There’s no such thing as a shutout in basketball. Even the worst offensive teams are going to score.
The goal is to make it as hard as possible for the opponent to do that, either by forcing a bad shot or preventing one altogether. And Arizona hasn’t been doing much of either lately.
Kansas shot 49.3 percent in the 83-76 win over the Wildcats on Saturday, the third-best percentage of any team this season. The two teams to shoot better were Iowa State (50.0) and BYU (55.4), two of the UA’s three opponents prior to Kansas, while ASU (46.3) wasn’t that far behind.
Four of Arizona’s seven worst defensive performances in 2024-25, according to KenPom.com’s efficiency metric, came in the final five games of the regular season. Those efforts dropped the Wildcats’ ranking in adjusted defensive efficiency to 29th nationally after being 10th prior to the 96-95 home loss to BYU on Feb. 22.
Arizona is 10th in the Big 12 in defensive efficiency, and while those opposing shooting numbers are a big part of the blame they’re not the biggest. It’s the possessions that don’t end in a shot, or the lack thereof, that has played a huge role in the overall defensive performance.
Kansas had only five turnovers on Saturday, one coming on a shot clock violation with less than a second left, giving it away just 7.9 percent of the time. That came four days after ASU only had four turnovers (5.6 TO rate) in the game the UA won 113-100.
During the 3-5 finish to the regular season, Arizona forced an average of 9.4 turnovers per game, a turnover rate of just under 14 percent. In starting 11-1 in the Big 12 it forced 10.9 per game, with six teams turning it over more than 15 percent of the time.
Getting a turnover is one thing, capitalizing on it with points on the other end is another. And Arizona hasn’t done much of that lately, getting 77 points off 75 turnovers in the last eight games compared to 161 points off 131 turnovers in the first 12 conference contests.
The lack of live ball takeaways has contributed to this. Arizona had three steals at Kansas and turned those into five points, including Caleb Love’s basket with 6:02 left that put it up 68-66.
But the UA did not record a steal against ASU, the first time that had happened since 2019, and take away the 12 against Utah and it’s averaged 5.3 in the other seven games during the late-season slide. Jaden Bradley, the team leader with 59 steals, has 10 in the last eight games and ball hawk KJ Lewis has only eight.