After winning at Baylor on Monday night, Arizona took a couple days off before jumping back into preparation for the final five games of the regular season. For the players, that break allowed them to rest and recharge for the stretch run.
For Tommy Lloyd it provided an opportunity to do something he rarely admits to doing: look ahead.
While the main focus is on BYU, the Wildcats’ opponent on Saturday night at McKale Center, at least some attention is being paid toward what the Big 12 Tournament bracket will look like in a few weeks in Kansas City. As of now 19th-ranked Arizona (18-8, 12-3) is in second place and in good position to finish in the top four, which means getting a double bye into the tourney quarterfinals.
“I just want to know where we’re at, and right now we’re in the top four,” Lloyd said Friday. “Obviously, there’s advantages to staying in the top four, and the best way for us to stay in the top four, that I know of, is for us to win on Saturday. I don’t look four or five games ahead and say, ‘well, they’re playing here, and that could be a tough game. They could go 2-3 and we could go 4-1,’ my mind would explode, literally.”
A win over the Cougars (18-8, 9-6) would guarantee the UA no worse than a tie for fourth place, while wins the next two games would lock up a top-4 seed.
This will be the second time the teams have played in less than three weeks, with Arizona winning 85-74 in Provo on Feb. 4. BYU is making its first trip to Tucson since 2009 when it won 99-69 in the infamous Jimmer Fredette game when he scored a McKale Center-record 49 points.
Here’s what to watch for when the Wildcats and Cougars tangle on Saturday night:
A desperate opponent?
While Arizona is all but a lock to make the NCAA Tournament, and nearly that to finish with a double bye in the Big 12 tourney, BYU doesn’t have such certainties. BracketMatrix.com has the Cougars in the field, averaging a No. 10 seed, but that’s only a loss or two from falling off the bubble.
BYU helped its cause by demolishing Kansas by 34 on Tuesday night, the biggest loss for the Jayhawks under Bill Self, and are in fifth place in the Big 12 with a game up on Kansas, Baylor and TCU.
“Certain teams are making pushes to try to improve their opportunities for the postseason,” Lloyd said. “And so what that does, sometimes teams can play with a certain desperation that energizes them. We had to play with that desperation for quite a while, because obviously we didn’t get off to a start we would have hoped to. And I think that desperation served us well.”
Lloyd said BYU’s win over Kansas should have caught his players’ attention, but not more than how the UA’s first game went against the Cougars.
“The game at BYU, it’s a little misleading,” he said. “It was very even throughout, eight minutes ago or something we kind of made a run at the right time. They tried to come back and missed some of the shots. And we were able to kind of win at the end comfortably. But it wasn’t like it was from the tip, it was domination.”
Lineups and rotations
Arizona started bigs Tobe Awaka and Henri Veesaar together at Baylor, marking the sixth different starting lineup this season. Lloyd had only used nine different starting fives over his first three seasons, two of which were one-off lineups to allow walk-ons to start on Senior Night.
A double-big starting five was supposed to be the standard entering this season before Motiejus Krivas suffered an injury during the preseason and later was lost for the year. Krivas and Veesaar logged a little bit of time together on the court before Krivas was shut down in December, but it wasn’t until Trey Townsend missed two games with a concussion (suffered at BYU) that using Awaka and Veesaar together became a thing during the course of a game.
“It’s a lineup I like playing,” Lloyd said. “If you want to try a group of guys to play together, the best way to do that in the course of a game sometimes is start them. Because if you don’t start them, there’s so many little factors that play into a game. Could be a foul, could be a matchup, could be fatigue. So you’re like, man, I really wanted to play this lineup, but because of this reason I didn’t feel comfortable doing it in the game. I really want to play that lineup, so maybe the best thing I could do is look to start it.”
Other than shifting Pelle Larsson—who had won Pac-12 Sixth Man of the Year the season before—back to a reserve role midway through 2022-23, Lloyd’s lineup changes have mostly been the result of injuries. This year has been different.
“I’m not going to box myself in,” Lloyd said. “I think you got to react accordingly to what you think is best for your team over the course of the season. There is a great certainty in having the same starting lineup every day, if that makes sense for your team. I just felt like these adjustments have been something I wanted to try and it felt like it could be positive thing for our team.”
Townsend returned against Baylor and played only 11 minutes, tied for the fewest this season. It was also the first time in his career he came off the bench.
“I think it’s a great thing for players to come off the bench at some point,” Lloyd said. “You know why? Because if you’re going to play basketball for a long time at a high level, eventually you’re going to come off the bench at some point. And why not get good at it? To me, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s part of the game. Unfortunately, you can’t start seven players, so you start five, and hopefully you have seven, eight guys that are vying for those five spots. To me, that’s, that’s when you have a program, and that’s what we’re striving to do.”
The 3-point line
When Arizona won at BYU it did so by minimizing its biggest weapon. The Cougars get more than 39 percent of their points on 3s, 17th-most in the country, attempting 28.8 per game and making 36.6 percent of them.
Against the UA, BYU was 10 of 34 (29.4 percent). It was also only 18 of 33 (54.5 percent) from 2 compared to 59 percent for the season, which ranks 8th nationally.
Arizona gave up quite a few layups in that game because of how it was defending the 3-point line and BYU’s many pick-and-roll plays, but the Cougars’ offensive efficiency of 102.3 was their worst of the season at home.
“We feel like we’re growing defensively as a team,” said Lloyd, whose team has climbed to 9th nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency. “In the game of basketball, you don’t pitch shutouts, at least I have never pitched one. The other team is going to score, they’re going to have some success. You’re going to try something that’s not going to work, but then you go back and you try it again, and maybe it does work. We’re going to hang with it. I like individually, some of the games we’re making defensively. I like the cohesiveness we’ve been playing with for the most part on the defensive end.”
As for Arizona’s 3-point shooting, that continues to be an issue. Since making 8 of 21 at BYU the Wildcats have shot 19.7 percent (15 of 73) including just 2 of 34 in the second half.
That woeful stretch has coincided with their best perimeter shooter, Anthony Dell’Orso, only eight 3s and making two. Arizona is 11-1 when he attempts at least four triples and 9-1 when he makes at least two.