Arizona Basketball returns to action, routes Georgia Southern

Tucson, AZ- After a quick break of action, Arizona Basketball (5-2) returned to the friendly confines of the McKale Center to route Georgia Southern.

Well, it’s good to be in Tucson and not in Maui (I guarantee that may be the only time you’ll ever hear that). For Arizona Basketball, no truer words could have been said than those right now.

As to be expected, we knew coming in, that the 2018-19 season was going to be a bit of a down year (based on our typical expectations). However, we also thought, that their might be a chance for the Wildcats to still possibly make a tourney run.

Arizona Wildcats

Well, the verdict is still out on the latter, but nonetheless it’s in the early parts of the season, and we are learning quite a bit about this young and resilient squad. We all saw just how over-matched we were against then No. 3 Gonzaga and No. 8 Auburn in Maui.

Regardless, those were good, early tests to provide a bit of a learning experience for this group and challenge them to get better, competing against the best.

It’s a long season, and luckily it’s still the early!

Finally after nearly two weeks off, the Wildcats returned to action inside McKale to square off with a solid, Sun Belt team in Georgia Southern. Coming in, the Eagles were 5-1, hoping to score the difficult and unlikely upset.

From the tip, Georgia Southern competed, doing their absolute best to stick with the Wildcats. The Eagles would even hold their biggest lead of the game, after a lay-up from Montae Glenn that made it 15-10, GSU.

A little over two minutes later, Justin Coleman would convert on a lay-up to give the Wildcats the 20-18 lead, and from there, Arizona would never look back!

Arizona would continue to use a pretty steady offensive effort for the rest of the first half, to go along with a solid defensive performance. After 20, the Wildcats held the Eagles to just 32 points on 43 percent shooting.

Brandon Williams would lead the way for the Wildcats, scoring 10 of his 14 points in the first half, and Brandon Randolph would add eight of his own.

The biggest draw back was that the Wildcats had10 fouls in that first half.

Fortunately for us fans, the second half would be much more of a dominant performance by the Cats!

Arizona would come out ready and focused, opening the half up on a 13-6 run to extend their lead to 20 with about 15 minutes to go. Much of the same would continue, as the Wildcats would prove too much for the visiting Eagles.

Georgia Southern would make every attempt to keep this one fairly close, but great shooting and bench play (the Wildcats ended up scoring 47 off the bench) is what this one ultimately came down to, giving the Wildcats a big victory!

In an important game for continued development and repetition for some of the other Cats, Arizona saw great production from Alex Barcello, who scored a career-high 16 points on 6-10 shooting!

Also, the now infamous Devonaire Doutrive saw a decent amount of minutes as well, scoring eight points in 11 minutes of game action. But more eye-catching than his solid athleticism and scoring ability, was perhaps the best pass we will see by a Wildcat this season.

The stellar play by Arizona, scored the Wildcats a dominating, 100-70 victory over a solid Georgia Southern team! Wildcat big man Chase Jeter would lead the way, scoring 18 points, while grabbing 10 boards.

Dylan Smith would also had a respectable evening, scoring 10 points on 4-11 shooting from the field.

With the win, the Wildcats improve to 5-2 on the year, and will have to prepare for a challenging road game against UCONN this weekend.

Listen to head coach Sean Miller breakdown his teams’ performance over Georgia Southern, and the importance of getting Doutrive involved more moving forward.

At Zona Zealots, we are proud of the way Arizona played. It feels good to win, but there is still more to learn and improve upon! Bear Down, Arizona!