Gaels are no strangers to Arizona
SALT LAKE CITY — Randy Bennett was watching recruits run up and down the court one day in Las Vegas five years ago, nothing too exciting, when the St. Mary’s coach looked over, saw Arizona coach Sean Miller and started up a conversation.
Turns out, Miller knew Bennett well. Really well.
“He had studied what we do, which caught me off guard a little bit,” Bennett recalled Friday, a day before the two teams’ second-round NCAA Tournament matchup. “He’d studied (Mickey) McConnell and (Matthew) Dellavedova and that group. We talked about that. And we talked about how we got to where we were offensively . ...
“So we decided we’d scrimmage each other. He was doing
us a favor that way. We did it three years in a row. We didn’t this year — they needed to play an exhibition game instead.”
The two became friends, and although their teams’ past scrimmages don’t mean a lot considering three of Arizona’s top six scorers are freshmen, there will be an air of familiarity when Saturday’s game tips off at roughly 4:45 p.m..
The No. 7 Gaels are at least comfortable with how the No. 2 seed Wildcats play, and the Wildcats know how good the 29-4 Gaels are. After all, Miller still speaks highly of Bennett and the Gaels.
“Not until you go against St. Mary’s do you truly understand how well they move the ball, how well they execute and how together they are on both offense and defense,” Miller said. “We are up against a great team. … Randy Bennett is one of the game’s great coaches. And he deserves a ton of credit.”
Added Bennett: “You don’t get in a situation often where you’re playing one of those guys that you’re friends with, you have a good relationship with, in the NCAA Tournament.”
Arizona (31-4) poses a huge test for the Gaels, and not just because it starts two sevenfooters who can score in Lauri Markkanen (15.6 points per game) and Dusan Ristic (10. 6). Sophomore guard Allonzo Trier is one of the best players in the country (17.3 ppg, 5.0 rebounds, 2.7 assists) and the Wildcats can get out and run and score in bunches.
“They can be really dangerous in transition,” Bennett said. “And they’re big on the boards, very similar to VCU that way. They have a few more ways to score. They have a lot of guys that can make a basket on that team.”
“It was a good adjustment for us in terms of athleticism coming from our league,” St. Mary’s point guard Joe Rahon said of his team’s first-round game. “There’s some good athletes in our league, but VCU can run seven, eight, nine great athletes at you. Kind of seeing the athleticism, being able to deal with it is probably the biggest difference.”
While VCU uses more fullcourt pressure and Arizona waits until opponents get in the halfcourt, their athleticism has St. Mary’s focus more on boxing out for rebounds. The Gaels were one of the best rebounding teams in the country — their rebound-margin of 9.3 was second in the NCAA — but again, most of that came against the WCC.
St. Mary’s did beat VCU 37-29 on the boards Thursday, and shot 56 percent from the field (center Jock Landale was 6-of-8 and had 18 points). Rahon and Calvin Hermanson were a combined 5-of-8 from three-point range, and Arizona is a young team that has lost games because teams beat them from outside.
”We’re going to have to be really good at the end of the shot clock,” Miller said. “You could play very good defense for 20 seconds but all of a sudden one of your defenders breaks down and St. Mary’s has a way of taking advantage of that.”