It was lining up as a get right game long before tipoff when Arizona (4-4) dropped three of it's last four including losing two straight games in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament.
That is exactly what it was as the Wildcats came back from their longest road trip of the season and returned home to welcome Southern Utah (8-3) to McKale in which it was a 102-66 Arizona victory.
The key to this contest was the shear mismatch when comparing the two benches as UA had way more contributions from the unit scoring 62 to Southern Utah's 13 from its reserves.
Typically though when a team is dominating you'll see reserves be implemented more with starters seeing less time and did Arizona dominate in this game.
So much so in the first half the Wildcats defense only allowed eight field goals and forced 13 turnovers that they were able to capitalize and score 20 of their 55 points off of.
That same intensity remained throughout the game where Arizona just out showed in terms of physicality and it forced the Thunderbirds to play up to that level in which they were unable to do so.
The single performances from Arizona were fairly spread even as Coach Lloyd had the rotations constantly shifting but that helped allow for some reserve players to shine.
For instance, Anthony Dell'Orso had a wonderful day shooting looking similar to the game he had in the first round of the tournament against Davidson.
He shot 3-for-4 from the three-point line for a total of 19 points with an assist and steal to pair with but really excelled as Arizona's top shooter today.
The player of the game though had to be KJ Lewis for the tone he helped set to start the game where he was responsible for five assists with eight rebounds and two steals while also scoring 15 points, nine of which came in the first half and tied for a team-lead at that point.
Including those two, seven Wildcats scored 10 or more points really encapsulating how spread out the ball was against the Thunderbirds.
Playing a game under .500 for the first time since 2010 was certainly an area that UA didn't want to familiarize itself with and it'll now have an opportunity to catch a week off before a big time matchup in Phoenix on Dec. 14 against UCLA (7-1) for a 1 p.m. (MST) tipoff that is scheduled for the ESPN2 network.
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