Arizona MBB falls to UCLA by 16 points after a poor shooting performance

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Ryan Wohl

The Arizona Wildcats mens basketball team faced off against the UCLA Bruins on Tuesday night January 25, in Los Angeles, California.

Ryan Wohl

The UCLA Bruins defeated the Arizona men’s basketball team by a score of 75-59 on Jan. 25.

This extends the Wildcats losing streak against the Bruins to six games dating back to the 2018 season.Throughout the first five to eight minutes of the game, it was within one point, but Arizona couldn’t keep up the hot streak.

There wasn’t a ton of positive things from the Wildcats in this game. They turned the ball over 12 times and four of those were from Kerr Kriisa. Kriisa struggled the entire night on the offensive end of the floor. He finished the game with 0 points on 0-12 shooting and 0-9 from three-point land.

Bennedict Mathurin shot a poor 5-22 from the field but still managed to score 16 points along with ten rebounds and two steals.

Arizona as a team shot the ball 31% (23-75) and 25% (7-28) from the three-point range.

The Bruins were terrific from deep, where they ended the contest 47 (8-17) percent. UCLA also scored 15 points off of Arizona’s 14 turnovers on the night. All four out of the five Bruins starters finished the game in double figures.

“Kerr is a tough kid, and you know he didn’t play well today and you know when you’re a good aggressive player, your going to have nights like that,” Lloyd said. “He wasn’t the only one so we definitely aren’t going to pin anything on him and and he’s our guy and I know going forward, he’s gonna deliver I’m confident in that.

After the game, head coach Tommy Lloyd said the decision to start Pelle Larrson over Azuolas Tubelis was because Tubelis didn’t practice the previous two days and he wanted to ease him back into competition.

“You play in a tough conference, and you play a great team like UCLA at their place, you know  you’re gonna have some tough nights,” Lloyd said. “The key is how do you respond to that, you know listen losing has never bothered me, I mean it’s part of the process.

Arizona returns home after a three-game road trip in California to face off against their in-state rival: ASU. The Sun Devils come to town on Saturday afternoon for a 12:30 p.m. tipoff.


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