Arizona Basketball: Wildcats face Summit League champs SD State

The No.14 ranked Arizona Basketball takes on 2018-19 Summit League regular season champions South Dakota State.

First-time meeting. Arizona Basketball has never faced its next opponent this Thursday, South Dakota State. With an average margin of victory of almost 35 points a game, their opponent has their work cut out for them.  As long as the Wildcats continue to play the way they have so far, they will have no problem against the Jackrabbits.

The Wildcats recently moved up five spots in the latest AP Top 25 poll to No.14 and will look to continue to play dominating basketball. They are the heavy favorites and need to continue to pour it on to move higher up in the rankings.

Just four games into the season and the Wildcats are already playing like a team that has been together for a while. They’ve taken excellent care of the ball and are limiting turnovers, while at the same time causing many turnovers through deflections and steals. Their fast-break style offense early on has been unstoppable.

This season the Wildcats are averaging 87.8 points per game, which is currently 18th in the country. On the defensive side of things, they have limited their opponents to just 53.3 points a game, which ranks 13th. This team is getting it done on both ends of the court.

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Their opponent this Thursday, is coming off a season in which they were 14-2 in conference play and had an overall record of 24-9. They ended being regular-season champions in the Summit League but missed out on the NCAA Tournament as North Dakota State won the conference tournament and earned the automatic bid.

This season the Jackrabbits are 3-2 with one of those loses comes to USC. The leading scorer for them, Doug Wilson, plays the forward position and is averaging 18.6 points and 8.6 rebounds per game. Brandon Key is the only other player averaging 10+ points a game with 11.8 points and 3.0 rebounds per game.

The Wildcats have the clear size and strength advantage over the Jackrabbits and will want to pound the ball inside to the back-to-back Pac-12 Freshman of the Week Zeke Nnaji and Chase Jeter as well. And Ira Lee and Stone Gettings and even Christian Koloko. The list goes on and on.

Jackrabbits do have at least nine players that have played solid minutes this season, but they have yet to face a team like the Wildcats. This one will likely be one-sided, but as we have mentioned before can’t take any team for granted this season in college basketball.

At Zona Zealots, we look forward to another stellar team performance by Arizona Basketball against South Dakota State. As always, Bear Down, Arizona!