Trying to remain undefeated in Big 12 play, head coach Tommy Lloyd and the Wildcats returned to McKale Center to take on the UCF Knights.
In the first home game of the new year, Arizona was tested by UCF but came out with a 88-80 win.
Here is what Lloyd, guard Anthony Dell’Orso and forward Tobe Awaka had to say:
Lloyd on UCF speeding things up for the Wildcats: “Not that we weren’t prepared for it, but they do a great job being aggressive. I mean they’re relentless, and I was really impressed, not only their relentlessness with the pace, but driving, asserting their will, and trying to get to the paint and then on the glass. They did a great job, and they’re a tough out. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. When you have a game like they did a home against Kansas, you know, Coach Dawkins is a great coach. I’m sure he’s been on those guys, and they’ve responded so they gave great effort today, and definitely a formidable opponent, we were fortunate to come out on top.”
On how Arizona played: “I’m upset with how dumb we played. We were dumb. Our fundamentals were poor. Our late-game execution was poor, and it’s not acceptable. Hey, I love the result, and I told the staff and the players, if somebody would’ve told me when we got back to Tucson after the UCLA debacle, that we’d be 4-0 in conference, I probably wouldn’t believe you. So, I love where we’re at, but I’m also going to fight for where we’re going, and Arizona basketball does not play dumb at the end of the game. We just weren’t good enough at the end of the game.
“Whether it’s disrespecting the game or getting casual, whatever you want to call it, we’ve got to be better. Those guys that are playing heavy minutes, they’ve got to be better. At the end of the game, they have to be better. There’s no other way to put it. I could try to put them in better positions, and maybe the best position might be off the court. So, you know, those are conversations we’re going to have. Winning is important and we need to value those opportunities.”
On late game mistakes: “It’s frustrating. We come out and get off to a great start, a great start. I thought our energy was good. I thought the defense was okay, you know, offensively, I thought we were clicking. Then it’s like we get a little bit of a lead, and if you go back, and if you watch possession by possession, it’s just like are we really making the best play for the team? When we’ve struggled this year, we haven’t made the best play for the team. We’ve been good when we’ve made the best play for the team. It’s really not complicated, and I think that’s probably most all teams across the board. So we got to be better. We got to be better at those moments. We got to be better in that first half.
“Not that I expected a 14 point lead to turn to 28 to turn to 56. I don’t expect that, but I expect that to be better, and we weren’t better, but we responded. We found a way. We won a tough conference game at home against a formidable opponent.”
On why similar mistakes keep being made: “It’s being nonchalant, maybe a little bit selfish. Those moments, you know, Hey, we’re up, maybe this is a great opportunity for me to do something. We don’t need to be a me program. We need to be an us program.”
On the recurring theme of blowing big leads: “You’re playing high level games against high level teams. Like I said, leads don’t exponentially grow. Teams are going to come back. So I think the common theme is that your opponents are really good. You need to respect the opponents. Now you build a lead, so you must be pretty good to build a lead on a good team. Now, respect it. How do you handle it? I don’t need the lead to grow from 14 to 20, but I don’t need to do it from 14 to zero. That’s where we got to get better. Maybe you got to get better possession by possession, because they all add up. All these possessions add up. It’s something we talked a lot about and worked on, and that’s why I was a little bit frustrated tonight. I think we did a great job of seizing the opportunity and seizing the moment. It’s a teaching moment for us. And you know what? I do love teaching after a win, I will admit that.”
On mindset of ‘taking it easy’ after 3-0 start in conference play: “It’s not easy for me, but maybe some of the players have that. They need to figure that out, because they need to be mature competitors. A mature competitor, understand, you’re in a really tough conference It’s a 20-game grind. Every game matters. Every win matters. At the end of the season, teams are going to finish one to 16, and every team is going to be able to go back and look at that table and say, ‘Man, we would have played a little better at game three.’ We would be at this seed instead of that seed, you know. So this stuff matters. It matters. It matters now. It’s not about individual players, it’s about the team. So that’s where we gotta double down on. It’s about the team and every one of these games matters. It’s great to be 4-0. But you know what? 4-0 could also be 4-16 if you don’t handle it the right way. So we got to handle it the right way.”
On UCF outrebounding Arizona: “They kicked our ass on the glass. Kicked our ass. They’re relentless. I gotta go back and watch the film. I heard there were some good block outs. When the assistant coaches are telling you there’s some good block outs that means there’s a lot of really bad block outs. A few good ones stuck out so it stood out. We got to get better. Some of these guys playing heavy minutes, it’s their job. They don’t get to just do what they want to do. Shoot shots they want to shoot, dribble the ball when they want to dribble it and not rebound. It’s not how it works, not on good teams. So we got to figure that out.”
On Dell’Orso’s performance and in-game passion: “He’s fiery but he’s still finding his way and figuring it out. Ever since we started him, it’s not like he’s played great, but our team’s played pretty good, so there’s probably something to that. KJ has played really good in his role. So I feel good about that. Carter’s played good in his role. I feel good how the pieces are fit together, and I know it’s only a matter of time til Delle steps up and have some moments like that. We want him hunting shots. We want being aggressive because he’s a great shooter and he’s a good offensive player.
“Now, the one thing I do want from him, I want to be at the ball out of his hands a little bit quicker. Some of these pick and rolls, maybe one or two dribbles too many. He’s a guy that can be a great little dime dropper that kind of initiates our action and gets our flow going. We need to get better at that with him.’
