Marching to Vegas: On Arizona and the Road
Posted by Adam Butler on December 23rd, 2014Adam Butler (@pachoopsab) of Pachoops will again be joining us all year, providing us with his weekly take on our favorite conference as we begin the March to Vegas.
One of the major factors of future success is margin of victory. It plays significantly into the predictive work of Dan Hanner as he algorithmically computes future outcomes and it also helps us lay people. Kentucky demolishes Kansas by 32 and we conclude, “Yup, those ‘Cats are good.” Pure science. So you can perhaps understand that it was becoming cause for concern as my beloved Wildcats (the Tucson genus, not Lexington) were beating the Manhattan genus of Wildcats by just four. And San Diego State by only a pair. Or what about at deficit to UC Irvine with as little as seven minutes remaining? Perhaps this is spoiled complaint, but as the Dukes and Kentuckys were demolishing the opposition – and elite competition at that – Arizona was being left behind in the conversation.
Arizona Appears To Be Starting To Click, But The Road Can Be Unkind. (Getty)
Now, we’re still in that glorious time of year where narrative and hype drives the conversation. Our sample sets are minimal at best by which to forecast the next three months. Teams are just now learning about themselves, freshmen have barely broken out their winter coats from under their bunks. But even Arizona’s best win evoked toughness from the Zags. The vaunted Arizona defense wasn’t what it was a season ago and Stanley Johnson was neither Aaron Gordon nor Nick Johnson. Perhaps this Arizona team wasn’t quite the dominant force we thought they’d be?
And I want to believe it’s starting to click. Prior to reverting to their butt-clinching ways in El Paso, Arizona’s previous three games have yielded their three highest offensive efficiencies and their three lowest defensive efficiencies as the Wildcats have won by 31, 27, and 37 points. Stanley Johnson – as noted by Mark Titus – is putting up 15 PPG, 7 RPG, and 2 APG against ranked and power conference teams. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson does things like guard Kevin Pangos and Caris LeVert who went a combined 5-of-19 with 9 turnovers against the long ‘Cat. And maybe we need to pay more attention to Kaleb Tarczewski? In my circles, he gets ripped on for which I cannot fathom. Expectations for the big guy must be off the charts but from where I’m sitting, I see one of – if not the most – effective big man in college basketball. He has offensive weaponry around him. What does Tarc do? He anchors the best rim protection in the nation. Arizona gives allows just 16.2% of shots to get to be taken at the rim. His block rate is miniscule but that’s irrelevant. He’s in the right place such that people don’t even go to the rim. I’m not even about to mention TJ McConnell or Brandon Ashley.
Yet the concerns may still ring valid. The Wildcats passed their first road test but it was with hardly a passing grade. They committed 17 turnovers and yielded 13 offensive rebounds (each the second highest single game totals of the season). In a road contest and a low possession game, those sorts of gifts aren’t going to help convince anyone of changed ways much less accumulate a significant margin of victory.
But road tests are exactly how I talked Andrew into anointing Utah last week’s Team of the Week; for beating BYU in Provo and giving Kansas everything they could handle somewhere not in Lawrence but also – as someone kindly noted to me on Twitter – not necessarily in Kansas (the arena is technically in Missouri, 2.7 miles from the Kansas border because I looked it up). It’s perhaps unquantifiable, you can’t quite use it to predict anything, but when the Wildcats are challenged, they respond. They went on the road and won. They took body blows from Gonzaga and won. This isn’t to present the woe is me case for Arizona, this team is really good. And they’re really just getting better.
Andrew Murawa Likes Basketball.
