Arizona’s Dell’Orso, Awaka foil Colorado’s surprises

They were old Pac-12 coaching chums, but also in a profession that demands competition trump friendships.

And Boyle had just pulled a fast one.

“So much for our practices the last few days,” Lloyd said. “I told Tad, ‘Next time, can you give me a little heads up that you’re going to play 40 minutes of zone and run these baseline screens? It would kind of help with our preparation a little bit.’”

Known for often running a stubborn man-to-man defense that handed Lloyd’s first Arizona team arguably the worst of its four losses in 2021-22, Boyle instead ran all zone defense Saturday.

Dell’Orso, who hit a career-high six 3-pointers over that zone, said the Wildcats expected some zone, but said it was a “bit of a shock” that they went with it full-time.

On offense, Lloyd said he hadn’t seen anything all season from Colorado like the way the Buffaloes ran the baseline screens they did Saturday.

It wasn’t a complete surprise. The Buffs were desperate, entering Saturday’s game winless in seven previous Big 12 games, and Lloyd had said beforehand that Boyle would push the right buttons at some point and win some Big 12 games.

“Tad’s a really good coach. He’s been around for a minute,” Lloyd said. “His team’s not playing probably as well as he would hope. He was not afraid to let it rip today and try a few different things.

But the tricks only worked for about 33 minutes, until Dell’Orso and Awaka helped break the Buffaloes completely down.

En route to his career-high in made 3s, Dell’Orso scored 14 of his game-high 20 points in the second half. Inside, Awaka had eight of a career-high-tying 15 rebounds after halftime, when UA pulled away from a 40-40 tie with 14:43 left.

A junior transfer from Campbell, Dell’Orso finished with 20 points, one shy of his season-high set against Davidson in the Battle 4 Atlantis. Awaka’s 15 rebounds tied his career high he set earlier this season against Old Dominion.

Overall, Arizona outrebounded Colorado 37-31, while scoring 16 second-chance points off 13 offensive rebounds.

“I thought Awaka was the difference in the game,” Boyle said. “ I mean, the way he rebounded the ball … we knew Arizona coming in this game is a really good offensive rebounding team. They’re averaging 12.6 a game. They got 13 tonight. That was a key for us to win the game. We didn’t do that.”

While Awaka was the force inside the zone, Dell’Orso stood on the outside, tossing in his six 3s on just nine attempts, a zone-buster in the purest form.

That’s what he was supposed to deliver out of the transfer portal last spring, being able to space the floor with his shooting threat and carrying through when the opportunity arises.

“I’ve told Delly all along, you’ve got to stay locked in and ready because there’s gonna be nights where we might need you to be our leading scorer,” Lloyd said. “He did tonight. He was great.”

Once it became clear what Dell’Orso was doing – he scored six points in the first half and then scored eight of Arizona’s first 10 points in the second half – Boyle pulled out another trick.

After a while, that didn’t work well enough, either.

“They kind of attacked him on defense, so then you end up a little bit stuck in between – do you keep him in for offense or sub him out for defense?” Lloyd said. “Sometimes, you’ve just got to let a guy play through it a little bit. We were able to do that, and he delivered. Delly gets all the credit for that one.”

For Dell’Orso, it was a bigger stage but not a bigger role. He averaged nearly 20 points a game last season, actually 19.5 leading Campbell in scoring. His career high is 35 points, dropped on East Carolina early last season.

So when the Buffaloes started trotting out that zone, he knew what to do.

“It’s not new stuff to me,” Dell’Orso said. “They were sitting in a zone and that probably plays more into my specialty a little bit, from the outside. And my teammates found me in the right spots, and tonight I was able to knock them down.”

Dell’Orso only missed four shots, going 7 for 11 overall, and Awaka was cleaning up a lot of the Wildcats’ other misses. Awaka had seven offensive rebounds to go with eight on the defensive end, fueling UA’s second-chance opportunities.

“It was just finding a body, doing my work early, anticipating the shot before went up,” Awaka said of his afternoon on the glass. “Then it was just having the wherewithal to go and get the ball.”

The Buffaloes’ strategies slowed Arizona significantly early in Saturday’s game. The Wildcats shot 38.2% from the field and made only 4 of 14 3-pointers in the first half. Arizona raced to a 9-3 start, hitting four of its first six shots and outrebounding the Buffs 5-0 over that stretch, but the Buffs remained competitive until the final seven minutes of the game.

The Wildcats broke out midway through the second half, outscoring Colorado 20-9 during an eight-minute stretch in which Dell’Orso hit three 3-pointers and Henri Veesaar hit another. That left Arizona with a 65-51 lead over Colorado with 6:07 left, and the Wildcats held a double-digit lead the rest of the way.

The win moved Arizona to 13-6 overall and 7-1 in the Big 12 entering a Monday showdown with third-ranked Iowa State. UA made 56.3% of its shots in the second half, when the Wildcats outrebounded Colorado 19-11.

Julian Hammond had 19 points and four assists to lead Colorado, which shot 42.9% overall.

The Buffaloes (9-10, 0-8) have now lost 15 straight games to Arizona in Tucson, never beating the Wildcats at McKale during the Pac-12 era.

“As crazy as it sounds, being 0-8, I’m proud of our guys for not losing the fight,” Boyle said. “Obviously, we’re not a zone team, but we felt like that was the one thing we could do, maybe to try to keep the crowd out of this. I know the crowd’s a big part of it, because when they get going, they thrive on that energy.”