Bear Down Wildcats

I stopped watching when Laurie got his third foul on that ridiculous flop. The ref's must have not seen that viral flop that was going around.

I am not surprised by this game, since as we have gone over many times they can't beat a zone, and don't have much of a chance against a good team playing one. They just look befuddled. I don't get it.

But more than that, it seems to me that Trier is trying to do it all, and the great team basketball we were playing before he came back is just a memory. More than once I saw him driving the lane right into several defenders while Laurie is wide open on the 3 point line. And since Laurie is shooting 50% (!), I would think that would be the first option EVERY time it presents itself.

Is there some dissension on the team now? Resentment that it's (as it should be) Laurie's team?

If they don't fix this, they will need a great seed to make the sweet 16. i.e. they can probably (maybe) beat lower seeds who zone them but a good team that zones?

edit: clarity

Trier's decision making is turrible.

He looks for his shot first and the outlet pass later. Has totally disrupted the team ball that we had going into UCLA.

Miller should give him a talking to, IMO

I didn't see one guy play team ball today. Not one.

In the grand scheme what can you take away from a game like this if you're Arizona? I don't subscribe to the "we needed a loss" to teach us a lesson line of thought and even if I did it certainly wouldn't be a loss this awful. So what does Arizona learn from this exactly?

They learned they are capable of losing by 30... something I'd never thought they would be capable of under Sean Miller

I have to see Miller presser when it's up.

ChooChooCat wrote:In the grand scheme what can you take away from a game like this if you're Arizona? I don't subscribe to the "we needed a loss" to teach us a lesson line of thought and even if I did it certainly wouldn't be a loss this awful. So what does Arizona learn from this exactly?

They need to play much better. Oregon straight up dominated us in every aspect of the game. It was not close.

You just have to play better. There is no other magic lesson. Don't play like crap on offense. Don't get outhustled. Don't play terrible D.

I mean, we were going to lose regardless, but Oregon was 16-21 from 3 at one point. To but that in perspective, that was a better percentage than Klay Thompson shot to win the NBA 3 point contest. We quit 5 minutes into the 2nd half once we were down 25+ and that's when they turned on the dunk show. Just look to Miller in these games, he was laughing at points because even he understands that at certain point not even the Warriors could win a game where the other team is 16-21 from 3.

Wouldn't be surprised if Miller is less angry than half the posters on this board. Yeah we sucked. Yeah we didn't play well, but even if we played the best game of our season we'd still have lost by 15+.

Four straight games is a pattern. This is more us than it was Oregon.

I think the biggest play of the game was the third play of the second half, when we had just hit two shots, cut the lead to 16, Kadeem stole the ball, took two dribbles, and made an absolutely horrific pass that Pritchard stole and they hit a three to push it back to 19. That was the play where I knew it was over, and the lead went from 16-25 in the span of about 30 seconds.

dcZONAfan wrote:I think the biggest play of the game was the third play of the second half, when we had just hit two shots, cut the lead to 16, Kadeem stole the ball, took two dribbles, and made an absolutely horrific pass that Pritchard stole and they hit a three to push it back to 19. That was the play where I knew it was over, and the lead went from 16-25 in the span of about 30 seconds.

I said the same thing to my buddy. Not that we were going to come all the way the back but whatever momentum we had disappeared immediately.

Alieberman wrote:They learned they are capable of losing by 30... something I'd never thought they would be capable of under Sean Miller

That you even believed that is a testament to Sean Miller. It can happen to any team on the road. Sometimes, the basketball gods inject a home team with a shot of Kantmiss.

Unless we win the PAC tourney I think this loss sends us and UCLA out of the west.

Other then that we break down film, find our resolve and not lose again in the regular season. I can live with a 30 point loss or whatever but was and 28-3/17-1

Oregon stil has to win both games in southern california, and go to Cal, and they got Utah in eugene. If they run the table, perhaps. I dont think they will. The ball is still in our court and we have the much easier path. They dont have a road sweep of UCLA/USC at this point and we do. Thats the trump card

Oh I agree but I think if we win the regular season and say they lose at UCLA but then win the conference tourney, that Gonzaga would be a 1 out west with Oregon the 2.

rgdeuce wrote:Oregon stil has to win both games in southern california, and go to Cal, and they got Utah in eugene. If they run the table, perhaps. I dont think they will. The ball is still in our court and we have the much easier path. They dont have a road sweep of UCLA/USC at this point and we do. Thats the trump card

Agree with your logic completely but this assumes that we pull out of the spiral we are in and finish strong. My fear, as I stated in another thread, is that we continue to struggle against the zone and lose to UCLA maybe a roadie somewhere against a hot team. Just go back and look at the 2nd half of the UCLA game when they went zone..........IMO if they had stayed in it the entire game we would not have won.

azcat49 wrote:Oh I agree but I think if we win the regular season and say they lose at UCLA but then win the conference tourney, that Gonzaga would be a 1 out west with Oregon the 2.

