Coming into the NCAA Tournament, 4-seed Arizona (23-12) had a strong showing in the Big 12 Tournament making the title game. However, due to the fact that in the past season, Tommy Lloyd and his team have underachieved in the tourney and have lost to a 15-seed in Princeton two seasons ago. So, even though the team finished on a high note, there were still skeptics questioning if UA would make it out of the first round.

The Wildcats answered the bell and delivered a dominant 93-65 win over 13-seed Akron with everything clicking from offense, defense and ball movement. Arizona was able to put together a nearly complete performance.

As a team, the Wildcats shot 57% from the field and set the tone early by opening with a 9-0 run over the Zips that featured three 3-point buckets. Overall, Arizona shot 12 of 25 from the deep and had seven players connect from beyond the arc.

One of the player for Arizona that set the tone early on was forward Trey Townsend, who attacked the paint and finished with 16 points by going 7 of 8 from the field. Townsend hit his first six shots of the game. He finished two rebounds shy of a double-double with eight boards and collected two blocked shots.

Throughout the season, Arizona's defense has had one massive weakness and that has been the ability to guard the 3-point line and on Friday, it faced a team in Akron, which averaged 10.7 per game and hitting 36% on those shots.

However, Arizona's defense stepped up to the defensive challenge and held the Zips to 7 of 25 shooting from deep with four of those made shots coming in the second half.

The biggest difference on the game thugh came on the glass where Arizona used it size and strength to overwhelm the Zips and dominated 53 to 22 on the boards. This led to 18 second-chance points for the Wildcats.

In terms of guard play, it was point guard Jaden Bradley that made his mark on the game scoring a team-high 19 points while going 8 of 13 from the field. Bradley not only had the scoring touch, he logged in six rebounds and three assists on the night.

Although many thing went right for the Wildcats, there were a few things that went horrible wrong and one of those things was the ability to protect the basketball. Arizona turned the ball over 16 times, which led to 13 points for the Zips.

Another issues was the free throw line, where the Wildcats have been great all season. But on Friday, Arizona started the game going 0 of 5 from the line and finished shooting 30% from the foul line.

As you go deeper in the tournament, those two things need to be corrected if Arizona is going to make a deep run.

Right now, Arizona's opponent for Sunday is unknown. However, the Wildcats will play the winner of (5) Oregon versus (12) Liberty. The time and channel for the game will be announced following the end of the first round of games.

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