Arizona’s get-right game proved to be alright – well more than that, actually.
But what does it all mean when it comes to the men’s basketball team just eight games into the season after beating Southern Utah 102-66 in McKale Center on Saturday afternoon.
Arizona got what it needed and what coach Tommy Lloyd wanted to see: “a win.”
But it had to be more than that with so many question marks out there with this version of Wildcats.
Like can they defend the 3-point line?
Can they get out and run like Arizona teams have been known to do?
Like, who would step up offensively?
Would the bench score some points?
Would Caleb Love return to last season’s form?
There are more, of course, but those were pivotal ones as Arizona needed to get to .500 and did at 4-4 overall.
“Great programs, good coaches, great players are going to stumble once in a while and the response is the key,” Lloyd said. “Learning from it and coming back stronger is the objective; that’s the challenge.”
Like he said earlier in the week, he’s built for it – but are the players? Well, Saturday did help – but to be fair beating Southern Utah doesn’t really move the needle when it needs to beat the likes of the teams it’s lost to.
But, hey, it beats the alternative, right?
“We obviously have been challenged early this season, which is a good thing,” he said. “We had a good week to kind of really evaluate a lot of things (to) figure out if there’s adjustments we need to make.”
So they did. They figured they needed to talk to each other more, see about “behavioral things” and “really getting back to the nitty gritty of our culture,” he said.
All in all, he said, “it was a good week.”
Again, it beats the alternative.
How big was it to have a game like this, after losing three of four?
“Very important for us. This whole week was probably one of the most, you know, I want to say hardest, disciplined weeks that we had since I’ve been here,” said KJ Lewis, who was one of seven in double-figure scoring. He had 15 and did so coming off the bench. “We definitely needed it.”
No doubt.
Intensity?
“We just knew our standard wasn’t where we would like it to be,” Lewis said. “We’ve been focusing on a bunch of us basketball, playing as a team and just moving the ball like Arizona is known for.”
Tommy Lloyd said “it was a good first step” in UA’s return home and return from the Bahamas.
“You want the players to reward themselves with a good performance,” Lloyd said. “For the most part we did.”
They shared the ball (getting 23 assists) and “we’re going to try and build on this going into next week.”
And next week, the competition steps up as UA faces UCLA in Phoenix.
But first, Arizona had to get right. Just had to – and did.
Anthony Dell’Orso led the way with 19 points. Henri Veesaar had 12 and Mo Krivas added 10. They led a group of bench players in scoring a total of 62 off of it.
Arizona was able to get on the break way more than it had most recently, getting 21 fast break points relatively easily.
It created problems with a press that created opportunities.
“We backed off that press a little bit (in the second half),” Lloyd said. “And (SUU) got a little comfortable but that’s the right thing to do because you’re not going to be able to win games night in and night out just pressing.”
Still, Arizona must get better at defending the 3-point like, given SUU hit 10 of 28 but it didn’t impact the game.
And neither did the poor shooting of Williams, who was 3 for 12 from the floor, including 2 of 5 from beyond the 3-point line.
He did finish with 11 points in 26 minutes.
“I don’t know if he’s going through a funk,” Lloyd said, when asked if Williams was. “I think he’s just kind of finding his way. I thought for stretches in that game Caleb was great. They were really being aggressive on his ball screen, kind of showing on his ball screen, not on anybody else’s. I thought he was doing a good job moving the ball. I thought he was good in some of those open-side ball screens. When you’re a good player, you draw a lot of attention. I thought he did a good job of that.”
