What we learned in the Arizona Basketball loss to Washington

The Arizona Basketball team (20-11, 10-8) continues to disappoint their fans as, the team loses its fourth game out of the last five played.

Going into Saturday nights game, the Arizona Basketball team was 10.5-point favorites in the game as the Washington Huskies, who were in last place in the PAC-12.

After a convincing win against the Washington State Cougars on Thursday night, it seemed like maybe the team was finally clicking on offense, limiting their mistakes early on in the game.

Arizona Wildcats

But on Saturday, everything went back to how they were playing for most of the season, getting off low percentage shots and not establishing a lead early on in the game.

Heading into the PAC-12 tournament this coming week, it is discouraging that the Wildcats could not finish the season strong and are back to struggling like they did mid-season. One of their main issues for this season was not being aggressive early on in games and settling for contested long-range shots.

Shooting 35 percent (20-57) from the field and 68 percent from the free throw line (15-22) is just not good enough to beat any team in the Pac-12 as they have shown to be all relatively competitive especially during conference play.

Josh Green and Nico Mannion combined to shoot just 5-16 on the night which is not acceptable as they were supposed to be the teams two best players coming into the season being five-star recruits.

It is a shame because it was Dylan Smith’s senior night and he had one of his best games as a Wildcat through his four years on the team, finishing the night with 19 points (6-11 FG, 6-10 from three) to go along with five rebounds.

Another common problem this team has had the whole season is finding consistent productive scorers off the bench. Jemarl Baker has been up and down the whole year, and in some games he shows up and makes a couple of threes and then like this game against Washington, he didn’t add anything for the second unit.

Also with Max Hazzard being out the last few games due to personal reasons, his absence has hurt the team. Because when he is hot, it has been hard to stop him from deep.

After that loss it makes us wonder what is going on behind the scenes, and whether patience is growing thin on Sean Miller.

Over the past few years we have seen players fail to develop into valuable rotation players that can be useful pieces off the bench such as Chase Jeter and Ira Lee. And when it comes to this season, Nico and Josh have played nowhere near what their expectations were before the season.

Now the big test of the season that we have been waiting for is up next, a first round rematch in the Pac-12 tournament against the Washington Huskies. Sean Miller has to be more prepared coming into this game with limiting touches from star Huskies big man Isaiah Stewart. Also Arizona’s wing players need to be more physical guarding their other talented freshman Jaden McDaniels.  This will also be a good test for the Wildcats young players to be able to experience playing on a big stage because starting March 17th, March Madness begins!