Veterans stepping up for No. 23 Wildcats
PULLMAN, Wash. — Since the day Phoenix point guard phenom Nico Mannion committed to Arizona in September 2018 and began lining up some help to come with him, there was little doubt who would be leading the revamped Wildcats this season.
Mannion. Good buddy Josh Green. And, especially after he emerged in preseason practices, Zeke Nnaji.
Nico-Josh-Zeke. The only true freshman trio in the nation that has become the top three scorers on their team.
But when the Wildcats finally cleared the road-game hurdle over the weekend and then converted it to the Pac-12’s first road sweep of the season, guess who was standing in front?
Jemarl Baker, a third-year sophomore, hitting 4 of 7 3s-pointers Thursday at Washington, including a 25-foot go-ahead bomb with 44 seconds left.
And Stone Gettings, a fifth-year senior, setting new season-highs of 19 points and 12 rebounds on Saturday at Washington State.
As proven in nearly every NCAA Tournament of the one-and-done era, veterans matter in college basketball, too.
And maybe now the Wildcats have some they can believe in.
“You need everybody to win in a great conference like we have,” UA coach Sean Miller said. “There are no easy games and winning on the road has never been more difficult.”
That’s a proven fact this season. Entering last week, Pac-12 home teams were a combined 31-11, making the Pac-12 the nation’s third-toughest conference to win on the road behind only the Summit and Big Ten. And for the first time since Colorado and Utah joined the conference in 2011-12, there were no conference road sweeps completed in January.
But while also receiving near-typical production from Mannion and Nnaji, the Wildcats completed a road sweep that put them in a five-way loss column tie for first-place at 5-3 at the calendar midpoint of league play.
The Wildcats have only played 8 of 18 conference games so far because they already had both one-game weeks against geographic rival ASU, but six of those final 10 games are at home, starting Thursday against USC.
Moreover, momentum is back on the Wildcats’ side, after the sting of having a 22-point lead evaporate in a 66-65 loss at ASU on Jan. 25.
Arizona also has a more settled rotation. Baker has continued to excel in a sixth-man combo-guard role, and Gettings appears to have been increasingly more comfortable in a starting role after joining the lineup on Jan. 16 against Utah, when Chase Jeter ran into what appears to be a combination of rebounding and back issues.
After scoring 13 points on Thursday at Washington, Gettings scored twice inside over the first four minutes of the game at a time when his teammates were still settling in, with WSU going on to take an early 15-8 lead.
“Going into each game, I just try to focus on playing defense, talking a lot and rebounding,” Gettings said. “Then I kind of just let the offense come to me if I’m open. Luckily I got a couple of easy buckets in the first four minutes and it’s always nice to see the ball go in. But my teammates are doing a great job finding me and I’m playing with confidence out there and just trying to build each game.”
While earning UA’s nomination for Pac-12 Player of the Week, Gettings went on to total 11 points and 10 rebounds in the first half alone, keying UA’s 14-0 run with a layup and a 3-pointer.
Mannion said he was happy to see it. “Yeah, really,” Mannion said. “I mean, Stone is one of the hardest workers we have. He’s in the gym every day and he does this kind of stuff in practice, too, so we kind of know what he’s capable of. He got us started with our first two baskets and it’s good to see the ball go in for him.”
Baker, meanwhile, followed up his clutch shooting on Thursday with another 23 minutes of turnover-free basketball on Saturday. He’s now gone a total of 102 straight minutes without a single turnover, and ranks 41st nationally in turnover percentage, losing the ball on just 9.1% of possessions when he’s on the floor.
Baker and another veteran, sharpshooting guard Max Hazzard, have also improved defensively to the point where Miller has another tool in his array of lineups: He played them both alongside Mannion against UW and WSU at times, with Gettings and Nnaji playing the post spots.
On Saturday, Miller went with that lineup just after WSU took a 15-8 lead with 12:07 left in the first half.
By the time he substituted next, putting in Christian Koloko for Nnaji five minutes later, the Wildcats had rattled off 10 straight points. Gettings then hit a short jumper in the paint before Koloko stole the ball from WSU’s Isaac Bonton and went downcourt for a dunk. It was 22-15 then, and Arizona never really gave up the momentum after that.
“That’s a lineup we played the other night and I think it’s something that we’re learning it’s good for parts of the game,” Miller said. “Stone was in there with Zeke, and (using them with) those three guards is something that we haven’t done as much.
“But we trust those guys on defense a little bit more now, and I think they’re more accustomed to playing our style. It gives us more flexibility in depth when you can play that lineup.”
There are still issues, of course, especially with shooting. The Wildcats shot just 40% overall during the two games in Washington, and Green is hitting just 23.1% in his past three games.
Miller said he believed Green would break out of the slump, and credited him for successfully defending Cougar standout CJ Elleby, who was just 2 of 12 from the field.
But overall, with 10 games left in Pac-12 play, the Wildcats appear more experienced, more confident and maybe more defined.
That might suggest some upside. “I think everyone’s confidence is kind of getting higher as we play more games just because we have such a new group,” Mannion said. “Coming into the season it was just really building chemistry, and now that we’re about halfway through the Pac-12 season, we’re kind of starting to hit that point where we understand each other and everything is starting to flow a little smoother.”