The Arizona Wildcats are the #1 ranked team in the nation as voted on by the Associated Press. This marks the second time in the Tommy Lloyd era that the Cats held that distinction.1 Arizona will get another test this week in Alabama.2 Let’s take a look at some of the lesser discussed items from their three-game homestand.
Arizona 97 Auburn 68
In the biggest non-conference home matchup of the season, Arizona left little doubt, dismantling Auburn with an 18-2 start to the second half, building on a 12-point halftime lead.
Seven minutes in, the Wildcats trailed by two and made a key adjustment. Betting that the Tigers big men would not be very effective in the short roll, the Cats went to a blitzing ball screen coverage, leading to three straight turnovers in the first half. Here is Tobe Awaka hot on those traps:
The Wildcats were as aggressive on the perimeter as they have been all season, including drawing two moving screens in this game as the Auburn offense struggled to get anything going with the exception of Tahaad Pettiford isos.3
An extra shout-out to Ivan Kharchenkov, who maybe doesn’t get the same recognition as the other two more highly touted freshmen, but who I think is doing the best job defensively so far. He is quick enough to cover wings but strong enough that he can’t be taken advantage of in the post.
Plus, he’s switch denying and then diving on the floor to secure a loose ball with two and a half minutes left and a 25-point lead. You just gotta love it.
If that’s not enough for you, here’s two absolute dimes he dished out in the second half.4 Quickly becoming one of my favorite players for this team.
Koa Peat also had another great offensive game, shooting 8-11 from the floor and tallying 5 assists. I want to highlight a screen assist of his. Tommy Lloyd teams have been adept at the “Gortat screen”, named after former NBA center Marcin Gortat, in which the screener sets a screen on their own defender to prevent that defender from helping on the ball-handler.5 Tobe Awaka is already a master at this6 but the last clip here is Peat’s from Saturday night.
And finally from this game, a really composed take from Motiejus Krivas. Here he slips into a short roll, fakes the swing on the catch, and methodically walks his defender down to a 3-foot half hook. This is a nice evolution for Krivas, who does the majority of his work on the (mostly right) block.
Challenge!
Get used to me highlighting Coach Lloyd’s use of challenges this season, the first where they are allowed in college basketball. He is now 2-0 on the season, after getting another out-of-bounds call overturned near the end of the second half.
Here is what he had to say when asked in his postgame news conference:7
On using the coach’s challenge: “Things happen so fast in the game, I think everyone’s trying to figure out how to utilize it. For me, there has to be certainty, and it has to be probably a certain part of the game. I’m probably not going to do it early in the game. Timeouts are too valuable.
It’s like a good formula, you can’t do it every game, but if you can have a couple timeouts in your back pocket under the four minute media. That’s usually, to me, kind of the sweet spot. If you could save that third time out long enough, then you feel pretty good.
It was the perfect time to challenge. I didn’t even kind of see the play. I was kind of blocked a little bit, but the guys behind the bench were adamant that we should do it. It was like five minutes to go in the game. So I felt like it’s a perfect time to give your team an extra rest. You call the time out no matter what happens, you get a full time out, you rest, and then you have another time out after the media rest. So to me that’s kind of the sweet spot. So yeah, it worked out in our favor tonight.”
On not using the challenge more often: “The number one thing I focus on is just winning the game. To win the game, sometimes you got to lose a possession. I’m not afraid to do that early in the game, because I think there’s enough game to make up for it.
So, it’s judicious and smart to probably keep that challenge in your back pocket down the stretch of the game, because even under two minutes, you still have to challenge an out of bounds call. You don’t have to challenge a goaltending or a block charge with the charge circle. We’re all learning the intricacies of it, but it worked today.”
As Coach Lloyd points out, in addition to out-of-bounds, coaches can challenge goaltending or foul calls pertaining to the restricted arc until the last two minutes of the game, where those calls become official reviews. Out-of-bounds are never official reviews, removing the “free time-outs” that plagued college basketball for the last few years.
An aside: The NCAA decided not to allow other fouls to be challenged8, claiming to not want to review judgement calls. I find this to be a poor decision.
One case that everyone should brace themselves for is the “foul proximate to the out-of-bounds violation”. The NBA added this last year (2024-2025) to cover the case where a referee looked off a foul and gave the out-of-bounds call to the offended team.
