Arizona had answers for Stanford during Saturday night's game, but the Cardinal simply had more at Kaiser Permanente Arena in Santa Cruz, California. Stanford led for nearly the entire night, but UA (5-1, 0-1 Pac-12) still had an opportunity to win the game late. An offensive foul ended that chance resulting in the Wildcats' first loss to Stanford since 2009, 78-75.
Arizona head coach Sean Miller, who had never lost to the Cardinal before Saturday since taking over in Tucson, blamed the loss on his team's ability to defend the Cardinal (4-2, 1-0) with four different Stanford players finishing in double figures.
The Cardinal found a way to continue building their lead any time Arizona was able to put together a run while the Wildcats leaned on another impressive Jemarl Baker Jr. scoring night to keep the game close.
Despite having a chance to pull out a victory late, Miller believed his team needed to play better on the defensive end of the floor to earn the win.
"Throughout the game our defense was not good enough to win," Miller said. "There were a number of breakdowns we had. Sometimes you have to give the other team credit. They got us on a couple cuts, they picked on a couple matchups that I'm sure that they really favored in our man to man. I'm glad we went zone. I thought it gave us energy.
"Kind of changed the complexion of the game when we had a really hard time defending them. We're on the road with a young group, a lot of new faces. Clearly this is the toughest opponent that we've played this year."
While defense was an area Miller wanted to focus on after the loss, Arizona's inability to hit shots from the free-throw line played nearly as big of a role in the game. The Wildcats were able to get to the line for one more opportunity than Stanford but missed 11 free throws in the loss.
Starting point guard James Akinjo missed seven free throws in the loss just one game after going perfect, 14 for 14, from the free-throw line against UTEP last weekend. Miller said the blame for the loss shouldn't fall on Akinjo, who also was called for an offensive foul with UA down one with ten seconds left, but he did acknowledge that free throw shooting was an issue for his team in the loss.
"James is our heart and soul," Miller said of his redshirt sophomore point guard who scored seven points and dished out nine assists in Saturday's game. "He's the engine that really makes us go. ... I thought the last drive, that's what you want. You want a hard drive at the basket with a help defender coming over and a lot of times you go to the line to win or lose.
"He'll bounce back, no doubt. I'm sure he was in his own head. It's just you think anyone who would have had great confidence from the line tonight it would have been him based on what he just did in the last game."
The final offensive possession for Arizona ended with the offensive foul called on Akinjo as Stanford freshman Ziaire Williams slid in front of the Wildcats' point guard on his drive to the basket. It was one of a handful of similar calls in the game that went against the Wildcats in what is becoming a trend for the team this season forcing Miller to have to rethink how he approaches teaching his team to avoid those situations and earn those call itself.
"They really draw the charge," Miller said about Stanford. "Tonight, I don't know how many offensive fouls we had, but I promise you this. That you'll never see an Arizona team draw more charges moving forward than ours. I promise you that. The way it's being called we have to adjust. I have to adjust.
"We have to get into position and take the charge on and off the ball. We have to force the action so that we can get a few of those plays. If it's one-sided and we have seven to 10 offensive fouls in a game and we're not doing that to our opponent it heavily favors the other team. We have to do a better job of adjusting, drawing the charge, making these hard plays on the ball and putting us in a position to get an offensive foul. Even in the five games before tonight it's not been to our advantage. We're addressing it with our team."
Despite the Wildcats losing for the first time this season, the game was a battle and Arizona was able to keep it close and even take a lead at one point. Baker was a big reason that was the case as he hit three 3-pointers in the final 3:33 with two of those shots giving the Wildcats a lead.
The redshirt junior hit eight 3-pointers, one shy of the program's single-game record, for 29 points to lead the Wildcats. Baker has raised his level of play so far this season, but Saturday night he says he was simply trying to help his team earn a victory as he scored 26 of his points in the final 20 minutes.
"Just wanting to win, simple as that," Baker said of his second-half explosion. "Just wanted to win. Other than that I didn't play well enough for us to win for sure. That (scoring performance) doesn't really matter at this point, because we didn't get the win. We just have to learn from this, continue to get better and win the next one."
The Cardinal were led by senior big man Oscar da Silva who scored 21 points and grabbed seven rebounds in his team's victory. UA simply didn't have an answer to slow him down as Stanford dominated the points in the paint 42-26. Williams finished with 16 points, four assists and a pair of rebounds for the Cardinal.
UA will return home and quickly turn around to play two more games this week as the Wildcats host the University of San Diego on Monday afternoon before facing Montana on Tuesday at McKale Center.
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