The good and the bad from Arizona's (lucky) win over Washington.

[talj1@juno.com]

The good.
Red mamba had a pretty good game.  Our defense held Stewart to under 10 points. Baker saved our bacon with some clutch and confident shooting at the end.

The bad.
Once again our Seniors tried to choke this game away, Dillon 1 for 3 free throw shooting missing the front end of a one and one.  Getting swatted on a week lay up attempt that was ill advised at best.  Very lucky he did not get called for a travel at mid court showing little awareness of time and score after Washington passed him the ball.  Should of just held it and passed it to a clutch free throw shooter.  Stone missing 0 for 2 free throws.  inexplicable traveling turnover.  If our other senior had played we would have lost for sure.  Max didn't make any late game mistakes but don't forget his layup attempt at the end of the half against the devils.
Washington did everything they could to loose this game in the last 2 minutes and we still almost lost even with Baker shooting out of his mind at end.
What is wrong with these guys?  Will they figure it out ever?

ya we won...I don't feel any better about our play on the road.

[talj1@juno.com]

Just to be clear I am pulling for our seniors.  We need them desperately to be more clutch.   Without them we are going no place good.

[TennesseeCat36]

I agree with the bad. This team has played enough close games on neutral and road courts so you would think it benefits them but last night was their first time winning a Road game and they nearly choked that away. It would be nice to have a comfortable double digit win on the road and it would also be nice to leave Nico in the damn game instead of subbing him out twice per half, he didn't even have any fouls into the 2nd half. I wonder if Australia is on the mind of Green since he's been struggling a lot lately and wasn't on the floor in crunch time last night. Dylan doing typical Dylan things when the game isn't in Tucson. He's not a good free throw shooter late and is sloppy with the ball so I would love to see Baker and Hazzard in there with Nico when it's late and the score is within a possession. Guarding the perimeter has to be a focus going forward. I said Washington would make 15 of 28 from 3 and they made 14 of 28 which is way too many. Overall I'm happy with the win and the fact they battled til the end but come on how about a good ol fashion domination from start to finish on the road

[arxpert]

Green is struggling to an extreme detriment and Miller had the courage to bench him yesterday which is why we ended up being able to come back as opposed to fade away like we did at Oregon State once they went up and didn't look back. I think Miller finally broke through and figured out what to do in those bad stretches when it comes to utilizing or not utilizing Green's strengths and weaknesses. I think Green will break out big time down the stretch. He is WAY too good to be this bad and when it happens he might end up having a Miles Simon type run for us. Hopefully it comes from Green and not Dylan although Dylan has made it clear to everyone he runs on hate and will continue to try as hard as possible to create plays and make shots (he is still just a role player overall who should slow his roll at times)

Eitherway its clear we can't run fundamental offense with Green on the court. He is 1 dimensional right now (slasher with good FT prowess). Opponents know he is not a threat to shoot the ball and over the last few games have all but dared him to shoot which pulls us so far away from our fundamentals that its impossible to play Miller's system. Once Green was yanked in favor of Gettings, we had so much better flow and passing throughout their Zone D and ended up with a massive amount of wide open mid range jumpers for Zeke and Stone, that at first they were missing (when we went down big), but kept at it and chipped away until that technical foul on McDaniels that sparked our competitiveness back. We withstood an insane 3pt barrage 14-28 by Washington who is not know to put up huge points. The best way to utilize Green is to get him screened looks from the elbow/FT line because he happens to shoot well from there so naturally that is good range for him. Not sure Miller can implement this for him in a short period of time, but he has already done this for Ayton, Ristic, and Zeke. So maybe there is some hope if Green will buy in to not being Showtime.

I am seriously impressed with this victory. It shows a lot about the heart of the team and Miller's ability to always keep this team in the game. (YES BY THE USE OF TIMEOUTS). That is what a coach is supposed to do. We have been on the losing end of close games for a while and it feels like shit, but it doesn't take away from the fact they are close games and closing out games comes from the players on the court. Drawing up plays only goes so far when the players don't execute them properly or the refs get involved (like Oregon with the inadvertant whistle and no calls on the fouls to Zeke).

The fact that Dylan keeps popping up at the end of games for FT's is literally happenstance. No one is targeting him. He is 75-80%. Last night he had the chance to pass off to Nico, but he also knew securing the ball and getting fouled posed 0 chance of a random turnover. So Im glad he trusts himself. We are who were are. The NCAA universe knows we have a huge ceiling. I can understand people being sour, salty, and frustrated when we lose a close game, but at some point I find it extremely rude, disingenuous, and overly entitled from a fanbase that has only witnessed 1 national championship and 4 final 4's total in the entire lifespan of the program.

The truest reason we act spoiled is because of the consistent success of winning the Pac12 conference, Pac12 tourney banners, and bringing in high level blue chip recruits. ALL THINGS MILLERS EXCELS IN THE MOST. We are a powerhouse of the West. We have overtaken UCLA. Gonzaga and Arizona are the flagship programs now. Gonzaga doesn't get the blue chips that we get and it took them 20 years of sustained consistency in a shitty conference to even get credit to be more than the token 6-12 type seed with 30 wins. Now they get respect to be 1-2 type seeds. So as a fanbase I implore everyone to really take a deep look at how unreasonable some of the criticism really is when you actually evaluate the hard facts

Tied 22nd overall in most Final 4s all time with: Kansas State, LSU, UNLV, Utah, Wisconsin ----> and when you put the name Arizona in that bunch you can literally feel and tell the difference as we are a Basketball powerhouse compared to those solid standard programs. Especially knowing that some of those teams only have it because of random Elite NBA All Stars
https://247sports.com/LongFormArticle/Who-has-most-Final-Four-appearances-ncca-tournament-March-Madness-college-basketball-130794907/

[2012Cat]

This team would be so much better without Dylan smith

[grantj22]

Dylan Smith is really important to this team and has hit some huge shots for the team this year and does a lot of things that do not show up on the stat sheet. I think at this point we are starting to see which players have the confidence to hit free throws at the end of the game lets remember this is almost an entirely new team and I bet Miller will start dictating more in practice who should have the ball in their hands at the end of close games. I think the sample size is getting big enough at this point to where we can see who is going to choke on those free throws. Unfortunately most of them appear to be older players.

[arxpert]

This team would be so much better without Dylan smith

A blanket statement if i've ever heard one

[Wildcat4life]

22nd in final fours and none of them earned by Miller. Thanks Lute for being such a great coach and having such a wonderful wife that was always supporting the players. One day the program will return to is prior success, hopefully soon.

[Jav]

We got a lot of good shots to start the second half and it felt like most of them missed.  It was the rebounds from the missed but excellent shots that caused fast breaks against us and made things difficult.

How do we go 11-13 from the line but miss all the big ones late?  We really needed a win, even if we didn't play any better in the last two minutes of the game than we have all year.  Maybe just getting the W will take a little pressure off the team.  There's no explanation for their end of game performance except them playing really tight.

[ichi]

We got a lot of good shots to start the second half and it felt like most of them missed.

this is true, add to it at the time the dogs were raining 3s - the difference was we didn't shut down mentally like we did in a few of our road losses

we fought back from that little rough stretch, same thing as what happened at Corvallis, but UDub isn't as good as the Ducks so we were able to hold on