In college, as it was previously in the NBA, if this call is challenged, the out-of-bounds call would go against the team that touched it last, even if there was clearly a foul that caused that to happen. You might think this happens rarely, but it is more common than you think.
Back to Coach Lloyd’s statements: I think this is a reasonable strategy and mirrors what a member of another high major team’s coaching staff told me.
However, “If you could save that third time out long enough, then you feel pretty good.” refers to the three timeouts that teams are allowed to carry over into the second half. Between that and the rest of his quotes above, you get the impression that a first half challenge is not really on the table.
In NCAA basketball, teams have one use-it-or-lose-it timeout, that is forfeited if not used in the first half. Among the many differences in college/pro timeouts, NBA teams face forfeiting timeouts at the end of the 3rd quarter (can only carry 4 of the original 7 to the forth quarter) and at the 4Q 3:00 mark9 (can only carry 2 timeouts beyond there).
Someone I spoke to with knowledge of NBA coaching strategy told me that staffs are absolutely aware that these inflection points are ripe for challenges and you will see many that occur in the area between 4Q 6:00 and 4Q 3:00 if the team has a timeout to burn.
That inflection point being at the end of the first half in college does make for a tougher decision but if a team has not used a timeout yet, my intuition is that a challenge in the last five or so minutes of the first half might have a lot of value.
If the call is overturned, the team gets a second challenge to use later in the game. If the call stands, the team loses a timeout it was about to lose anyway. Yes it means that team would be without a challenge for the rest of the game, but with the limited list of challengeable calls, it is likely that teams may not need it anyway. After all, Arizona has now challenged two calls in ten games if you count the exhibitions.
I’m not advocating for shooting your challenge into the sun in the first half just for the fun of it, but if there is a call that a staff thinks it has a decent chance of flipping, I think they should go for it.
A Few More Items For Fun
I’m working on the ability to do breakdown videos to complement the articles. Here’s my first crack at it, looking at a play against Denver [sound on].
I intend to do a more thorough analysis of Arizona’ baseline out-of-bounds plays but one thing I noticed recently was more attempts to inbound directly to Koa Peat, with actions off of him. There were two against Denver that came after timeout (ATO). Neither were successful, but I liked the ideas of both.
Denver tried to run the same horns misdirection that Arizona ran at the end of games versus UCLA and UCONN and Arizona snuffed it out real quick.
Norfolk State came out defensively in what I guess would be best described as a line-and-three defense. I have seen many a triangle-and-two, box-and-one, diamond-and-one, but I think this is a first for me.
Arizona converted 5 of 6 and-one opportunities in the first half versus Norfolk State.
Finally, the end of the half is an interesting opportunity in college basketball. In the first clip, Arizona does a good job working the clock down to get the last shot. But because the clock runs on made baskets in the first half in college, there are other ways to try to ensure the last possession.
In the second clip, watch Ivan Kharchenkov and Evan Nelson waste 8 seconds of game clock to essentially turn off the shot clock. This is cutely called “walking the dog”, as you see point guards walking beside a rolling ball.
Think of it as the opposite of rolling a ball on an inbounds late in the game when you don’t want the clock to start. The five-second count ends when the ball leaves Kharchenkov’s hand but the shot clock doesn’t start until the ball is in Nelson’s.
The same opportunity was missed in the Auburn game. In that case, the possession actually changed hands two more times, but something to keep in mind going forward.
Next up: Neutral* vs Alabama on Saturday December 13th, 7:30PM MST.
Two weeks: December 4 and 11, 2023
Technically, a neutral site game in Birmingham, rather than on campus in Tuscaloosa.
Auburn finished with only 7 assists in this game. Arizona had 23.
Kharchenkov finished with 8 assists on the night.
Gortat became famous for screening his own man on the roll against drop coverage, allowing the guard to snake back to open space.
He was called for an illegal screen late in the Auburn game on a call that was, um, questionable.
Credit Juan Serrano, Arizona Desert Swarm for transcription. Video here.
A mea culpa: In my previous article, I got very excited about a potential leg kick challenge, which alas is not challengeable in the college game.
Technically the lower of the 4Q 3:00 and the second mandatory timeout of the 4Q.