Arizona Vs Purdue 🏀 Game Preview/Discussion Thread 12/16/23 At 230pm Peacock

[CatInFL]

I thought both teams played well.  It would be interesting to see them play again with good consistent officiating.  It was bad both ways and likely evened out in the end, but the a lot of the stuff that went against us, changed the flow and was largely (not completely)responsible for Purdue taking a big lead.  The goal tend should never have been called. I'm glad they looked at it and got it right, but in the moment it changed the momentum and direction of the game. There were ticky tack fouls called both ways and there were multiple hammer fouls, mostly committed by Purdue, that weren't called.  At one point, I found myself thinking, "No wonder Edey has never fouled out, you can't foul out if they don't call fouls on you." There were 5 FT's shot in the first half and 30 in the second half.  Did the teams play that much differently?

Maybe, as others have said, Tommy got out coached, but I was excited to see him change defensive schemes until he found one that worked.  His predecessor couldn't/wouldn't do that, he only had one arrow in his quiver, man to man.

I enjoyed seeing Edey get slowed down.  Ballo, Krivas and whoever doubled teamed him at the moment did a great job. 

I can't believe Purdue only made 10 3's. It seemed like they made 6-7 in a row at one point. 

We weren't going to win every game this year.  In fact, I wouldn't want to enter the championship game undefeated, I don't know how anybody could handle that pressure.  So at least that monkey is off our back. Losing to a team of Purdue's caliber in what was really a home game for them still sucks, but isn't as bad as some losses.

[arxpert]

Bill Self coached Kansas back @Indiana today from a disaster. Right when we hit the inflection point where we were enroute to pull ahead, Tommy went back to the exact plan that got us in the hole in the first place and it all fell apart. He had too much time to plan for this to be the brutal domination that it was.

#1 Kansas
#2 Purdue
#3 Houston
#4 UCONN
#5 Arizona

Purdue might be in Indiana, but Indiana is NOT Purdue.

And Tommy made Purdue look like the historical Hoosiers that couldn't be beat. The only success he had was with Boswell out of the game. Then he killed that.

[Blafresh]

Meh, I thought we played poorly. Might be the best half of basketball Purdue plays all year. We had so many defensive breakdowns and switch communication errors that it gave them open looks and they hit their shots. So many shots had long bounce right into Purdue arms but some were just lack of AZ boxing out. I thought we played a C+ or B- game while Purdue played a solid A. I'll take it. Rather lose now than when it really matters. Learns, grow, and move forward!

[Deb]

Purdid.

They had two guards who went off. We had two guards who were off.

I doubt many AZ fans had us escaping our non-con sched w/o a loss. Most prob thought it'd be to Duke tho. We have two more big games to get a W before we head to conf play. BearDown Cats!

[arxpert]

I think the biggest thing that set me off is not that I already called the game plan early in the week and Tommy didn't execute it, but throughout the game itself there were clips being shown of Tommy talking about Edey and fouls or how Purdue hasn't "seen Arizona yet" --- blah blah.

I think that cocky tone is GOOD (didn't see that coming did you?)

But I also think it is exactly why I say Tommy is very set in his ways. He doesn't always believe his coaching approach is Mortal when it is very, VERY, mortal. When he makes a plan he sticks to it. Just because we see him call for a Press here and there or switch to a 2-3 Zone doesn't mean that is an adjustment. "It is in his bag" as the kids say these days. It isn't like the prior 2 notable coaches in Arizona History. Miller had his way of playing. So did Lute.

I just think overall Tommy should have mixed up his principles when he saw that Purdue had normalized and adjusted to what we came out with. That was around the 13 minute mark of the 1st half. He could have tried what he did in the middle of the 2nd half and continued to keep Purdue thinking.

Just some notes that I think get Tommy into trouble when the chips are down. Every marquee loss he has (which are NOT many) have this same theme.

Again, the final score was not indicative of our thorough ass whoopin, but we did get within 4 and Tommy chose to go back to Boswell and the original plan thinking that it would persevere through to the finish line. It was an extreme miscalculation on his end.

