Deep into the summer – and probably before – Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said he really – no, really! – liked his team this season to anyone who asked.
Well, now you know why. Saturday night it acted and played the part of college basketball’s best team in its impressive 96-75 win over host Alabama.
Top-ranked Arizona (9-0) played its best game of the season and perhaps its best in more than two as it beat its fifth ranked team this season. No team in the history of college basketball has a team beaten five ranked teams in its first nine games.
Down at the half, Arizona scored 57 points in the second half and outscored Bama by 23 in the second half, with a all out torrid offense that had the Tide rolling in the wrong direction.
“It was great,” Lloyd said on his postgame radio show. “We love all our wins, but to be able to come here in this atmosphere ….”
Arizona did it in front of nearly 15,000 fans – and made it look easy in the second half.
Five Arizona players scored in double figures, with freshman – imagine that – Brayden Burries leading the way with a career-high 28 points. He had 20 points in a recent game – and averaged 17 in the previous three games – but had been struggling a bit before all that this season. But Lloyd said earlier in the week that he liked how Burries had been practicing and that was a good sign.
“It was pretty special to see Brayden to have that opportunity, kind of that breakout; we knew it was coming,” Lloyd said. “I didn’t know it would happen today, but I told him before the game I had a good feeling about tonight.”
Lloyd pointed to a moment early in the second half when Burries could have had an assist on a lob but didn’t pass it. That’s why Lloyd told Burries “to let loose … start playing a little faster and with a little more flow.
“From that point on, he took the game over.”
And everyone seemingly followed suit. Figure the numbers:
Mo Krivas had his first career double-double with 14 points and 14 rebounds.
Anthony Dell’Orson had 14 points and looked confident with his 3-pointers.
Jaden Bradley had a steady – yet effective – night with 13 points and seven assists back where his career started.
And Ivan Kharchenkov had 10 points.
The numbers don’t stop there.
Arizona had 52 rebounds to Bama’s 32, leading to 28 more shot attempts for Arizona.
UA had only four turnovers to Alabama’s 15.
“I didn’t know that, but we’ll take it,” Lloyd said. “Taking care of the ball is one of our core tenants.”
Everything meshed in Arizona’s white-hot offense. It went along with a stout defense that created havoc for a team that seemingly thrives in it given how fast and crazed it plays. But Alabama wilted in a stretch where Arizona outscored them early in the second half and just couldn’t recover.
“The theme for the week was early energy, early effort (for) every possession,” Lloyd said. “You can’t relax against at team like Alabama … we knew we’d be comfortable playing at the pace they play with. We wanted to play with a little bit more discipline.
“We talked about endurance and you don’t talk much about it in basketball against a team like Alabama – there are so many possessions in these games (because) they can get a little frenetic but (it was about) having competitive endurance and our guys did a great job.”
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