No. 24 Arizona basketball suffered two consecutive losses to end their tournament, against Oklahoma and West Virginia.
The Wildcats have seemed to hit a wall capturing only one victory in their last five games, the 104-71 win coming against Davidson in the opening Battle for Atlantis matchup.
”We know it’s a tough road, we’re living it right now,” said head coach Tommy Lloyd.
Arizona’s early strength in their first two games seemed to come back during the outing against Davidson, however they would struggle to keep up this form in their final two outings.
The last time the Wildcats found themselves with a 3-4 record was during Sean Miller’s first season as head coach in 2009-10. That season Arizona lost in the first round of the PAC-10 championship tournament and missed out on the NCAA tournament.
Takeaway #1: Arizona can shoot the three, but needs to know when to stop
Arizona basketball shot excellently from three against Davidson making 11-22 of their threes, behind a dominant performance behind the arch from Anthony Dell’Orso who ended with 21 points on 5-7 three point shooting. Despite this game seemingly showing Arizona had control behind the arc back, the following games would put them back into their hard groove.
Against Oklahoma and West Virginia, Arizona would shoot for a combined 12-40 three pointers with a 30% shooting percentage. Caleb Love could not find his groove behind the arc, first shooting 3-9 against Oklahoma then 4-12 against West Virginia. Despite the shooting disparity, Love would still finish with 24 points against West Virginia.
Arizona needs to learn how to focus on the mid-range and paint game when they notice the shot isn’t there, Arizona is a good two-point team having 44 points against West Virginia and 46 points against Oklahoma that were two pointers. For future improvement, Arizona needs to adapt when shooting isn’t there as they have strong performances for the two pointers.
Takeaway #2: Arizona needs to guard the three and prevent mass turnovers
Arizona basketball may have lost their strength behind the arc, but this doesn’t mean they need to let up on it on defense. In both matchups against Oklahoma and West Virginia, both teams shot tremendously from the three point line as Arizona struggled.
They would let the opposition light them up from the arch, having teams shoot and make several threes in a row. The worst occurrence came against Oklahoma in which the Wildcats let Oklahoma score six straight three pointers which would just keep the game far out of reach for the Wildcats.
Players would get hot as well, and would be no match for the defense. This was seen against West Virginia where Tucker DeVries shot 8-12 from behind the arch, having three straight at the end of the first half. Arizona needs to control their three point defense especially when they aren’t able to get those points back on the offensive side of the court.
”I mean that guy [Tucker DeVries] hit some threes today that were timely and deep and off staggers,” said Lloyd. “Those are incredible shots that there’s not many guys in college basketball that can make those.”
Arizona had been good at controlling turnovers in their first two outings, however the West Virginia game saw some costly turnovers that would change the tides of the game towards the Mountaineers. KJ Lewis, Tobe Awaka, Trey Townsend, and Caleb Love all individually recorded three turnovers on the night.
“We just kind of lost balls, whether it was rebounding, or losing the dribble or getting the ball in the paint and losing it, ” said Lloyd. “We just didn’t do a good job at protecting the ball.”
Take away #3: Free throw line woes
One of the key positive takeaways from Arizona’s outing is their consistency at the free throw line. In their three matchups, they had an average of 81.3% from the line.
Despite this seemingly good control at the line, Arizona would allow every team they faced to have more opportunities at the line. Sometimes this would come to Arizona’s advantage, in which when they allowed Davidson to have 34 chances at the line, they only made 11 shots. However, against Oklahoma, Arizona allowed the Sooners to shoot 21 times from the line making 20.
Against both Oklahoma and West Virginia, KJ Lewis would foul out of both outings allowing both teams to capture crucial points towards their victories.
Lewis also ended up receiving a technical foul against Oklahoma that saw him subbed out in the West Virginia game for freshman Carter Bryant.
”We have to exhibit more winning habits, so we’re going to have to look deep within to find those,” said Lloyd.
Next up for Arizona (3-4): vs. Southern Utah (6-2) – Dec. 7 at 12 p.m. MST (2 p.m. EST)