It was a successful debut for Arizona in the Big 12, opening conference play with a wire-to-wire victory over TCU on Monday night. It’s only going to get tougher, though, as the Wildcats’ next two games are on the road.
“The assumptions I’m going to make are easy: every game is going to be hard, and we’re going to have to play good to be competitive,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said after the 90-81 victory. “I’ll make those assumptions. Anything beyond that we’re going to have to earn, and that’s how we’re going to approach it.”
Our game recap can be found here. Below is what Lloyd, guards Caleb Love and KJ Lewis and center Henri Veesaar had to say afterward:
Lloyd on how that first taste of Big 12 play felt: “It’s basketball. The big 12 is going to be amazing, but we had some amazing conference games the last couple years in the Pac-12 as well. They’re heavyweight battles.”
On leading the whole way: “I thought our guys did a good job getting off to a good start. Maybe against some lesser opponents you get that little run to make the next run and get that gap. We were just never able to do that. Got to give a ton of credit to TCU for hanging around and not making it easy. Our offense obviously was clicking tonight, which is a good sign, but it had to be, or the outcome could have been different.”
On bouncing back each time TCU got within one score: “We haven’t maybe handled some of these close games as good as we could have. And I think there’s a little more certainty now in what we want to do and how we want to play. I thought the guys had great poise, and we’ve talked a lot about that these aren’t going to be 20-0 runs. Yu’re not going to be up 30 at half, those days are done. So we’ve got to get comfortable being in close games and comfortable fighting and fighting back. I thought our guys showed a ton of poise today and that’s what’s going to take on a night in and night out basis.”
On Love going for 33 points, 7 rebounds, 7 assists and no turnovers: “I’ll take it every day.”
On Love’s last 3 games after an uneven start to season: “It’s going to be a long conference season, but he deserves that. There’s a lot of attention put on him, and he’s a little bit of a lightning rod. My job is to stick with him. He’s my guy, and he’s our guy, and I’m going to hang with him through the good times and the bad times, because I believe in him, and I know his teammates believe in him. I know he believes in himself. Sometimes I think that one thing that’s not talked about enough is, when you’re a guy with his stature, then you have to come back to college. It’s not easy and and there’s a lot of emotions involved. And when you come back, you want to do it great, you want to do it perfect, and when it doesn’t, it’s a gut punch. So I think he showed a lot of character in how he’s handled it, how he’s responded to a situation that, there’s expectations, and it hasn’t gone well, for him to come out and play the way he did, just the way he carried himself, was great. But you know what, there’s another challenge waiting next week. That’s the thing, we got to keep it going.”
On Henri Veesaar: “Henri settled in. Henri is somebody that I believe in a lot. His development has taken a while, which is normal, it’s not a slight to Henri by any stretch. He’s in his third year. He’s 7 feet tall. He had a thin frame. They’re starting to come together, his shooting, his decision making, his balance, his strength. It’s all kind of coming together at the right time. He needs some game experience. Henri has shot the ball really well in workouts and practice, and I don’t know what his 3-point shooting was going into the game, but it wasn’t an indicator of that. So there’s this thing called game confidence that you have to get and you have to be able to do it under the lights. And so for him to kind of get that opportunity, Mo’s out—so we’ll make that announcement. I don’t think he’s coming back this year. I mean, it doesn’t look like it—now we’re gonna be able to roll with Henri, and he’s gonna get probably a little more opportunity, and for him to kind kick off his Big 12 career that way was a great sign.”
On if Motiejus Krivas will have surgery: “I think that’s coming, but the head coach probably slipped up and said too much. I let my guard down and said what I think we were all kind of assuming. I met with Mo today, he looks like he isn’t going to play, but he’s a great person and player and he’s an important part of our program going forward.”
On his assessment of Carter Bryant’s recent play: “Growing. Guys I told you, let’s give him a month, let’s see where he’s at. You need that initial kind of, those initial opportunities and those initial tests to see where you’re at, and then you need some time to respond to those. And I think we’re getting to that right now. He’s got enough game experience now. He did some great things today. I mean, that 3 he made it was big time. He had another 3 right in front of our bench that goes in and out, that would have kind of iced the game. Those are big time plays. He did have a travel on a little dump down. He had a travel on when he caught the ball kind of in the middle of the zone, on that spin move. Those are things you can continue to get better at it. Defensively, he had some great possessions and he had also some possessions where he did too much. They’re all learning. It’s all learning. Carter has two things in spades: great character and great potential. And I would bet on those things every day, but they just take a little bit of time. And I think we’re getting closer to seeing what a more finished product of Carter is going to look like.”
