Arizona not waiting to get healthy in race towards Big 12 title
· Yahoo Sports
HOUSTON — The logic was easy to figure, but Jaden Bradley wasn’t buying it.
Visit asg-reflektory.pl for more information.
Because the Arizona Wildcats built their 23-0 start with a rotation that was injury-free, then lost two games in a row when it wasn't, their most likely path to winning the Big 12 didn’t appear to include a 73-66 win at second-ranked Houston on Saturday.
Or any win against Houston.
More likely, it was to just get past that game and make sure to beat everyone else on the schedule: Baylor on Tuesday, Kansas and Iowa State at home after that, and Colorado in an away game to finish the regular season.
After all, even in the high-elevation environment of that March 7 game against the Buffaloes, the Wildcats might be able to breathe easier.
By then or before then, they could have Koa Peat back from a lower leg injury that has bothered him since Feb. 7 and kept him out for UA's past two games; they could have Dwayne Aristode back from an undisclosed illness, and they could have Brayden Burries back at full strength after a bug of his own.
After all, UA coach Tommy Lloyd told the Star on Saturday that he expected to get Peat back “sooner rather than later,” was hoping Aristode “is close,” and that Burries was “gonna turn the corner soon.”
In other words, the Wildcats could have just hung on until better times come around. But they didn’t wait.
Now, at 25-2 overall and 12-2 in the Big 12, Arizona is alone in first place with four games to go.
“Our job as players is always to try to go out there and win, no matter what,” Bradley said. “We did a great job. We’ve got to tighten up on our free throws and all that other stuff, but we did a great job.”
It is true that the Wildcats hit only 64.5% of their free throws Saturday, with Bradley uncharacteristically missing 5 of 10 — including 1 of 2 when the Wildcats were trying to put the game away in the final seconds.
There were other problems, too. UA hit only 3 of 12 from 3-point range, and while the Wildcats can usually shrug off that sort of thing by drilling teams in the paint, the inside wasn’t working out as usual Saturday.
Houston threw double-teams whenever the Wildcats sent the ball inside, with post players Tobe Awaka (3 of 5) and Motiejus Krivas (2 of 4) combining to take just nine shots. Moreover, Peat’s presence on the bench Saturday drastically altered the Wildcats' post rotation.
Instead of having three guys for two post spots, the way they had run it nearly all season, they had only two: Krivas and Awaka, as much as possible, with wing Ivan Kharchenkov moving over as needed.
“You take a guy like Koa out of the equation, a guy who is so important, and you start playing guys a little bit more, and maybe with lineups you haven't played as much,” Lloyd said. With Peat available, “when a guy gets a foul you have the luxury of sitting him for a stretch to make sure he doesn't get a second.
“Now you’re having to bring guys back a little bit quicker. And in a physical game like this — it’s like calling offensive holding in the NFL, you probably could pick a rebounding foul on either team every possession — you just have to dodge some bullets.”
They didn’t really even do that, with both Krivas and Awaka fouling out, having totaled just 11 points and 42 minutes between them.
But the Wildcats made up for it by getting Kharchenkov and Anthony Dell’Orso to aggressively drive in gaps whenever they appeared, and by turning the ball over just five times.
Kharchenkov, playing both forward spots, collected 16 points and nine rebounds.
“Arizona has great size but their best team tonight was when Kharchenkov was at the four,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “I didn't think their bigs impacted the game as much as I thought” they would.
Dell’Orso scored 22 points for the second straight game, making 6 of 9 shots from inside the arc, and Lloyd said the Aussie wing had some “spitfire” in him.
“I don't know how many of you guys know Aussies, but Aussies got some you-know-what to them, and he has a little bit” of that, said Lloyd, who spent a year playing and coaching in Australia early in his career. “It wasn't going his way for a good stretch there a while back, and he hung with it. Our guys hung with him, and the staff hung with him."
While Dell'Orso led the Wildcats offensively, Kharchenkov led a defense that held Houston to just 35.7% shooting and kept the Cougars’ top 3-point threat, Emanuel Sharp, to 2 of 8 shooting from 3-point range — and 0 for 3 from inside the arc.
Also worth noting: That Kharchenkov played 39 minutes.
He had no choice. At least for now, the Wildcats aren’t built quite the same way they were during their 23-0 start, and Kharchenkov is a focal point of that change, expanding his game on both ends of the floor.
“We knew Houston is a tough matchup for us, especially we were banged up a little bit, and the two losses just didn't taste right in the mouth,” Kharchenkov said. “So we just figured it out. Fought, and figured it out.”
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona not waiting to get healthy in race towards Big 12 title