Arizona Basketball Rolls in Savage, Semifinal Revenge win over UCLA

In their Pac-12 Conference Tournament rematch versus rival UCLA, Arizona Basketball advances to the conference final following their big win.

Game. Set. Match, Arizona! Already in the thick of March Madness, the Arizona Basketball team showed their teeth in the conference tournament’s semifinal win over rival UCLA.

From the start, the Bruins had the intensity, but couldn’t seemingly match Arizona’s toughness from then on. It was a poor shooting performance for UCLA, and perhaps the Lonzo Ball hand “injury” may have played a part, but Arizona clearly looked better last night.

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Using a strong first half, Allonzo Trier, and Lauri Markkanen accounted for 25 of Arizona’s 41 points and headed into halftime with a six-point lead. Additionally, the Wildcats held freshman phenom Lonzo Ball and sharp-shooting Bryce Alford to just four points on 2-8 shooting, and six turnovers.

At 22-1 (now 23-1) when leading at the half, Arizona would come out strong to start the second. Using a fury of offense, the Wildcats would push their lead to 14 at about the 15-minute mark following the Markkanen-made three.

The two teams traded baskets from then on, and it was UCLA that seemingly had a tough time getting the lead down to a much more comfortable level, as the Wildcats would respond with just about every UCLA run.

It was big plays like these, that certainly seemed to keep the Bruins at bay, and the momentum and intensity in Arizona’s favor.

UCLA would make things a little interesting down the stretch, as Arizona had troubles in-bounding the ball, and cut the lead to single digits with just over a minute to play.

Things would also get a little testy with just seconds left in the game. Up by 11, Sean Miller would call a timeout with 0.9 seconds left to play (actually he tried calling it earlier, but the ref wouldn’t give it to him), delaying the handshake between the schools. A little bit of a favor returned to UCLA when they did that to Arizona here just recently.

Following the win, Sean Miller would have this to say:

"“When UCLA played us in McKale, I thought they did a great job, they called a timeout with one second left just to make sure they had poise, and I felt like I wanted to make sure our guys had poise at one second left in this game.”"

Appropriate? Petty? Definitely debatable, but one thing that isn’t perhaps, is Arizona’s strong play, and the team buying into the ‘Savage Life’ mantra (Note, Lauri, retweeted Rawle’s tweet).

It seems to be a thing with the team, and we should get on board as well. Don’t bother looking up the term Savage Life on urban dictionary. We will go with the Facebook definition which roughly means ‘Brutal, but Awesome.’ (Note to the players, if we got this wrong please correct us so we can get it right.)

Overall it was a strong performance by Arizona. We are fortunate that UCLA went just 4-25 from three, but a win is a win. Also, the Wildcats still won by 11, despite going 20-32 from the charity stripe. Here are more reasons why Arizona won:

With the win, Arizona advances to the Conference Tournament Final, where the Wildcats will play a revenge rematch against the Oregon Ducks.

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At Zona Zealots, we’re definitely pumped about the win and hope Arizona can bring the intensity again today. We need to avenge that loss to Oregon from earlier in the season! Bear Down, Arizona! Savage Life!