Arizona needed a win. It didn’t matter what team it was against or what the score was, the Wildcats simply needed to avoid losing more games. Thursday night as Cal was on the other bench UA had its best chance at its first victory in its last eight tries.
The Wildcats’ seven-game losing streak came to an end Thursday night as the team knocked off Cal. 76-51, in a game Arizona needed to end with a victory. It eventually was over a month in between UA wins and a lot happened in that time.
The Wildcats had to learn to play without big man Chase Jeter for a couple games. It didn’t go well. Then the team had to live life without standout freshman guard Brandon Williams who has now missed six games. That didn’t go well either.
There was no hiding from the task at hand for UA over the last month. If the Wildcats wanted to get back on the winning track the answers would come from within. Sean Miller and his players have had a spark of confidence lately and the UA head coach was optimistic earlier in the week that his team was getting close to winning again.
Thursday night UA (15-12, 6-8 Pac-12) looked closer to the team that started out the conference season with a handful of wins. For the Wildcats the focus has been on improving what it could on its end and worrying less about what team was on the other end of the floor. That continued Thursday night and while playing Cal certainly didn’t hurt it was not what the Wildcats were most zeroed in on.
“It really wasn’t about who we were playing, we needed a win,” Miller said after Thursday night’s victory. “We needed to play well. I think, like I told the guys at the end, this game reminded me a lot of Utah and Colorado where we had some really good moments on offense and some really good moments on defense. There were stretches of the game where you really felt good about what we looked like.
“Bu there were also a lot of stretches and things that happened where we didn’t play well, and that’s where it gets into who you’re playing or where the game is at. Our quest is to continue to grow and learn, recognize the things we’re doing well and improve the things that we aren’t.”
One of the things that is going well right now for Arizona is the play of graduate transfer forward Ryan Luther who has made a turn in his production for the Wildcats over the last several games. He led the team with 19 points Thursday night with 15 of those points coming by way of 3-pointers.
His confidence and aggressiveness on offense have turned up a notch recently and his night was highlighted by a big dunk showing a different type of intensity and purpose for the sometimes mild-mannered senior from Pittsburgh.
“Not much,” Luther said about what has changed in his game as of late. “My teammates and my coaches do a good job of putting me in the right spots. I’m shooting it with confidence and playing with confidence and playing with each other. ... Playing off them it’s a product of that.”
Miller recently had a heart-to-heart with Luther letting the versatile forward know that his passiveness on the offensive end was having a negative impact on the team – a team that badly needed more scoring. Since that time Luther has been more aggressive on the offensive end of the floor and his production has gone up.
He has scored in double digits in each of the last four games and is averaging 15.3 points in that span. It is that kind of production Miller knows one of his team’s best shooters is capable of and why he urged Luther to continue taking more shots.
“I think we had our epiphany moment with Ryan against Washington,” Miller said Thursday night after UA’s win. “He’s unselfish to a fault, he’s such a great kid. Off the court that’s awesome, but on the court his greatest weapon is his ability to shoot it on a team that doesn’t shoot well. So when he gives up open threes and makes a one-more pass to a player that has a worse percentage than him it’s actually really selfish if you think about it.
“I think once it was framed to him like that and you started to go through the numbers and really talk about the responsibility he has is to take every open shot he can get. If he goes 0 for 10 those are 10 really good shots for Arizona. As often times is the case, when you’re confident you can do it well you start to see what happens. We need more players on our team to shoot the ball like him, simply put.”
As Arizona moves forward the task Miller knows comes next is his team’s ability to follow up Thursday night’s win with another one when it takes on Stanford this Sunday. UA was happy with the victory over Cal, but getting a win over the worst team in the conference isn’t something the team is content to celebrate at this point.
“I thought we might actually play better than we did, because we have practiced so well,” Miller said. “I think that’s what we can control and leading into Stanford that’s not gonna change. You can’t make excuses, can’t go back in time. You have to have a couple great days, great shoot around and at six o’clock on Sunday take advantage of our great crowd and see if we can play a better game against Stanford than we did tonight
“I think that’s what we’ll need to beat them.”
