• Naked legs—UA senior Nic Wise played against Lipscomb without wearing any calf socks. Last season he wore the compression sleeves on both of his legs to keep pain in his knees down. This season he has been wearing a calf sock on just one leg, until Monday, when he didn’t wear any.
“”I lost them,”” Wise said when asked why he went bare-legged before revealing he was joking. “”My knee hasn’t been bothering me as much as earlier in the season.””
• Solid tree—Redshirt sophomore Alex Jacobson, whose nickname is Tree, put to good use his 14 minutes Monday. The 6-foot-11 center scored 6 points on 3-for-3 shooting. He scored two 15-foot jumpers and a layup midway into the second half to keep Arizona close when it trailed Lipscomb. Coming into this game, Tree had scored only 7 points all season.
“”He gave us some great minutes and had three field goals, and we needed every one of them,”” said UA head coach Sean Miller.
• Shaky free throws—Freshman Derrick Williams struggled at the charity stripe again, making just 7 of 14 free throws. He is now 48-for-77 this season. Wise, however, made all 12 of his shots. He leads the Pacific 10 Conference with 48 of 50 made free throws this season.
“”Nic Wise, he’s a real weapon late in the game because of his free throw shooting,”” Miller said.
• That’s not how you say it—I stumbled a couple of times when typing Lipscomb’s mascot, the Bisons. A few times I wrote Bisons; A few times I wrote Bison. The school uses Bisons, although the plural, according to English grammar, is Bison, like sheep. Apparently Lipscomb doesn’t use the same English grammar.
• Miles is coming back—The MVP of Arizona’s 1997 national championship team, Miles Simon, will be back in McKale Center on Wednesday, when the Wildcats take on North Carolina State. Simon, who coached for Arizona under Lute Olson, is now a television analyst for Fox Sports Net.
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