KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After Jaden Bradley hit a buzzer-beater and Arizona beat Iowa State in one of the most epic games of the college basketball season Friday night, Arizona returned to the Hotel Phillips in downtown Kansas City and found the hotel staff had left a message on the whiteboard in the team’s meeting room.
“Congratulations, Wildcats!”
Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd walked up to the board after dinner, grabbed the eraser and cleared it, then picked up the marker and wrote his own message: “Now.”
Then, it was story time.
Five years ago, Lloyd was on staff at Gonzaga when Jalen Suggs hit a half-court buzzer-beater to take down UCLA in the Final Four. Two nights later, the same energy didn’t carry over in the championship game against Baylor, and Gonzaga lost its first and only game all season.
Arizona, on a high like no other, had a point to prove. Could it turn the page?
Lloyd got his answer in the Wildcats’ 79-74 win over No. 5 Houston in Saturday’s Big 12 championship game. Arizona (32-2) flipped the script from a year ago, when Houston (28-6) won the Big 12 regular season and tournament, the latter coming at Arizona’s expense. This year, the second-ranked Wildcats won both and will be a No. 1 seed when the NCAA Tournament bracket is unveiled Sunday.
The Cougars, who were one shot away from winning a national championship last April, deserve an assist for the juggernaut Lloyd built this year.
Last season, Arizona led Houston by 7 points in Tucson in mid-February and had a 1-point lead in the Big 12 championship with 5 1/2 minutes left. And then …
“They kicked our ass in the last five minutes of both games,” Lloyd said. “So, we knew we had to get more endurance and sustain our effort and energy longer and be able to win these tight games.”
Last spring, Lloyd landed five-star recruits Brayden Burries and Koa Peat. In July, he signed Ivan Kharchenkov, one of the top international prospects in the class, to join a core that included seniors Anthony Dell’Orso, Tobe Awaka and Bradley. Last year’s Wildcats were built around star Caleb Love, who had a high usage rate and was always going to have the ball down the stretch of close games. This team would be built on its depth.
Sometimes, too much talent can be its own challenge. Lloyd figured out how that would go when he approached Dell’Orso and Awaka, both starters last year, before the season opener against Florida and asked if they’d be OK coming off the bench.
“I had a decision,” Dell’Orso said. “Either I’m gonna accept it, or I’m not gonna accept and (it’ll) probably be the detriment of my own career. So, I chose the smart path.”
Awaka is nearly averaging a double-double — 9.7 points and 9.6 rebounds — and points out he’s putting up the best numbers of his career. Dell’Orso has also increased his scoring average — from 7.2 to 9.1 PPG — and has carried the offense in some big games lately, as he did Friday night when he buried six huge 3s and led the Cats with 26 points. The five starters all average double figures, but no one has a high usage rate.
“It’s not built around one guy,” Lloyd said. “It’s built around a group.”
That formula has turned Arizona into the most consistent team in college basketball. Evan Miyakawa, who runs the basketball site evanmiya.com, tracks “kill shots,” which are any run of 10-0 or better. Going into Saturday night, the Wildcats had allowed only one kill shot all season, the fewest in college basketball, and that came in mop-up duty in a blowout win over Norfolk State in November.
Saturday, Arizona was in control and led by 15 in the second half after Motiejus Krivas made a hook shot with 14:04 left. Over the next 7 minutes, 24 seconds, Arizona went cold and Houston went on a 14-0 run to cut the lead to 1. Bradley, who won Big 12 Player of the Year and ended up winning Big 12 tournament MVP, injured his wrist early in the second half. He had returned, but he was struggling and had zero points, zero assists and three turnovers after halftime.
Instead of freaking out, Lloyd, one of the most stoic coaches in college basketball, told his players to “just take a breath.”
The Wildcats always have enough.
“He’s one of the most emotionally intelligent coaches I’ve been around,” Awaka said. “The way that he has built his culture is around love — love of the game and love of each other.”
The response? Arizona scored on six of its next seven possessions and outscored Houston 17-14 over the final six minutes.
As Bradley stood at the podium to be interviewed for winning tourney MVP, he said that no one on Arizona’s team cares about the accolades or who scores the most points.
“Celebrate your teammates’ success,” Lloyd tells them, “as much or more than your own.”
That has allowed the Wildcats not to get in their feelings when someone has an off night, and the maturity showed against Houston. Burries, who scored 3 points on 0-of-7 shooting in Friday’s classic, was the one to finally end Houston’s second-half run with a wrong-footed, and-1 runner, and he finished with 21 points on just 10 shots. Peat, who also struggled Friday and had just 4 points against Iowa State, also responded with 21 points in the championship game.
“And yesterday they did nothing,” Lloyd said of his five-star freshmen. “That’s the sign of a good team.”
That team, Lloyd was told before he headed into the winning locker room, has the highest floor of anyone in college basketball. The Wildcats haven’t really had a bad night. Even when they lost two games in the second week of February, both were close — at Kansas, 82-78, and in overtime against Texas Tech, 78-75 — and those losses followed a 23-0 start.
The Wildcats have won nine straight since. Saturday, they became the first team ever to beat 12 ranked opponents before the NCAA Tournament. They have a top-five offense and a top-five defense. Then, of course, they are the team that is best at preventing kill shots in college hoops.
As Lloyd walked away, he held his left hand out at his side, palm down.
“Steady,” he said. “Rebounding and defense does that.”
Now, on to the next thing.