Arizona Basketball: Who to watch for in Game 1 of Spain Trip

Starting August 10th, the Arizona basketball will head overseas to play three games against Spanish Professional teams. With the tougher competition in play, there are some big names on those teams. Let’s take a look at who to watch.

Three months before the college basketball season officially begins, Sean Miller and his new and improved Arizona Basketball team will take their talents to Spain to play some of the professional team’s overseas. On August 13th the team will take on Combinado Valenciano, then on August 16th and August 18th, they will face the Mataro All-Stars and the Mataro Parc Boet respectively.

With DeAndre Ayton, Ira Lee, Emmanuel Akot, Brandon Randolph and Alex Barcello all coming into the season as freshmen, and all hoping to make their own path to success, they will be looking to prove just how good they are against these players they will be up against.

More from Zona Zealots

• Arizona Football begins Conference play against Stanford
• Arizona Football starts slow but runs away from UTEP
• How Wildcats Fans Can Claim $200 INSTANT Bonus at BetMGM Betting $10 Right Now
• Costly Mistakes doom Arizona Football in loss to Mississippi State
• Arizona Basketball likely to schedule Florida Atlantic for 2023

Rawle Alkins, Allonzo Trier, Parker Jackson-Cartwright and Dusan Ristic will look to keep the momentum they had last season that unfortunately culminated in a Sweet Sixteen loss to Xavier. In that game, the offense was no problem for the Wildcats. Trier put in 19, and Ristic put up 17 against the Musketeers. The main thing that the team will have to work on before the upcoming season is the team defense, as it wasn’t up to par last year with many other top teams. With that being said, DeAndre Ayton will bring that defensive presence that the Wildcats will look to gain an advantage off of down in the post.

The first game should easily be the best game of the trip, as DeAndre Ayton will get his first true test as a member of the Wildcats. He will be up against Tibor Pleiss, who played in 12 NBA games with the Utah Jazz back in the 2015 season. Even though he was never a force to be reckoned with in the NBA, Pleiss still stands a towering 7’3. That will not be an easy task to cope with, even as one of the most dominant big man college basketball has seen since Anthony Davis.

Tryggvi Hlinason will be another name to watch, he completely dominated the Euro U20 Championships in every facet of the game. He averaged 14.4 points, 12.8 rebounds, 2.0 assists and 3.0 blocks per game. He also stands 7-foot-1. I

If nothing else, Spain will be no match for these shirts you can buy to commemorate the event:

Must Read: More on Arizona Basketball from ZZ..

At ZonaZealots, we are still expecting the Wildcats to stand tall, figuratively and literally, to pull out the victory in this game. What do you think of the first “game” of the 2017-2018 season? Let us know in the comments below!