On the performance from the big men: “They’re really coming together. It’s a combination, and that’s how I really look at it’s like a collective of, you know, you got these four guys playing. Two guys playing the four, two guys playing the five, and they’re being really productive. That’s always been an advantage for us, and it might not be one guy, you know, getting all the glory. It might be a group. Tonight, I thought as a group that those bigs were really productive. Tobe played really well to start, and was kind of solid in his runs in the game. I thought Henri had some great moments in the game. I thought Carter had, you know, some better moments in the second half. First half wasn’t quite as good. So you can’t assume, because you’re playing better the last couple games, that you’re going to come out and play great. You got to fight for it, and he fought for it a little more in the second half. Then, Trey had a solid night. I think he had a couple shots rim out for him out. That just really doesn’t happen for him often. So our fours and fives were really impactful as a group.”
On Caleb Love’s performance: “Caleb was great to start. Was not good enough at the end, whether it’s shot selection or dribble down the sideline that gets a trap. Caleb’s played college basketball for five years. He knows better than that. Falling down, okay, this stuff shouldn’t happen. I’m counting on this guy to be like an All-American level player. I love Caleb, and I’ve given him a lot. He’s got to be better. Bottom line, he’s got to be better.”
On not being satisfied with the win: “I’m fighting for our season, point blank, right? I mean, you guys have been all the ones knowing how we’ve been playing. You guys are making all the comments. But you know what, I’m behind the curtain. I’m fighting. I’m fighting for these guys. I’m fighting for our team, and I’m not going to sugar coat it. You know what? I haven’t been sugar coating it with them. If you think I’m telling you stuff right now that they haven’t heard you’re crazy. They know. They know where we’re at, and they know where we want to go, and if we want to go, where we want to go, we’ve got to get better.”
On learning from the win: “There’s going to be a lot to learn but here’s the deal. We’ve already learned the lesson. We fell back into it. So stupid, and that’s it. We’ve learned the lesson. We’ve had the ball taken from us. We haven’t played smart and then, we got better at it. We’ve been working on that stuff every single day. We’ve worked on jump stops and pivots every single day. We work on situations every single day. We work on early shot clock, late shot clock every single day. So be better. Be better.
“And you know what? As coaches. We’ve got to be better. We own this too. We’re in the fight with the players. This isn’t a coach talking down a player. We’re all in this together, and we’re fighting to have a great season. And you know what? We’re back on track. We’re back on track. We’re right where we want to be. We’re right where we should be. Now go try to fight to be great. Got to fight to be great. This stuff just doesn’t happen. It just doesn’t happen. I think sometimes because guys come to Arizona and put Arizona on their chest, that just happens, it doesn’t happen. You have to fight for it.”
Dell’Orso on performing better in second halves: “Every game is different. You know, some games you feel it early. Some games later, it’s just, you know, you figure out the game as you go along. It’s just a matter of time. It’s also the whole team is playing a certain way and stuff like that, we’re for each other. So any moment, anyone can kind of go off.”
On the defensive struggles: “Obviously defensively, it wasn’t where we’re at, and our rankings kind of show better than what we showed tonight. I think that’s kind of the frustration he was showing just some things that, you know, we could’ve easily won by 20, 25. That’s where we should have been. Kind of let it slip. A few moments where we kind of went back to our old ways working a little bit, and that’s something we’re trying to leave in the past.”
On playing dumb: “You can kind of nitpick everything, and we should have done and we shouldn’t have done after the fact, but in the moment … everyone’s trying hard, just sometimes you don’t make the best decision in terms of what’s best for the team and not best for individual play. We kind of fell back to that. You know, early in the season, we were doing that a lot, and then when they came back from the 14 deficit, that’s kind of what we’re doing. Then we kind of got out of that, we acknowledged our mistakes, and then you can see how fast we got back the lead. It’s just a team thing and accountability thing. No one’s taking things personally, and so soon as we saw that, we just changed.”
Awaka on playing aggressive tonight: “Just merely stop thinking double thinking. When that tip goes up, play as hard as you can. Don’t hyper-focus, just play freely.”
On his and Henri Veesaar’s improvement: “It’s great. I mean, I think when we’re both producing on the court at the same time, it’s really hard for teams to defend us. Shooting threes, dunking over dudes. It’s really hard to game plan against that.”
On UCF out rebounding them: “Well, they were shooting some wild and contested shots. So you always get the ball bouncing crazy different ways. I think the main thing was that when they were shooting threes, guys were kind of collapsing to box out their man. When a team is shooting threes, the rebound is gonna be long. So I feel like that gave UCF big opportunities to get boards with us crashing down and then getting the easy rebounds.”
On what practice will look like following the win: “Lots of rebounding drills, boxing out drills. We’ll watch film first and translate it to practice and stuff like that. Coach is a great coach. He knows what it takes to win, so he’s gonna hold us to a high standard.”
On the outlook for the rest of the season: “I think from the beginning, we thought we were never out of it, despite the losses. I think continually throughout the season, we’ve been building, and I think we’ve seen some of that stuff come to fruition as of late. We still have areas in which we still need to build and grow as players, individually and collectively, as a team. So I would say right now, we’re right where we want to be. We’re not perfect.”