Arizona cruises past UT-Rio Grande Valley
Once he was finished making it look easy, having collected five blocks and a double-double in Arizona’s 104-50 destruction of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, Christian Koloko made it sound simple.
“That’s the goal — to score as many points as we can,” Koloko said, chuckling, after teammate Azuolas Tubelis said the Wildcats would try to equal that sort of output against Pac-12 teams and “see how it goes.”
Against UTRGV of the Western Athletic Conference, scoring was never a problem for the Wildcats. Not only did Koloko chip in a career-high 18 points and a career-high 11 rebounds, but forward Azuolas Tubelis had 20 points and nine rebounds while wing Bennedict Mathurin and guard Justin Kier each had 13 points.
In all, Arizona scored more points in regulation than it had for all of one of the 411 games played during the 12-year Sean Miller era.
The Wildcats beat Long Beach State 104-67 two years ago at McKale Center, and scored 107 in a two-point tripleovertime win at Cal during the 2010-11 season, but those were outliers.
For second-year coach Tommy Lloyd, it may happen with a little more frequency. Even before Friday’s outburst, the former Gonzaga assistant said he’d like to score in the 90s if possible, and he stayed consistent to that idea after the game.
“I’d love to,” Lloyd said. “I think that we’re starting to figure out how we can score easier.
“Hey, in college basketball it’s hard to score 90 points, and to average 90 is almost impossible. But if you can average over 80, you’re going to be one of the topscoring teams in the country and I just think when you can play at that pace and score like that, it puts so much pressure on the other team and it gives you a little bit of a margin of error.”
In Friday’s case, it was more than a little bit of a margin. Winning by 54 points allowed the Wildcats to easily shrug off their 18 turnovers, though, of course, Lloyd wasn’t about to do that.
“I’m not happy. Not happy with those,” Lloyd said. “We gotta take care of the ball. I mean, you play fast but you play with fundamentals and you can’t let your guard down.
“A lot of these plays are happening randomly and so you have to have a foundation of fundamentals and trust simple decisions. If you get a little greedy, now you’re making hard plays and hard plays lead to turnovers.”
Other than that, the only sort of rough spot the Wildcats had arrived early in the second half.
Up by 25 at halftime, the Wildcats made only a third of their shots in the first four minutes after halftime. But they went on a 15-1 run to take a 73-34 lead with 11:35 left, getting a 3-pointer from Kier and two 3s from Mathurin in less than a minute. Mathurin had made just one of his first four shots before his pair of 3s, the second of which came on a fast break.
About four minutes later, Mathurin put the Vaqueros all but away, 83-42, with an alley-oop dunk in transition off a feed from Dalen Terry after a UTRGV turnover. Subsequent 3s from Kriisa, Kim Aiken and Adama Bal gave UA a 9244 lead with 6:15 left.
All that scoring so quickly, throughout so much of Friday’s game, left Lloyd saying he was surprised.
“What I was looking for in this game was a street fight,” he said. ”I thought it was going to be a physical game and I knew they had some experienced players… I thought they had the potential to be really physical and aggressive but I thought our guys came out and hit first and then hit often, and kind of broke their will.”
It probably didn’t help the Vaqueros’ spirit any that just about any time they dared to enter the post early in the game, Koloko either blocked their shots or altered whatever they had planned.
In the first half, Koloko already tied his career-high in blocks with five while adding 10 points and collecting eight rebounds to help Arizona take a 49-24 halftime lead.
While it’s obvious Koloko has continued to improve in his third year at Arizona, again, he made it sound simple.
“I approach every game the same,” Koloko said. “Every time someone shoots in front of me, I want to block the shot, and that is what I’m doing.” Yes, he was.
Koloko had set his career-high in blocks with five just three days earlier against NAU in the Wildcats’ season opener and had his first three blocks during just four minutes of action. He had his fifth block with six minutes left to play in the first half.
The Wildcats built early leads of 8-0 and 18-2 by spreading the ball around offensively and controlling the boards on both ends. UTRGV missed its first five field goals and 11 of its first 12 – and nine minutes into the game the Vaqueros still didn’t have a single offensive rebound despite shooting just 3 for 15 at that point.
Meanwhile, Tubelis dominated the Vaqueros both inside, outside and in transition, hitting a corner 3 to put them up 11-2 early and scoring inside twice afterward to help UA build a 30-6 lead. He also hit a fast-break basket after Koloko blocked his fifth shot and Pelle Larsson picked up the rebound and passed to Tubelis for the assist.
Overall in the first half, Arizona shot 62.5% from the field and clobbered UTRGV on the boards. Arizona outrebounded UTRGV 29-9 overall and minimized the Vaqueros’ second chances -UTRGV shot just 24.2% and had just two offensive rebounds on its 24 missed shots.
Arizona wound up shooting 60.7% for the game from the field while holding UTRGV to just 22.4% shooting and outrebounding them 54-25.
The game was lopsided, in just about every way you could look at it.
“I didn’t expect that,” Lloyd said. “But I’ll take it.”