Arizona Basketball can’t find the basket, fall to a formidable USC

Arizona Basketball traveled to Los Angeles on Wednesday to get ready to take on the Los Angeles schools, first USC on Thursday then UCLA on Saturday.

Arizona Basketball players from Los Angeles look forward to playing in front of their families and friends and winning becomes so much more important. With Emmanuel Akot leaving the program suddenly, and Chase Jeter down with a back injury, a recovering Sean Miller seemed not himself in the big loss to USC. Big because the loss was by 23 points, 80-57.

Pac-12 basketball analyst Michael Yam summed up the game this way, “The Wildcats have just 9 conference losses by double-digit points under Sean Miller in 10 seasons. Crazy! So rare when AZ gets beat bad.”

More from Wildcats Basketball

• Arizona Basketball likely to schedule Florida Atlantic for 2023
• Rondae Hollis-Jefferson’s FIBA World Cup performance is reminiscent of Kobe Bryant’s
• Rawle Alkins a star in the Drew League this summer
• Arizona Basketball to play in ‘Battle 4 Atlantis’ in 2024
• Reflections on the Pac-12, the Arizona Wildcats, and other memories

Watching a game in person and watching it on TV, one can come away with different perspectives. On TV it may have looked like the Wildcats didn’t care, that was far from the truth. Chase Jeter almost never sat down encouraging his teammates to not give up. There was an obvious size difference with Bennie Boatwright, Nick Rakocevic and Victor Uyaelunmo crowding the paint playing mostly a zone defense. The three plus Elijah Weaver logged seven blocks to Arizona’s three (two from Ira Lee).

Justin Coleman and anyone playing point guard seemed to dribble into a crowd often and kick the ball out to the three-point line.

That still should work, but when you aren’t making your shots, then all the steals and turnovers Arizona caused tonight went unrewarded. Arizona shot 27.8% (20-72) overall and 20% from three making only five of 25 from beyond the arc. The Cats were out-rebounded 51-39 and even though the fouls evened out by the end of the game, the Cats were called for most of their fouls when it counted and could have made a difference where the Trojans were finally called for fouls, but more towards the end of the game.

With only two of the Wildcats barely in double figures (Ira Lee and Brandon Randolph both scored 12 points), there is no way to win a game and miss 52 shots, especially the way USC was shooting. The Trojans shot 47.7% overall and 50% from three making 10-20 three-point shots. The team also got back their star Kevin Porter who was very efficient and added 18 points to the score.

What I took away from the game was that the Cats shots were just not falling, no matter how hard they tried and where they shot the ball from. They played hard and while only committing seven turnovers the entire game, they forced 15 from USC. They just couldn’t covert, it was frustrating for everyone including the quiet fans in the stands.

Three things made the fans pseudo happy tonight. One, if any Wildcat missed both their free-throws, the entire crowd would have gotten free Chick-Fil-A. Not one of the Wildcats missed both free throws in the second half, but most missed at least one of them. The Wildcats made 12-18 (67%) and the Trojans made 8-14 (57.1%).

Second, you couldn’t help but be moved by Jeter who stood most of the first half cheering on his team, you could tell he wanted to be out there.

Third, there were hardly any Trojan fans in the stands. It seemed the entire upper bowl was empty, and half the fans were Arizona fans, quiet Arizona fans. I am not used to hardly any UofA chants which I think would have helped the team a bit. The student section was full because we all thought they gave them free jerseys. It seemed odd that a student base who pays way over $75K per year for college would get so hyped over a free jersey or a free Chick-Fil-A sandwich.

Miller was clearly upset and disappointed with his team and kind of embarrassed. He couldn’t explain why the Cats layups weren’t even going in tonight. But how can anyone explain why the entire team was missing shots?

Don’t come away from this loss thinking the players didn’t care, you could see it on their faces, they felt horrible and again it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Maybe less film watching and more practice shooting will help. Arizona is now in Second place behind Washington with a 5-2 record in the Pac-12. On to UCLA. Let’s see if we get Jeter back, Miller feels any better and the Wildcats shots fall. Or let’s pray.