Tag: Revived

After slumping much of the nonconference season under the weight of sky-high expectations, Arizona guard Caleb Love poured in a season-high 33 points to lead the Wildcats over TCU 90-81 in their first-ever Big 12 game on Monday at McKale Center.

“Obviously, I’ll take it every day,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said of Love’s prolific offense. “Caleb played great. It’s going to be a long conference season but he deserves that.”

On a night when Lloyd also said center Motiejus Krivas would miss the rest of the season with a foot injury that has mostly plagued him since August, UA big man Henri Veesaar added 15 points, six rebounds and four assists, while guard KJ Lewis set a new career high in assists with eight off the bench.

Love built his 33-point effort on 11-for-17 shooting, hitting 5 of 11 3-pointers, while making all six free throws he took. Love also collected seven assists and six rebounds.

“We didn’t have an answer for Love,” TCU coach Jamie Dixon said. “They killed us offensively….Generally it’s the guard who plays the best, (his) team usually wins.”

Love had shown signs this sort of thing was coming, averaging 23.5 points while hitting 6 of 17 3-pointers in the Wildcats’ final nonconference games against Samford and Central Michigan. His 80 total points over the past three games were the most of any three-game stretch in his career

“For sure, I feel like I’m definitely in a rhythm,” Love said, thanking God and his mother, whom he called “kind of my spirit warrior.”

Love also thanked his teammates for setting him up and moving the ball. Arizona shot 56.9% from the field while setting up 28 of its 33 field goals with assists.

“That was awesome,” Lloyd said. “That’s how we love to play. Assists is something we never talk about, but playing the right way is something we talk about. We want ball movement. We want player movement. We want guys to have high IQs. We want guys playing with great fundamentals.

“That was challenging at some points this year. I obviously could have done a better job coaching it, but it’s not like I changed my philosophy. Now I think that there’s more synergy between what the staff’s looking for and what the players are doing on the court.”

The Wildcats’ energy was mirrored by the McKale Center crowd of about 13,000, which stood on its feet for much of the game. The atmosphere was the liveliest McKale has had all season, other than the opening minutes of UA’s Nov. 22 loss to Duke, and rivaled that of many past Pac-12 games.

Both the energy on the floor and in the stands may have helped the Wildcats stave off the Horned Frogs throughout the game. Leading 41-37 at halftime after leading by up to 14 in the first half, Arizona saw its lead cut to just a point on three different occasions in the second half.

But the Wildcats answered the threat every time the margin shrunk that low, the first with a dunk by Trey Townsend off Love’s assist with 18 minutes left, then on a layup from Lewis on another assist from Love with 15:38 left and then with a jumper from Veesaar with 14:35 left.

“We just knew they were going to be an aggressive team,” Lewis said. “It was being prepared, taking their punch. They move the ball really well, they’re and aggressive rebounding team. We knew we had to all give effort on defensive rebounding and pushing in transition.

“I feel like we dominated when we got (defensive) stops, and we didn’t let them set up their zone or their defense.”

With 8:35 left to go, Love stole the ball from TCU’s Vasean Allette, then dished to Lewis on the break for a dunk that gave UA a 71-63 lead. From there, UA led by six or more points the rest of the way.

“The message was `stay poised, stay together,’ “ Love said. “I think it was last eight minutes when we said that and that’s exactly what we did. We were the most connected team. We played together.”

While Love was 5 of 11 from 3-point range, the other Wildcats were a combined 2 for 11, but even that combined 7-for-22 mark had TCU center Ernest Udeh conceding a defensive failure.

“I feel like we gave up a lot of stuff,” Udeh said. “If you go back and watch the film, (you’ll see) a lot of those 3s were just wide open. No one even close. For sure, coach was talking about being more up on the ball screens and everything. When we went switching, our communication got to be better. But kudos to them. They shot great, executed their stuff great.”

Love surpassed his previous season-high of 24 points when he hit a 3-pointer with 10:06 left, also giving him a new season high in made 3s with five. He finished three points short of his career-high of 36, set last season when he broke the scoring record at Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena.

Love spread his scoring throughout the game. He had had 16 points on 7-for-10 shooting in the first half to help the Wildcats take a 41-37 halftime lead, hitting three of his first four shots to help UA take an 11-6 lead at the first media timeout.

Arizona went on a 9-0 run to go ahead 22-8 after just over the 10-minute mark, though the Horned Frogs pulled within 22-10 when Vasean Allette made a layup after stealing a pass from Lewis. Less than a minute later, though, Lewis fired a three-quarter-court pass into the hands of racing freshman Carter Bryant, who made a layup just before his momentum took him past the basket.

Bryant made two other notably athletic plays in the first half, dunking off an alley-oop pass upon entering the game after five minutes and later leaping about eight feet to block a jumper from TCU’s Micah Robinson.

“He’s growing,” Lloyd said of Bryant. “I think he’s got enough game experience, so he did some great things today.”

While Bryant finished with seven points, Trey Townsend had eight and center Tobe Awaka had nine, complimenting Love’s outside production along with Veesaar’s 15 points.

Their combined efforts kept the Wildcats ahead throughout 40 mostly tense minutes, showing a resiliency they didn’t always have in the nonconference season and one they will almost certainly will need over the rest of the Big 12 season.

“We haven’t maybe handled some of these close games as good as we could have, and I think there’s a little more certainty now in what we want to do and how we want to play,” Lloyd said. “I thought the guys had great poise. We’ve talked a lot about that there aren’t going to be 20-0 runs, you’re not going to be up 30 at half.

“Those days are done, so we’ve got to get comfortable being in close games and fighting back.”