Arizona went to the Bahamas riding its first losing streak in four years but with hopes of getting things sorted out during the Battle4Atlantis. Three games and three days later, the Wildcats take another skid back with them to Tucson and have a sub-.500 record for the first time since 2010.
“Tough week for the Wildcats,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said after Arizona’s 83-76 overtime loss to West Virginia in the third place game. “We were hoping to right the ship and compete for a championship, and we had moments where we thought we were close and then there’s moments like we felt we were far away.”
Arizona (3-4) is off until Dec. 7, giving it time to both recover from this trip and tinker with what’s gone wrong.
“We got to back as a program and do some soul searching and find some real answers to why we’re not being as successful as we’d like to be,” Lloyd said. “I’m here for it. We’re going to roll up our sleeves, get on that plane, get back to Tucson and get back to work.”
Our game recap can be found here. Below is what Lloyd, Caleb Love and Trey Townsend said afterwards:
Lloyd on Arizona’s froncourt: “We’ve got to get our bigs playing better. Our bigs have always been an integral part of what we do. They’ve got to create advantages for us. We’re going to attack that full force when we get home. I’m waiting for Mo (Krivas). If he’s going to eventually start I want him to earn it. It’s me trying to find a way to take advantage of these bigs that we have as a valuable asset. I think they can be, when we put this team together we thought that would be the case.”
On Townsend: “He’s been playing great, he’s kind of been a real steady force for us. He made some big time plays to kind of keep us in that game.
On if West Virginia gave Arizona a glimpse of the Big 12: “We know it’s a tough road, we’re living it right now. We’ve never overlooked anybody. I never looked at the preseason Big 12 rankings coming into this thing. West Virginia is a good team, they got a good coach, they got a good system, they got a couple really good players.”
On Tucker DeVries: “That guy hit some 3s today that were timely and deep and off staggers. There are not many guys in college basketball that can make those. He got on a little bit of a roll tonight and he was able to give them a bit of a lead.”
On the Mountaineers playing 3 overtime games: “I think they showed a lot of character, a lot of heart. I think those guys were probably running on fumes but they had a lot of pride. They were opportunistic in transition, other than that they were comfortable walking the ball up the court. They played very sticky, feisty defense.”
On West Virginia scoring 24 points off turnovers: “They’re live ball turnovers and they got out in transition and were able to take advantage of that. They were really gappy in their defense and we kind of lost some balls. That was the thing in the first half that caused our offensive to stall out a bit is we just kind of lost balls, whether it was rebounding or losing the dribble or getting it into the paint and losing it. We just didn’t do a good job of protecting the ball.”
On Carter Bryant starting over KJ Lewis as discipline for Lewis’ technical vs. Oklahoma: “I had a talk with KJ and I had a talk with the team, if something like that happens again we’re going to address that. We’ve got to exhibit more winning habits, and so we’re going to have to look deep within to find those.”
On the plan for the week ahead: “We’re going to get back in the gym and get back to work and clean things up. This is not the product that we want to be putting on the court right now. I think we got the right guys, I know we got the right guys, now we need to make it happen.”
On if he saw Arizona being 3-4 at this point: “It’s always a possibility. I’m not a guy that writes what I think our record is going to be at the end of November, put it in an envelope and seal it and look at it later. I’m literally game to game and I respect all our opponents. You come here, one team is going to go 0-3, a couple teams are going to go 1-2, a couple teams are going to go 2-1, one team is going to go 3-0. Our hope was to come here and find a way to try and get to 3-0, we didn’t do that. We ended up in the 1-2 slot, that’s our reality. We’ll wear it, we wear it and we’ll take responsibilities for it and see if we can make the necessary changes to fix it.”
Love on Arizona’s 3-4 start: “We just gotta start having better starts to the games, to (the second half) and obviously overtime. The turnovers kind of hurt us in this game. I still believe we’re a good team. It’s early in the season, I’m not panicking. I hope my teammates and coaches aren’t panicking.”
Townsend on his recent play: “For me it’s all about confidence. At the beginning of the regular season I was struggling with that. I felt every time I was touching the ball we were building momentum.”
On Caleb Love: “Every time we step on the floor we’ve got the best player in the country. That gives us the confidence to want to play.”
On the 3-4 start: “I’m confident in our guys and just excited to keep playing with them.”
On still finding his role in Arizona’s offense: “I feel I’m a pretty versatile player. At Oakland we didn’t have 7-footers, I played the 5 there. Me being able to play my true position like this ultimately helps our team. It was a struggle at the beginning. We’re all still finding our way.”