An afternoon that should’ve just ended with a loss to Washington ended with a much more crushing blow. Arizona lost to Washington 69-67 in Tucson Saturday night but the big loss came after the game when the school announced that junior guard/forward Kevin Parrom broke a bone in his foot and would be sidelined for the rest of the season.

Parrom, who was coming on strong as of late with the previous games against Colorado and Utah, was shot in his right leg during the preseason in September while making a trip home to New York to visit his ailing mother. A redshirt seemed to be the only solution so he would be healthy for the following season but Parrom was adamant about rehabbing and coming back this year.

There were times out on the court when Parrom was still feeling the affects of the gunshot wound but started to find his footing as the season progressed. After news broke that he would be out for the year, Arizona head coach Sean Miller reflected on what Parrom means to the team.  

"We missed him, no question about it," Miller said Saturday, before UA announced the full extent of the injury.

"It's a shame because Kevin right now is (effectively) a starter. He is. He would have probably been a starter from the first day of the season until now, but on the Colorado-Utah swing was probably the first time we saw him running and playing and confident. He almost had his full strength back.

He played an excellent half against Washington today. Not having him available for the second half was kind of the same look we've had prior to him coming back and our margin for error is razor-thin without him, that's for sure."

When the news was dealt to the junior guard that he would miss the remainder of the season, Arizona head coach Sean Miller summed it all up by saying this. "Life's not fair sometimes," Miller said. "You want to win every game and that's the job that I have. But from (Parrom's) perspective it would be nice if he could just catch a break."

Parrom will be missed defensively and as a team leader for Arizona
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Now the Wildcats will be without one of their defensive stoppers for the remainder of the season. This is a team that already is lacking interior depth with no true center and now that the Wildcats have lost Parrom, other players will have to step up for Miller and his young group of Wildcats.

Freshman star guard Nick Johnson has been struggling of late for Arizona and had another difficult shooting night for the Wildcats. Johnson scored two points and only took four attempts in 27 minutes of playing time against the Huskies, a team that had been underachieving at the beginning of the year but now finds themselves atop the Pac-12 standings with the California Golden Bears.

Despite the loss, the Wildcats could still win the Pac-12 regular-season conference title. In a watered-down conference, Arizona finds themselves with two crucial road games coming up as they visit the Bay Area this week to take on Cal and Stanford, two teams that are also very capable of not only winning the conference but making a run into the NCAA tournament in a month-and-a-half.

Losing Parrom hurts Arizona, from a defensive standpoint, a team chemistry standpoint and an emotional standpoint because not only was Parrom a great weapon for this team but he was turning into a solid leader for Arizona. If the Wildcats want a chance at winning the Pac-12, Coach Miller may have to start using his backup centers Alex Jacobson and Kyryl Natyazhko.

If anything, Jacobson and Natyazhko can eat up space in the middle and grab rebounds, an area that the Wildcats have been lacking all season. Both Natyazhko and Jacobson stand at 7'0" and if Miller were to insert them into the rotation they would definitely help on some level because Jesse Perry is only 6’7" and is more of a swingman-type player than an interior post player.

I’m not taking anything away from Perry, because he does rebound and play at an extremely high level, but there has to be something that changes in order for Arizona to have a chance at winning the Pac-12.