I don't think anyone should have thought we would go undefeated, but I did say if we won this set of 4 ranked games that we would be able to lose a game or 2 in the Pac12 and still be the Overall #1. A loss like yesterday's is what will likely keep us out of that unless we plow through the Pac12.

We now must defeat Alabama and FAU.

Then I think we can maybe afford 1 more loss total on the season and still garner the reputation we all want to hold. 3 Losses is the vertical limit. The Pac12 is not going to get any respect this season so just like last year, we may end up playing for a 2 seed if we stumble again before Conference Play.

Tommy better recognize this and hammer Bama and FAU hard so we can put that to bed. No one Selecting will blame us for the Purdue loss if we can win these next 2.

That was a True Ending style 1 seed vs 1 seed matchup in the Final 4 or Final Game. UNLESS we make ourselves into a 2 seed where we would play that game in the Elite 8 (like we did vs Wisconsin) and then we have no one else to blame but ourselves.

ONWARD AND UP

Beardown.

[KansasCityCats]

If you predicted the game plan, you would have guessed the winner.

Ballo was in the right position on defense but couldn't stop Edey because nobody in college basketball can stop him. He consistently hit shots with a 7-footer in his face because his fundamentals are unreal.

Krivas actually did a good job of defending him in the paint but Krivas' lack of experience unfortunately led to being out of position on multiple occasions, which led to easy buckets for Purdue guards (or free throws).

Loyer isn't "that" open if we play them again. Edey likely won't hit every shot (including FT's) and I think a rematch would never include a double digit Boulermaker lead.

It's one loss on the road against the team that will likely be #1 tomorrow. No big deal. Learning experience. Next.

[arxpert]

If you predicted the game plan, you would have guessed the winner.

Ballo was in the right position on defense but couldn't stop Edey because nobody in college basketball can stop him. He consistently hit shots with a 7-footer in his face because his fundamentals are unreal.

Krivas actually did a good job of defending him in the paint but Krivas' lack of experience unfortunately led to being out of position on multiple occasions, which led to easy buckets for Purdue guards (or free throws).

Loyer isn't "that" open if we play them again. Edey likely won't hit every shot (including FT's) and I think a rematch would never include a double digit Boulermaker lead.

It's one loss on the road against the team that will likely be #1 tomorrow. No big deal. Learning experience. Next.

A few notes.

1) I don't pick Arizona to lose. My score prediction was correct in the sense that we were due for a clunker and we did clunk. Either way, Purdue shouldn't have scored over 90.

2) Ballo was one of the worst players on that court. I know you see it differently, but the absolute worst shot of the entire season was the Free Throw line 1 handed Push Shot. That has to be a 2% chance shot per analytics. He is not even a 40% FT shooter so a running 1 handed push shot? No shot bucko. That should have earned him a seat on the bench the rest of the way.

3) If you believe Ballo's Alley-Ooping was "amazing" then you basically are condemning this team to being 1 dimensional in the sense that Ballo was only capable of 1 thing and then the rest was Love chucking. Again, Ballo did nothing to even try to bull into Edey. It did not matter if Ballo got a charge call (for me at least). I wanted him to get 3 charge calls and maybe 1 defensive foul, but otherwise making Edey work 1 on 1 with NO Hedging from Guards/Forwards to double Edey. Worst gameplan of all time is to worry about double teaming Edey whether it was with Ballo of Krivas. The only success we had was when we made Edey have to take his shots 1 on 1 and outside of 3ft from the rim. Even close to 3ft away he missed I think 3 or 4 in a row on our 11-0 run.

4) Tommy abandoned Krivas. Ballo is 6'9". Proven by fact in being dwarfed by Edey. Krivas was not dwarfed. They were almost the same size in many ways. It didn't matter that Krivas couldn't stop his layups. It was a much better plan to play straight up 1 on 1 Krivas on Edey. Krivas didn't put Edey on the line. The other mistake was Tommy forcing the guards/F's to feed the ball into Krivas on offense and try to get Edey to move so as to get some fouls on him. That was foolish. The way to draw fouls is to have Pelle, KJ, Keshad, Love barrell into Edey with momentum. I omitted Boswell because similar to Kerr Krissa sadly he is paralyzed when entering the Arc. He just doesn't understand how to get to the rim and finish strong.