On having 28 assists on 33 field goals: “That’s how we love to play. Assists are something we never talk about, but playing the right way is something we talk about. We want ball movement, we want player movement. We want guys to have high IQs, we want guys playing with great fundamentals. That was challenging at some points this year. I obviously could have done a better job coaching it, but it’s not like I changed my philosophy. So now I think that there’s more synergy between what the staff is looking for and what the players are doing on the court.”
On playing the next 2 games on the road: “We’re fired up. We got a great road trip. You’re going all the way back to the East Coast. You play in Cincinnati, you play in West Virginia. I’m assuming both fan bases are going to be excited that Arizona is coming to their home gym. What a great opportunity for us to go out and and continue to prove ourselves in the Big 12.”
On if he likes getting the longest road trip of the season out of the way early: “I’ll let you know after.”
On if his team has the toughness to compete in the Big 12: “You need toughness, but you need toughness when you play UCLA. You need toughness when you played Oregon. That’s what winning basketball is. Maybe we’ll see top to bottom, maybe there’s a little bit more of it needed.”
Love on if Lloyd has asked him to do anything different lately: “He just wants me to play within the offense and play off my teammates and play with my teammates. That’s what I’ve been doing. My teammates have been putting me in position to get easy baskets, and I’ve just been feeding off them, and I’ve been sharing the ball as well with them.”
On when he last felt this good: “It’s been a minute, probably since my sophomore year. It feels good, but it feels even better when we’re winning.”
On Arizona’s offense: “We’ve just been playing great offense. When we move the ball we’re at our best. My teammates played well. We hit big shot after big Shot, big play after big play. Even though they were throwing their punches, we were throwing ours. Ours was hitting harder. We played a complete game today, and I’m proud of my teammates.”
On holding off TCU the whole game: “We just stay poised. Although they were hitting big shots and we were trying to kind of trading buckets, we stayed poised. And I think that’s how we control the game. I give credit to JB for running the show and keeping everybody in place. Coach Lloyd, he did a great job of calling the plays. And Coach Murph, I give a shout out to him for his scout, he had us prepared since the break, since we got back. We were ready for this game and it showed up on the floor today.”
On pulling away late: “The message was stay poised, stay together, and we got to be the most connected team. I think it was last eight minutes when we said that, and that’s exactly what we did. We was the most connected team, we played together. I think that’s the key to us winning the games, and especially tight games in the Big 12 where it’s gonna be tough and calls might not go our way. We just got to stay together. We just got to stay poised.”
On Tobe Awaka’s 2nd half: “Tobe is a monster on the glass. He came up big tonight. We put a lot of trust in Tobe. It’s hard to be a big in Coach Lloyd’s system. He asks a lot but he steps up to the challenge every time.”
On opening Big 12 play with a win: “I think we needed this one. We’ve just got to continue to keep getting better and better every day. We’ve got a big road trip coming up.”
Lewis on holding off TCU: “We just knew they were going to be an aggressive team. They move the ball really well, they’re an aggressive rebounding team. So we knew we had to all give effort on the defensive rebounding, and then pushing the transition where I feel like we dominated the game when we got the stops, and we didn’t let them set up into their zone or their defense. When we move the ball and we move with player movement, it’s hard to hard to stop us.”
On Veesaar: “It’s been a steady growth since the summer. When you got teammates like we do we pour belief into each other, and he’s getting that belief from us.”
On being able to play like this on the road: “It’s big time. You’ve got to keep that same intensity, that same edge and aggressiveness on the road. And be able to take a punch because, home corner advantage is real in this league. And we know we’re going to get the opponents’ best shot over there. But we got to be able to rally together, stay poised like we did today in those big time moments.”
Veesaar on his shot selection: “My teammates are always saying rip it when you’re open.”
On making a 3-pointer: “It felt really good. I missed a lot in a row.”
On if he’s trying to be more aggressive: “You just start playing better, so you felt a little better, you be more aggressive. You just play like you want to play all the time. Don’t play scared.”