Arizona Shows It's a Bona Fide Title Contender with Gritty Road Win over Utah

It is hard to imagine any universe in which Bill Walton and Joe Lunardi are on the same wavelength, but they were recently about Arizona.

The Wildcats were on ESPN at Colorado when the 6’11’’ walking non sequitur made a direct point with which ESPN’s punctual tournament data cruncher wholly agreed. It came during Thursday’s action cutaway.

The Wildcats didn’t really do much in their nonconference schedule, Walton said, to warrant being considered for a No. 1 seed.

Did that teepee of his pick up Saturday night’s ugly yet resilient 63-57 rebuttal in Salt Lake City? It wasn’t nonconference, but it was big time.

Lousy offense. Miserable from inside three feet. Benching a starter in the latter stages because he couldn’t pay attention. And Arizona actually did something special to dispel its doubters, winning at Utah in a raucous environment.

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“There’s something to be said for going on the road and winning,” Arizona coach Sean Miller told ESPN’s Holly Rowe shortly after the final horn.

Arizona improved to 26-3 and clinched no worse than a share of the Pac-12 regular-season title. That's mighty impressive and seemingly worthy of some top-seed talk. But it hasn't really been that way, and not just by America's best basketball friends, Bill and Joe.

UA won the Maui Invitational right before Thanksgiving by defeating a bad team (Missouri), a bubble team (Kansas State) and a solid-but-unspectacular San Diego State team.

It needed overtime at home to oust Gonzaga. Needing that much work to beat a non-major is never going to get any credit, even if that team is 29-2.

Miller’s team didn’t exactly catch bad breaks in non-league road games. It just caught unimpressive teams: UTEP and UNLV, and yet it lost to the latter two days before Christmas.

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Arizona has turned into a team a lot of the country has pushed aside. It hasn’t been to a Final Four since 2001. Miller has been to a couple of Elite Eights in his first five years, but that Bill Self-ian level of “so close” can only woo people so much.

Arizona is just a little different on the eyes this year because its defense is more valuable than its offense, by any metric or eye test.

By KenPom’s measure, it’s the No. 1 team in the country in offensive rebound percentage. Teams that chuck-and-chase don’t tend to get a lot of love.

Arizona can muddy the game and likes it that way—and those are Miller’s Pittsburgh scrappy roots coming into play in the desert. Its most flash and swagger comes when Rondae Hollis-Jefferson steps to the foul line and does that smooth shimmy.

Basically, there wasn’t much reason to believe in the Pac-12’s best team. And then came a trip to Salt Lake City. Unless you’re skiing or trying to stalk Ty Burrell, it’s the last place most would think of looking. But it was a big-time atmosphere that UA handled with just enough gusto to prove itself a viable March contender.

It forced the Utes to miss 13 of their first 16 shots.

So much for the students who were camped out for three days, after being continually praised by their beloved head coach.

Don’t chuckle, America. Utah’s home court is rocking like it did in the Rick Majerus days. Wichita State lost a 35-game regular-season winning streak there in December.

It’s a really good Utes program which has everything—stud point guard, really nice inside presence, one of the best coaches in America in Larry Krystkowiak—to make a deep NCAA run of its own.

And Arizona was just a little better, even during a miserable start to the second half against a team that was 16-0 at home.

Miller’s group found some resolve. It found little ways that will go a long way.

Kaleb Tarczewski is amid the best hoops stretch of his college career. He averages nine points a game but has averaged nearly 13 in the past five, making 23 of his 32 shots. He is jump-shooting, posting up, defending and generally being a veteran menace that winners have—and require.

Gabe York (all 6’3’’ of him) has made 80 percent of his free throws, but he had the instinct to go after his late miss and turn it into an unconventional three-point play with 1:39 left to give Arizona the lead. 

Miller benched ultra-talented freshman Stanley Johnson, who lost focus on defense in the closing minutes.

The group can go back to Tucson knowing it wasn't clicking, it wasn't making point-blank shots—and yet it still beat a high-caliber team.

The Wildcats are further along than they were in November, December and their legion of critics would give them credit for.

Johnson has to catch up. He seemed to be lost in the fog of a 3-of-19 shooting night. 

He’ll get his head on. He’ll have to. It looks like there’s a lot of season left.