From there, it was a back-and-forth game, but the Wildcats remained in the lead.<\/p>\n
By the time the first quarter ended, the Wildcats were up 22-7.<\/p>\n
Arizona maintained its lead well through the second quarter, starting with a successful free throw from Nagle, taking the Wildcats to 23-7.<\/p>\n
After a couple of points from Arizona\u2019s Louie and SMSU\u2019s Fuentes, the score shot up to 27-13, with the Wildcats still in the lead.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Arizona’s Carlos Reynoso (17) shoots the ball over SMSU’s Robert Lew (32) in the NIWBT at McKale Center, April 2, 2026.<\/p>\n
Grace Trejo, Arizona Daily Star<\/p>\n
Reynoso and Fuentes both scored off the glass, bringing the score to 29-15 with 3:30 left of the quarter.<\/p>\n
Just before the end of the first half, Zander hit the first three-pointer of the game, giving the Wildcats a 34-19 lead heading into halftime.<\/p>\n
Things began to fall apart for the Wildcats in the second half.<\/p>\n
They began the third quarter with two fouls and a turnover, prompting head coach Mike Beardsley to call a timeout.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, Arizona had a difficult time bouncing back from its rough start as SMSU went on a 15-4 run against the Wildcats in the third\u2019s first several minutes.<\/p>\n
With only 2:40 left on the clock for the third quarter, the Mustangs took the lead for the first time in the game, with a score of 39-38.<\/p>\n
Arizona briefly took back the lead after Thornton scored two points, bringing the score to 40-38.<\/p>\n
That lead was short-lived as the Wildcats missed two essential layups in the last few minutes of the game and SMSU\u2019s Fuentes continued to add on to the Mustangs\u2019 total, ending the third quarter with a lead of 45-40.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From there, it was a back-and-forth game, but the Wildcats remained in the lead. By the time the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582019,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[634,1414,64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-582018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-american-football","tag-arizona-wildcats","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582018\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}