After finishing off a sweep on Arizona’s first Big 12 road trip, Tommy Lloyd joked that he couldn’t wait to get home to Tucson and back into “shorts and T-shirts.” Yet when he walked into his press conference Friday afternoon inside McKale Center it was the standard hoodie and long pants he normally has on after a practice.
In other words, there’s no time to relax. The Wildcats (9-5, 3-0) are tied for first in the Big 12 and winners of five straight but have two tough home games in what figures to be a neverending string of stiff competition in this conference.
“UCF is a really talented team,” Lloyd said. “We know it’s going to be a challenge. We know in this conference that there’s no nights off, so we don’t expect this to be any different.”
It will be the UA’s first-ever matchup with the Knights (11-3, 2-1) though their coach will be familiar to Wildcat fans. Johnny Dawkins, in his ninth season in Orlando, coached Stanford from 2008-16 but only won once in 14 tries against Arizona and lost by an average of 17.7 points in Tucson.
Here’s what to watch when Arizona and UCF battle Saturday night at 8 p.m. MT on ESPN:
Building off the big trip
Arizona had its fair share of road sweeps during its Pac-10/12 days, including one last season, but being able to win at both No. 16 Cincinnati and No. 21 West Virginia feels so much more impressive than sweeping the Washington schools or coming back from the Bay Area unscathed.
It also helped catapult the Wildcats right back into the NCAA Tournament conversation after its 6-5 record in nonconference play put the postseason in doubt. Many notable bracket projections have them in the field, with ESPN’s Joe Lunardi giving them a No. 8 seed.
“It was a trip we needed,” Lloyd said. “It was great to go kind of hunker down a little bit and kind of be by ourselves and really spend a lot of time just focusing on the things that we think are going to drive winning. When it’s cold outside and snowing, and you’re in these hotels, you’re not going outside much. So we had a lot of time to do multiple film sessions, and have conversations with guys. I think it was great.”
Arizona is favored by 13.5 points, per FanDuel Sportsbook, while KenPom.com projects an 85-71 victory for the Wildcats. But UCF has already shown the ability to win on the road, opening Big 12 play with a victory at Texas Tech, and with Baylor coming to town on Tuesday this has all the makings of a trap game.
“If our guys are mature competitors, they understand they got a talented team coming in on Saturday in an important game,” Lloyd said.
Tall iso ball
UCF is the 50th-tallest team in Division I, per KenPom, with an average height of 78.2 inches. That’s a hair above Arizona’s 78.1, and that number includes 7-2 Motiejus Krivas who is out for the year and 7-foot Emmanuel Stephen who hasn’t appeared in a Big 12 game.
The Knights’ frontcourt is 7-2, 6-7 and 6-6 compared to Arizona’s trio of 6’8 Tobe Awaka, 6’6 Trey Townsend and 6-6 Anthony Dell’Orso. Leading scorer Keshawn Hall, who is a load at 6-7 and 250 pounds, takes a lot of shots and also gets to the line quite a bit.
“Their size not only can impact the defensive end but they’re shooting the ball well,” Lloyd said. “They got a good mix of talented players. They have a couple experienced guards that are a bucket. They have a 4 man who’s versatile who can score inside out.”
UCF also plays a lot of 1-on-1 on offense, which is part of why its shooting numbers are so low. The Knights are 311th out of 363 Division I teams in field goal percentage (41.1) and 330th on 2-pointers (47.3).
And with an adjusted tempo of 70.9 possessions were 40 minutes, UCF will be the fastest opponent Arizona has faced so far in the Big 12. The previous three games all had fewer than 70 possessions yet the Wildcats still managed to fare well against top-20 defenses.
“You can win games getting in the open court, but you’re also gonna have to win games in the halfcourt,” Lloyd said. “We’ve always understood that. But listen, we’re not going to turn down a fast break when we can get a layup. I mean, we’re never going to turn that down. We’ll continue to hunt those opportunities, but at the end of the day, we’ll get the ball to the half court. Hopefully we can move it, move the ball, move our bodies, play with great fundamentals and just make good decisions and get great shot attempts. We’re not going to really make it much more complicated than that.”
Sticking with the same rotation
Despite Henri Veesaar emerging as Arizona’s best big man, KJ Lewis coming off a career-high 21 points at West Virginia and freshman Carter Bryant looking more and more like a 5-star prospect and projected high draft pick, don’t expect the starting lineup to change.
Lloyd inserted Dell’Orso into the starting five after the loss to UCLA, while keeping Townsend and Awaka at the 4 and 5, respectively, and Arizona has won every game since that change. And while the bench has been a big contributor to this run, averaging 32.8 points per game, it’s been a collective effort according to Lloyd.
“I just know this: early in the season, we weren’t able to build leads,” he said. “I’m thinking every one of our last games, probably all December and on we built leads. We may not have held every lead, but we build leads. So I’m encouraged where we’re going. I’m not concerned about our lineup right now.”