The Arizona women’s basketball team is coached by Adia Barnes, and the Arizona men’s basketball team is coached by Tommy Lloyd.
After a successful victory at the Maui Jim Maui Invitational last week, the Arizona men’s basketball team suffered their first loss of the season in their first Pac-12 game to the University of Utah 81-66.
The Wildcats had 11 turnovers in the first half and were outscored 42-25 during the first 20 minutes of the game. Arizona prides themselves on controlling the pace but taking care of the ball is still an important priority.
Arizona’s three main shooters, Kerr Kriisa, Pelle Larsson and Courtney Ramey, combined to shoot the ball 5-27 from the field.As a team, they were 25-71 (35%) from the field, 4-28 (14%) from deep and 12-18 (67%) from the free throw line.
Although Arizona lost by 15 points, their front court was still dominant. Oumar Ballo led the Wildcats in scoring with 22 points with seven rebounds while shooting 10-12 from the field. Azuolas Tubelis also added 20 points and six rebounds.
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This loss is unfortunate because they recently moved up 10 spots in the current AP Poll to No.4 in the country. They just couldn’t get it going on the offensive end of the floor all night. If this Wildcat team fails to shoot the ball well and limit their turnovers it will be hard to beat good teams.
Arizona’s bench has been a problem throughout the first seven games of the season. In this game, only two players to come off of the bench scored a total of seven points.
The Wildcats now move to 0-1 in Pac-12 play but have a meeting with the University of California Berkeley this Sunday in McKale Center. The Golden Bears are currently the worst team in the Pac-12 this season, where they have an 0-8 record.
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