Arizona men’s basketball closed the exhibition season on Friday night with a third blowout in a row despite enduring 20 turnovers.
The No. 5 Wildcats beat Eastern Washington 85-54 at McKale Center. However, Arizona had 20 turnovers compared to the Eagles’ 19.
“I just thought it was guys being really soft and maybe a little bit selfish,” said Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd. “Remember those Mad Lib books? They were just kind of filling in their own words.”
Freshman guard Caleb Holt continued to impress with a game-high 21 points, shooting 8-for-11 from the field and making 3 of 4 shots from 3-point range. He also had three steals, five rebounds and two assists, but he committed five turnovers.
“Caleb’s relentless and part of the deal when you have somebody like him who’s so talented, is you just kind of got to ride some waves,” Lloyd said. “I mean, there’s going to be some aggressive plays and there’s going to be some mistakes, it comes with the territory.
“He had five turnovers, which is too many and so we’ll take a look at where and why those are coming and hopefully he’ll be able to learn from him but he’s been a great student so far and a big part of the development with him is kind of teaching them what we do and why we do it but while that process is taking place let him play with that energy and effort and those natural instincts he came here with.”
Arizona jumped out to an 11-5 lead by hitting their first five field goal attempts. Holt missed Arizona’s first shot but the next was a made 3-pointer by sophomore forward Ivan Kharchenkov.
The Wildcats went up 18-5 with a 9-0 run and holding the Eagles scoreless for about 3:45.
After Eastern Washington scored, the Wildcats went on another 9-0 run.
There were 14 Wildcats who saw action, with all but three scoring.
At about six minutes left in the first half, Eastern Washington cut Arizona’s lead to 34-13 when the Wildcats went on a scoring drought of more than two minutes.
However Arizona pushed the lead to 45-17 and forced an Eagles time out when Holt made a lay up and in the ensuing inbound he stole the ball and scored again. Then, after the timeout, he made a 3-pointer to engineer a personal 7-0 run.
Eagles head coach Dan Monson is in his 29th season as a head coach and has 469 wins, which includes stints leading Long Beach State, Minnesota and Gonzaga.
EWU cut the lead to 48-24 in the last minute of the first half when Arizona went almost three minutes without scoring, missing seven straight field goals. The Wildcats led 50-26 at the half.
Eastern Washington shot 34% compared to the UA’s 52%. Arizona led by as much as 40.
At 13 minutes to go, UA went up 74-35 with an 11-0 run.
Eastern Washington had one player score in double digits, sophomore forward Jamil Miller, who had 10 points.
Arizona finished the preseason with three wins by 24, 15 and 31 points.
“There was a lot of good moments and then there was a lot of teachable moments and so we got a good day off (Saturday) to kind of take a breath and kind of see where we’re at and then hopefully leading into this first game, we can get a good rhythm of practice,” Lloyd said. “It just felt like practices have been a little disjointed because we’ve had to stack some days off in there to kind of make up for some extra practices we had early.
“So yeah, I’m excited to get back to work and then they keep things moving.”
UA sophomore guard JJ Mandaquit, whose rookie season at Washington ended in January due to a foot injury, had 11 points on 4-of-8 shooting, 2-for-4 from beyond the arc, as well as five assists.
“I thought JJ was maybe one of the bright spots (Friday), I thought he played pretty well,
I thought he turned down too many shots kind of in that second half,” Lloyd said. “We had a few good possessions where the ball kind of pinged around and maybe he found the third pass and was kind of open to the corner and he shot faked himself out of a three and drove it because he wants to make a play for somebody else.
“But JJ is also a really good standing three-point shooter so I want him to be comfortable, letting that rip.”
Lloyd said who makes the rotation could depend on practice next week but he doesn’t expect big changes.
“Obviously we’ve kind of been consistent thus far with who we’ve been playing and giving guys some chances,” Lloyd said. “The guys that are that are that are playing right now probably are going to be the ones that are playing, unless a Hail Mary happens or something like that.”
On Friday Holt and freshman guard Cameron Holmes led the way with 24 minutes, followed by sophomore guard Derek Dixon and Mandaquit with 23 minutes, then Kharchenkov had 19, freshman forward Maksim Brnovic played 18, senior center Motiejus Krivas had 17 minutes and sophomore guard Bryce James and fifth year forward Ugnius Jarusevicius were in for 15 minutes.
“For me personally I feel comfortable, I think we all feel comfortable,” Mandaquit said about the rotation. “We do such a good job of having culture building stuff, off the floor, we’re a very close-knit team and when it comes to on the floor, we do a really good job at practices, gelling together, everybody getting reps together and then when you get along off the court it’s a lot easier to play well together on the court.”
James started his third exhibition game in a row, getting three points and a steal on 1-for-3 shooting.
“Bryce has been good in practice, he got a little bit sick this week and he maybe wasn’t himself, but he didn’t start good (Friday) and I want Bryce to take advantage of this opportunity and just play with this relentless effort and energy because I think he keeps raising the standard there,” Lloyd said. “I think that confidence will seep into the other parts of his game.
“He’s had really good stretches of practices and so he’s right there, he’s right on the cusp of being a real player and I’m excited to keep pushing him but again, he’s young and we always knew Bryce was going to be a little bit of a late bloomer. So I’m hoping to keep pushing him and I hope he learns from (Friday) a little bit. I mean, he can’t start the game kind of the way he did (Friday), he had a couple defensive errors, he didn’t run our first play right and that’s stuff that he really hasn’t been doing.”
Arizona opens the season against No. 22 UCLA on Monday Nov. 2 in Las Vegas at 8 p.m on TNT. The Wildcats’ first home game is Nov. 5 against Cal Poly.
SHORT READS
— On Friday the UA announced that they had hired former Gonzaga star Kevin Pangos as an assistant coach.
The former West Coast Conference Player of the Year played at Gonzaga from 2012 to 2015, earning third team All-American accolades.
“Kevin and I have a long history together and it’s something he and I have been talking about for a while,” Lloyd said. “I was lucky enough to recruit Kevin and he came to Gonzaga and obviously had a great career there and went overseas, even had a short stint in the NBA and this was a guy who, I don’t know, I hate the word ‘overachieve,’ but he got everything out of his potential he could and he’s a great student of the game and a great worker and I think he has a lot of potential as a coach.”
— Attendance was 12,897.
Recommended for you
