LAS VEGAS – Senior center Mo Krivas held Arizona’s chance to tie the game in his hands, receiving an entry pass on the block with under a minute to play in the Wildcats’ season-opening clash with UCLA.
Predictably, the Bruins brought a double team, like they had all night, in a concerted effort to make anyone other than the 7-foot-2 Lithuanian beat them.
In response, Krivas turned and fired a pass into the corner next to Arizona’s bench, looking for an open Wildcats player to drain the game-tying 3-pointer. Unbeknownst to Krivas, nobody was there – or even in the vicinity of the pass – to finish the play as the ball bounced untouched toward the sideline.
Once again, the Wildcats’ supporting cast was a no-show. Only this time, Krivas couldn’t even give them the chance to deliver.
The potential limitations of Arizona’s role players were apparent on Monday night in the Wildcats’ 84-75 loss to the Bruins at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas in the Hall of Fame Series.
Arizona didn’t look the part of a Tommy Lloyd-coached squad. It couldn’t secure defensive rebounds, it couldn’t defend the 3-point line and it made some costly mistakes late in the game.
It almost overcame a first-half dud, largely on the back of sophomore forward Ivan Kharchenkov, who posted a 38-point double-double, adding 10 rebounds.
The rest of the team? That cast only managed 37 points.
“You have got a lot of new guys playing new roles and you get punched in the face a little bit and maybe you kind of lose your way,” Lloyd said. “But I’m proud of the way our guys fought back.”
Krivas, the Big 12 Preseason Player of the Year, only managed two baskets the entire night, logging eight points while battling foul trouble.
“They did a good job of making Mo maybe a little bit indecisive,” Lloyd said. “But I mean, Mo did draw nine or 10 fouls. So he’s just got to be a little bit better.”
The Bruins clogged the lane, crowded the paint and sent doubles to Krivas on a regular basis, refusing to surrender the paint to Arizona’s 7-footer. Instead, they conceded open looks to other Wildcats. In some instances, the nearest UCLA defender was camped in the paint multiple feet away from Arizona shooters, daring the Wildcats to beat them from the 3-point line.
Arizona couldn’t make them pay.
The Wildcats only attempted 16 3-pointers per game a year ago to rank 359th out of 365 teams, but they attempted 30 shots beyond the arc on Monday. They shot just 23% on those attempts, sinking just one in the first half.
If that one-game trend continues, it could prove problematic for Arizona, which will likely see other teams employ a similar strategy against Krivas this season. Nonetheless, Lloyd said he’s not concerned, encouraging his players to keep shooting, especially when other teams are willingly conceding the 3-point shot.
“They were really heavy in the gaps, and they weren’t guarding guys. At some point you (have) got to shoot a few of those and you (have) got to figure it out,” Lloyd said. “We’ll definitely need a few more of those threes to go in, and we will get a few more to go in. There’s no panic after one game.”
While the 3-point struggles have plagued Arizona in the past, a few unfamiliar problems put the Wildcats in a hole early. One glaring issue for Lloyd’s squad was its inability to control the glass.
Off a free throw in the first half, freshman forward Nikola Kusturica skied into the air, tipping the ball to himself over two Arizona players to snag another UCLA offensive rebound. It was one of 16 in the game for the Bruins.
That type of effort on the boards doesn’t fly under Lloyd, who promptly spun around and screamed at the Wildcats’ bench in frustration, likely asking for someone on his team, anyone, for that matter, to corral a rebound.
The Bruins outrebounded Arizona 27-22 in the first half. Although Arizona managed to finish just one rebound behind the Bruins with 44, Lloyd remained dissatisfied with his team’s effort on the glass and coming up with loose balls.
“They definitely won the rebounding battle, and they won the loose ball battle,” Lloyd said. “That’s what these games come down to. You try to emphasize that with your team,. Maybe it doesn’t quite hit home until you have a moment like this.”
UCLA’s control of the paint wasn’t limited to just rebounding. It also narrowly outscored the Wildcats in the paint, an area that Arizona has dominated in recent years. The absence of fifth-year forward RJ Godfrey, who is holding out for a court injunction to be able to play this season, hurt the Wildcats’ frontcourt depth.
In the past, however, it was a group effort that helped Arizona hunt the paint. On Monday, it seemed like Kharchenkov and Krivas were the only ones able to consistently make an impact in that area.
Freshman guard Caleb Holt was expected to help in that regard, but it was mostly tough sledding for the young guard against an experienced UCLA backcourt. He managed seven points on 2-for-7 shooting, battling foul trouble and struggling to develop an offensive rhythm.
Holt was just one of many players who displayed their youth against the Bruins. Lloyd emphasized that’s part of the learning process for a team that will need multiple underclassmen to be contributors this season.
As Lloyd noted, it’s one game in a long season. While Arizona’s performance against UCLA may have revealed potential flaws, its young players will likely continue to grow over the course of the season.
Consistent with his long-term approach to the season, Lloyd believes that the loss can be a helpful catalyst.
“Welcome to college basketball,” Lloyd said. “I told our guys, ‘What happens today is not going to define our team season, and it’s not going to define your individual season. So you just have to understand that you (have) got to keep it moving.’”
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.