovers, missed field goals, etc.). Productivity rating is productivity points divided by minutes played. Hill leads the Wildcats with a .610 productivity rating and Parrom is slightly behind at .609. Sophomore guard Nick Johnson led the Wildcats with 28 productivity points in 36 minutes against ASU. It is the most productivity points Johnson has posted since he had 26 in 31 minutes at Washington on Jan. 31.

“Nick was the best player on the team today, possibly the best player out there,” UA coach Sean Miller told reporters afterward. “He knows that. He played like he has with us this season, if he’s not energized it’s not the same team. It’s not just up to him it’s all of the guys. … He has been practicing really hard.”

Arizona freshman center Kaleb Tarczewski continued his surge in the second half of the Pac-12 season, making all four of his field goal attempts and pulling down eight rebounds. He posted 17 productivity points in 26 minutes. His .498 productivity rating is significantly better than the .419 mark he was at when Arizona first beat ASU in Tempe on Jan. 19.

“Kaleb continues to evolve and improve,” Miller said. “Not just because he was 4 for 4 from the field today, his rebounding had a big impact today. His is no where near where he can be or is going to be but if you look back at December and where he was there, it is a great improvement.”

Arizona’s half of the bracket in the Pac-12 tournament includes Colorado and UCLA, which are 3-1 against the Wildcats this season. The No. 5 seeded Buffaloes have a rematch with No. 12 Oregon State on Wednesday at the MGM Grand Garden Arena after losing to the visiting Beavers 64-58 on Saturday. The winner plays the Wildcats in a quarterfinal game Thursday afternoon.

If the Wildcats get past the Colorado-Oregon State winner a potential rematch with UCLA looms in the semifinals Friday night. The Bruins swept the season series from Arizona.

The Wildcats have taken the first step in the right direction by securing a bye until the second day of the tournament with their win over ASU.

Nick Johnson had his best productivity game in more than a month

“You always want to improve your seed,” Hill told reporters. “We’ve been to conference championship games in back-to-back years and we’ve come up short. It’s good to get the bye. It’s a big difference. We always want to win, whether it’s the NCAA tournament or our conference tournament. We want to get to the conference championship and win it.

“If we keep our defense like this (against ASU), I think our momentum can take us pretty far.”

ASU outshot Arizona 46.5 percent to 44.4 but the Sun Devils committed 17 turnovers. The Wildcats managed 10 steals, including three each by Hill and Johnson.

The Wildcats outscored ASU 24-10 in the last 11 minutes of the first half to take control. Arizona’s 40-25 halftime lead dwindled to five with 11:26 remaining, but the Wildcats again responded in the final 11 minutes. They went on a 17-5 run over the next five minutes to take a commanding lead again.

“In games like Cal, we didn’t bring it out in the second half and we ended up losing,” Hill said. “It was good to put two halves together and show that we can really get after it. Playing a game like this against ASU on senior night was great.”

The Wildcats dominated the boards, always an indicator of which team plays with more intensity. The margin of 35-23 was the greatest in Pac-12 play this season for Arizona and the most since the Wildcats out-rebounded Miami 46-20 on Dec. 23.

ASU had only three offensive rebounds the entire game, an opponent season-low for the Wildcats.

Defensive Rebounding Percentage (DRB%): Determined by dividing Arizona’s defensive rebounds (22 against ASU) by the opposition’s offensive rebounds (three) added to Arizona’s defensive rebounds (22) — 22/(3 + 22) = season-high 88 percent.

Offensive Rebounding Percentage (ORB%): Determined by taking Arizona’s offensive rebound total (13) divided by that total (13) and the defensive rebounds of the opponent (20 for ASU) — 13/(13 + 20) = 39.4 percent.

Ideal marks are 72 percent DRB% and 38 percent ORB%.

Site publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner

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