Arizona Basketball: Just one loss for the Wildcats, no need to panic

Arizona Basketball suffered their first loss of the season against a very good Baylor team and there is no reason to panic.

9-1. After going undefeated for the month of November, Arizona Basketball loss their first game of the season 63-58 to No.18 Baylor on the road. It was a tough one to watch from beginning to end, but things could have been a whole lot worse considering how the Wildcats played. For that, there is no reason to panic.

27% from the field and 11% from three, yet they only lost by five points. They were down as much as 18 points, got it down to one point. They were one bad Zeke Nnaji foul call away from possibly winning this one. Nico Mannion and Josh Green weren’t even at 100% and the Wildcats still had a chance in this one.

There will be games like this one in which shots don’t fall, but’s that college basketball. How a team adjusts to that is key to success. For the Wildcats, their defense stepped up in the second half and they were doing a much better job on the glass.

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In the previous matchup against Baylor the Wildcats were outrebounded 51-19, but in this one Baylor only had seven more rebounds with a 40-33 edge on the glass.

This team showed a lot of fight all the way to the very end, that is something coach Sean Miller and his staff can be proud of. Things weren’t going their way, whether it was bad foul calls or silly turnovers or easy shots weren’t falling, but at the end that didn’t stop this team from competing.

As a fan, it’s easy to panic and to get upset after a team has bad performance and loses. Sometimes though it’s important to take a step back and look at the big picture.

It’s especially important we do that because at 9-1 this team still has plenty of basketball games to play and minus one bad game, they are still a solid Top 25 team.

At Zona Zealots, we support this team no matter what, win or loss. Of course, no one wants their team to lose but it’s better they lose in December versus March. Plus, this loss against Baylor was one in which there was a lot of good things and also a lot of things to work on. As always, Bear Down, Arizona!