Anderson’s perfect night
Arizona men’s basketball’s Ryan Anderson went a perfect 7-7 from the field at Stanford Thursday night, not that the forward was paying attention.
After the game, Anderson was asked about his perfect shooting night, but quickly deflected attention toward his defensive performance.
“I didn’t miss a shot?” Anderson responded, before smiling.
“I knew I was playing well, but when you’re in the heat of the moment, you don’t really notice stats and stuff like that,” Anderson said. “All I knew is we were trying to shut Roscoe [Allen] down, and we knew if we made him have a tough night, we’d have a good chance of winning.”
Allen headed into the game off a 22-point performance against Cal last week.
On Thursday, Allen scored just four points on 1-12 shooting from the field.
“We thought Ryan did a really good job against a matchup player,” Arizona head coach Sean Miller said. “I believe Rosco Allen is one of the premier players in the Pac-12 — he’s a big reason why Stanford has had this successful run — and I thought our team did a good job of defending them. Ryan was a big part of that.”
STANFORD, CALIF —
Defensive lockdown key to second half
With 14:17 remaining in the game, Stanford held a 40-39 lead over the Wildcats after a pair of Grant Verhoeven 3-point plays.
The two scores by Verhoeven, a reserve forward who entered the game averaging 1.1 points, must have sent a wave of urgency through the Arizona bench.
Arizona’s defense would hold Stanford without a field goal for the next eight and a half minutes, a stretch in which the Wildcats went from down one up to 12.
The defensive stronghold resembled some of Arizona’s best defensive play over the past seasons.
The Wildcats buckled down on the perimeter, closed scoring drives and prevented Stanford from working its go-to blueprint: getting to the charity stripe.
“I thought our defense was really constant from start to finish,” Miller said. “It might have been our best overall defensive performance.”
California shakes off ASU
Across the Bay, California edged out ASU 75-70.
Playing without point guard Tyrone Wallace, the Golden Bears needed freshmen Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb to step up.
Ivan Rabb delivered with 20 points while Brown added another 17.
Cal as a team shot nearly 55 percent from the field including 7-15 from behind the arc, all while limiting ASU to 38 percent shooting.
Tip-off for Arizona’s matchup at Cal Saturday is slated for 6:30 p.m. Tucson time.
