What to watch for when Arizona men’s basketball honors seniors and hosts ASU in home finale

Tuesday night has all the makings of an emotional affair at McKale Center.

Arizona is set to play its final home game of the 2024-25 season, with a whopping six seniors getting honored before tipoff, and it’s rival ASU who is the opponent on Senior Night. Maybe the only thing getting in the way of one of the most amped crowds in recent memory is the start tip, just after 9 p.m. MT on a weeknight.

But Tommy Lloyd has high hopes for the atmosphere, and even offered a suggestion for how to spend the time leading up to the late start.

“I hope it’s raucous,” Lloyd said. “I hope everybody goes and understands there’s this thing in life called Happy Hour, and you can go out before, and usually the food and the drinks are discounted. And I hope they fully participate in that, and then they come to root on a Wildcat team that’s battled for them all year, and done a great job representing the community. I hope they come out and they honor the team the way they should be honored. And I expect they will. And I hope our guys come out and honor the fans with an effort that McKale and our fanbase deserve.”

A win for No. 24 Arizona (19-10, 13-5) guarantees it a top-4 finish in the regular season, and thus a double bye into the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals next week in Kansas City.

Here’s what to watch for when the Wildcats host the Sun Devils (13-16, 4-14):

Senior sendoffs

Caleb Love, Trey Townsend and walk-ons Luke Champion, Liam Lloyd, Will Menaugh and Grant Weitman will be part of Arizona’s pregame Senior Night ceremony, which is set to begin about 20 minutes before tipoff. A pair of managers will also get recognized.

It will actually be the second Senior Night for Love and Menaugh at Arizona, whom Lloyd called his “double dippers,” while Townsend is going through a second Senior Night after doing one at Oakland last season.

“It’s still an honor to have a Senior Night at any program, especially this one,” Townsend said. “At Oakland for me that was a childhood dream that I was able to live out. Obviously we had an historic year, which was a great thing.”

Also getting a second senior ceremony is Liam Lloyd, who had one last year at NAU before coming to Arizona as a walk-on for his final season. Tommy Lloyd was able to make that one, as it fell on a Monday and came a few days before the Wildcats played in Los Angeles last March, but he never thought he’d have a chance to personally honor his son.

“It’s honestly something I never wanted,” he said. “Liam was a pretty good player growing up, and he kind of carved his own path, and we as parents were proud of that. And he went through the struggles that come with carving out your own path and being a young adult. Around the court every day, it’s literally business as usual. I don’t go out of my way to talk to him or whatever. We can do that at home when he comes up to the house, but it’s been fun having him around.”

Love said he wasn’t thinking about if he might come back for another year at Arizona when he had his Senior Night in 2024, since the focus was on preparing for the postseason. Now that this will definitely be his last time playing at McKale he’s better able to reflect on the moment.

“I think it’s gonna be a great atmosphere,” he said. “It’s the last home game, and we want to show our respect and show our love for fans and what they’ve done, what they brought to not only us, but this whole program, by coming out here playing as hard as we can, playing together, and then just having fun and embracing McKale.”

But who starts?

In his first three seasons Lloyd has started every senior in the final home game, giving walk-ons Matthew Lang and Jordan Mains starts in 2023 and Weitman last season. Weitman had two early steals to help Arizona win 103-83 over Oregon.

But with six seniors on the roster, someone will have to sit. Townsend figures to be back in the starting five after coming off the bench the last four games, with Love holding down his usual spot.

That leaves three openings for four walk-ons, assuming Lloyd plans to give some or all the start. Presumably Weitman could be the odd man out since he started last year, or maybe it’s all scholarship players since the 2023 game that Lang and Mains started saw ASU jump out to an 8-4 lead in a game it eventually won on Desmon Cambridge Jr.’s 75-foot shot at the buzzer.

If the game gets lopsided near the end—Arizona is favored by 17.5 points, the largest spread for any Big 12 game this season—then there will be plenty of time for walk-ons to get playing time.

Depleted Devils

When Arizona visited ASU (13-16, 4-14) on Feb. 1 the Sun Devils were dealing with mounting injury issues but managed to get freshman center Jayden Quintance, who had missed the previous game. That 81-72 loss to the Wildcats was the first of seven straight for the Sun Devils, who have dropped nine of 10 since the first Territorial Cup meeting with their only win a surprisingly easy 12-point victory at Kansas State.

Injuries continue to be a problem for ASU, which only had six scholarship players available for its last game at Utah. Quaintance has missed the last two games, guard Alston Mason missed the game before against ASU and leading scorer BJ Freeman—the guy who headbutted Love at the end of the game in Tempe—has been dismissed from the team.

ASU is so thin that coach Bobby Hurley’s son Bobby Jr., a walk-on, has played 16 minutes the last two games, while freshman Trevor Best has been thrust into a major role after playing only nine minutes prior to last week. Best scored 18 off the bench against BYU and seven at Utah.

“We’re probably anticipating a few more of those guys that were injured being healthy tomorrow,” Lloyd said. “But I don’t really concern myself with their struggles. I have to concern myself with what I think they do well, and what I think they do well, I think they fight. They’re shot makers. I think they’re aggressive guys who can be streaky and so you have to be on it, and if you’re not on it with your energy, your effort and your focus and execution, they can have success. That’s the thing that always has my attention against Bobby’s teams and and I expected nothing short of that.”

3-point perspective

At 32.3 percent, Arizona is just outside the top 100 nationally in 3-point defense. In Big 12 games the Wildcats have allowed 31.7 percent shooting, which is 5th-best in the league.

All in all, the UA has done fairly well defending the perimeter … except when it hasn’t.

In six of its 10 losses, opponents have shot 35.3 percent or better from 3 including Iowa State going 11 of 21 including six in a row during one first-half stretch. BYU shot 45.2 percent on Feb. 22.

But outside of those two games, since Jan. 27 no other opponent has been better than 36.4 percent. ASU was 12 of 33 (35.3 percent) in Tempe and is 5^th in the Big 12 at 34.6 percent, shooting better than 47 percent twice since the teams last met.

As for Arizona’s 3-point shooting, the benchmark for game success isn’t that high. The Wildcats are 18-2 when making at least 28.6 percent of their 3s, the only loss since the Bahamas where they hit that mark coming against BYU, while they’re 1-8 when shooting below that number.

During the 2-4 stretch it is on, Arizona is shooting 25.4 percent from 3.

No hard feelings?

After Arizona’s win in Tempe, one that saw ASU’s bench players leave the court before the game was over and no postgame handshake line between the teams, Hurley added fuel to the fire by hinting that he would not be putting Love on his all-conference ballot.

Not at all,” Love said when asked if those comments will change how he plays. “I’m going to come in and do my job and do whatever I can to help this team win. That has no impact.”

That being said, don’t be shocked to see Love drop a few “forks down” hand signals after makes.