This is not about last night. What does it matter if Arizona defeated an overmatched Eastern Washington 85-54 at home?
Heck, coach Tommy Lloyd was a bit disappointed because his team didn’t beat them by more. That’s all that needs to be said.
“For us to not score 100 points is a little disappointing for me,” Lloyd said, among other things, “but at the end of the day, (it’s an) exhibition – we’re learning and we got a lot of good stuff to teach.”
He’ll have plenty of teaching moments from all three exhibition games, especially Friday night when Arizona had 20 – yes, 20 turnovers – and looked sloppy at times. Maybe it was Arizona going through the motions, given it was Eastern Washington and, well, the regular season starts in a few days. It’s still early
What people – fans and everyone who follows Arizona basketball must understand – this isn’t last year’s team. Tobe Awaka isn’t walking through that locker room. Neither is Jaden Bradley, Koa Peat or Brayden Burries.
So, I had to ask: how does Tommy and others (players) guard against people thinking this team will be as good as last year’s team? Expectations, and all that.
His response surprised me.
“I don’t think you need to guard against it,” he said. “It could happen again.”
As I write this, I then remember: here’s the coach who sat at the Final Four podium and said, hell, who knows? Arizona could be back at the Final Four five more times in the next 10 years. That struck me. As did last night.
Then he said as he continued his thought about expectations, “ You have to do the work, and the work’s going to be painful. There’s going to be some tough moments. There’s going to be some growing pains, and we’ve got to get better this week in practice from how we played (Friday). That’s how you can do it.”
There’s no other way, he said. No shortcuts and the players must understand that.
“Tough moments and adversity create opportunity for growth and learning,” he said. “So, we got to take advantage of every one of those.”
He then referred to last season when things didn’t look good early, with some players going through growing pains and others through body pains. But, they overcame them. Again, it was about work.
“A lot of learning had to take place,” he said. “but that’s just how seasons go.I’m excited to see where we end up. I’m glad we didn’t play great (Friday) Now let’s get this film broken down and let’s do some learning.”
What’s to be determined is what will the lineup be? He doesn’t know yet. There’s still work to do.
“We’ll see,” he said. “It depends on how practice goes next week. Obviously, we’ve kind of been consistent thus far with who we’ve been playing and giving guys some chances. The guys that are playing right now probably are going to be the ones that are playing, unless a Hail Mary happens or something like that.”
That would be the insertion of RJ Godfrey, who remains out because of NCAA rules and hearings. He is ready to go, Lloyd said.
“We’re not there with any definitive decisions, but we’re definitely looking at options, and I just don’t have a good option to give you (media) right now that would be worthy of you printing.”
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