5) Tommy refused to respect what I said. Doesn't matter if I said it or if Jason Gardner said it. He refused to guard the perimeter even when Purdue was hot. Forget about "Loyer" who is actually their achilleas heel for the most part. He had a game. It was just a collective lazy approach and a bad gameplan to ever leave the perimeter. The way to beat Purdue is to force their guards to enter the paint and put them into chaos trying to feed Edey in a short/small area. Guess who did that? We did. We entered the arc and tried to bounce pass to Frying Pan Hand Ballo. Bounced off him every time and was a turnover.

Looks to me like Purdue read my gameplan or had other smart individuals who know basketball create the mock up of the game plan and made sure to counter it. That is my takeaway. Perhaps I shouldn't post the way to win. Har har har. Deal with it. Sometimes you have to acknowledge someone else was correct and had their finger on the pulse the whole way even if you don't like it.

Take it on the chin. Acknowledge Tommy is not Him and accept that he cannot lose again before Conference play. 2-0 from here on vs Bama and FAU then I would say we can lose only 1 game in Pac12 play and it has to be a road game. The Pac12 is by far the worst basketball conference in the land. We have to get our credibility in this OOC. After the thrashing, we have no true credibility at the moment. If you think "Jay Bilas" means something when he compliments us you are just living in the twilight zone.

Our body of work is erased. Duke is trash. Michigan St is trash too I don't care if they beat Baylor. Baylor isn't good.

Do better Tommy. You are not putting fear into any of the experienced, chemistry laden teams that can't be overpowered with 101 level bully ball down low.

[KansasCityCats]

Never did I mention Ballo on offense. I just referenced that he was in the right position defensively but there's no way to stop Edey because his fundamentals are outstanding (in addition to his height). Krivas was limited because he was continually out of position and gave up easy buckets.

Both teams like to run and both teams shot well. I believe that around halftime, we hit 57.7% from the field and 75% from deep while Purdue shot 0.1% better. The difference in the score was Purdue's 8 additional rebounds, which led to transition 3's. That's uncharacteristic of Arizona because rebounding has been our strength all year.

There's no reason to panic. Alabama will be a good test because they also run and shoot an absurd amount of 3's. If our perimeter defense adjusts, then our staff did their job.

[KansasCityCats]

and BTW, our frontcourt was surprisingly pretty efficient on offense:

All Arizona players 6'7"+ combined to shoot 20 for 31 (65%) from the field, including both 3-point attempts.

The remaining Arizona players shot 12 for 31 (38%) from the field and 4 for 14 from 3 (29%).


Purdue only had THREE players that hurt the Cats:

Smith, Loyer & Edey combined for 75 of the 92 points.

The other 8 Boilermakers only made up for 8 fouls, 4 turnovers, 2 blocks, 12 assists, 17 rebounds, 2 for 6 shooting from the FT line and 1 for 8 shooting from 3.


Stat lines don't appear to lean towards a big Purdue win.  The only stat that stands out is the difference in fouls called...and Purdue's SIX additional offensive rebounds:

FG%: Arizona (51.6%) / Purdue (53.8%)
3pt%: UA (37.5%) / PU (41.7%)
FT: UA 14/16 (87.5%) / PU 12/19 (63.2%)
Rebounds: UA (26) / PU (32) - Arizona outrebounded their opponent by 2 in the 2nd half.
Assists: UA (24) / PU (22)
Steals: UA ( / PU (10)
Blocks: UA (1) / PU (3)
Turnovers: UA (13) / PU (13)
Fouls: UA (19) / PU (14)

[KansasCityCats]

I'm assuming the #8 with () somehow turns into  ...