Arizona's Pac-12 rivalry game against UCLA was slow to start with combining for as many turnovers as they had shots in the opening minutes.

The Wildcats (16-7, Pac-12 6-4) went into the game favored by a dozen points, but it started look like many other nights that Arizona has had this season when it fell to teams it was projected to beat.

In fact, it looked like a repeat of Thursday's game against USC when the Wildcats played the final eight minutes without making a basket before escaping with a victory. Saturday, Arizona's first scoring drought lasted 7:30. Then, it happened again going even longer with a 9:21 drought in the second half.

It helped the Bruins (13-11,Pac-12 6-5) lead the entire second half.

The Wildcats were able to cut the lead down to just one point, but the Bruins took off on another run over the next five minutes to build up their largest lead of the night – 17 points – which they were never able to recover from.

It wasn't an issue of getting shots off for Arizona, the Wildcats had 59 shot attempts in the game, it was that the Wildcats struggled getting the ball in the basket.

"Just a rough night all around," freshman point guard Nico Mannion said. "I think there were some times in the game we weren't locked in defensively, weren't executing well. Obviously shots weren't falling."

Actually, Arizona shot 25.4% from the field making the wrong kind of history Saturday night by having the worst percentage of any UA team at McKale Center.

The Wildcats once again leaned on their freshmen starters Saturday and two of the three players were able to finish in double figures, but those players also combined to miss 26 shots in the game against UCLA.

Sean Miller believes the Wildcats need help from other players outside that trio to have success.

"When you're riding their production every day and every game there's going to be some ups and downs," The Arizona head coach said about his young stars. "We have some other guys really that are struggling. Dylan is obviously struggling with his shot. I think he's missed about 20 in a row, but Dylan's 6-5 and he's that one wing player that can really help us defensively and our subs are much smaller.

"So it's tough just to to go without him because, you know, we trust him on defense and he's also had some really good moments on offense this season."

Mannion went 2 for 14 and finished the game with only five points and one assist. Meanwhile, Zeke Nnaji scored 14 points and 10 rebounds to lead the team while collecting his 11th double double of the season. Josh Green had 11 points, three rebounds and two assists.

The Wildcats now hit the road again as they make the trip to the Bay Area to face Cal and Stanford next week.