Assuming both teams win out, all three of our losses come to the likely #1 team, oregon will by then be in the top 5, and Butler will likely be around #15. Oregon lost to Baylor (top 10 maybe as high as top 5), and quite possibly two teams who wont even make the tournament (georgetown in eugene, rpi 52, and colorado on the road RPI 106). Dont think it is that clear cut.

rgdeuce wrote:

azcat49 wrote:Oh I agree but I think if we win the regular season and say they lose at UCLA but then win the conference tourney, that Gonzaga would be a 1 out west with Oregon the 2.

Assuming both teams win out, all three of our losses come to the likely #1 team, oregon will by then be in the top 5, and Butler will likely be around #15. Oregon lost to Baylor (top 10 maybe as high as top 5), and quite possibly two teams who wont even make the tournament (georgetown in eugene, rpi 52, and colorado on the road RPI 106). Dont think it is that clear cut.

I think if they beat us in the tourney, it would be a tough sell with that scenario. We would have a somewhat decent win over Utah/Cal/USC but that's hard to overcome 0-2 vs Oregon, with pretty similar resume otherwise.

I agree, I was not including the tournament in my scenario.

rgdeuce wrote:Four straight games is a pattern. This is more us than it was Oregon.

I disagree with your second statement. No one was beating Oregon that night.

I agree with your first statement, and I'm not happy with the dynamic on offense since Trier returned. He's dominating the ball way too much.

I'll put stock in Oregon once they beat at least one in LA.

Oregon lost at Rado, and barely got by ASU at home. They played a great game against us, no doubt, but if people are looking at our game as something more than the anomaly that it was...

Puerco wrote:

rgdeuce wrote:Four straight games is a pattern. This is more us than it was Oregon.

I disagree with your second statement. No one was beating Oregon that night.

I agree with your first statement, and I'm not happy with the dynamic on offense since Trier returned. He's dominating the ball way too much.

All of this. The cats were trending down before this Oregon game. Hopefully this is the wake up call they need to get back to team ball. Too much "Zo" isolation ball for my taste.

RG, I mentioned this in another thread, but do you think there's any way for Gonzaga to be W-1, Oregon 1 elsewhere, and us W-2? I think all three teams winning out, and Oregon beating us in P12 tourney, would be the only scenario that could even open the idea. I don't think that will happen, but I think it's more interesting of a discussion than Saturday's game.

I think you go w1-gonzaga, w2-Oregon, elsewhere 2-cats

Why did we put Lauri on Brooks? He hasn't been a defensive stopper his entire playing career.

Puerco wrote:

rgdeuce wrote:Four straight games is a pattern. This is more us than it was Oregon.

I disagree with your second statement. No one was beating Oregon that night.

I agree with your first statement, and I'm not happy with the dynamic on offense since Trier returned. He's dominating the ball way too much.

I just worded that awkwardly. I know we werent winning that game. I was just expressing that the bigger picture is not Oregon pushing our crap in, it is the fact that it was around 30 instead of around 15, which it would have been if the Arizona team from UCLA or before showed up.

prh wrote:RG, I mentioned this in another thread, but do you think there's any way for Gonzaga to be W-1, Oregon 1 elsewhere, and us W-2? I think all three teams winning out, and Oregon beating us in P12 tourney, would be the only scenario that could even open the idea. I don't think that will happen, but I think it's more interesting of a discussion than Saturday's game.

If Gonzaga wins out, they are a lock at the 1 seed out west now, as we kissed any outside chance of stealing that with our loss at Oregon. Oregon isnt snatching it from them with their 3 losses either. As is, in your scenario, likely Gonzaga and Oregon are 1 and 2 out west, respectively, and we likely get shipped out as a 2 or 3 in another region. Of course, not outside of the realm of possibility for Oregon to steal a 1 seed if they have just three losses if Nova, Kansas, Baylor, etc. drop some more games. In that case, we'd have a good shot at the 2 seed out west.

I don't think the "adjusting to Trier's return" angle can be overstated here.

The question is "do we get it figured out?" It is clearly an issue. He is playing somewhere between "I have to dominate because I can and no one else is (Oregon St)" and "This is my audition..ala Iggy (Oregon, times in other games)".

And it isn't a one-person issue. Zo doesn't inbound to himself then run up the court and try to go 1 on 5. Other players need to step up in order to keep Zo from going one on five. He needed to put on a show vs Oregon State or we were flirting with getting beat, or at the very least leaving up to chance in the late minutes, if he didn't. And vs OSU it wasn't so much he took over, just some big plays against questionable odds when no one else would.

We saw where we were pre Zo. We saw where we can be with Zo letting the game come to him because he was just inserted into the lineup at the last second and everyone around him playing their game (UCLA), then we saw what happens when he becomes a part of the game plan and newer players (remember we still have three freshmen who have never played with Zo in a game) are, for the 2nd time in one season, trying to figure out where they belong/what their role is.

It could be anger, or resentment. But I think this is just a natural issue when re-inserting a superstar mid-season to a good team. See Duke 2011 with Kyrie Irving. Clearly Kyrie is a great player...but Duke was all kinds of befuddled, and guys who were "the man" during his absence and had never played with him before (much like our situation) didn't know how to work it out. Practice helps, but it isn't the game. Roles are roles in practice, and you can have people run in their place. Practice is planning. But in the game, things obviously change. Coach cannot blow a whistle and reset.

The question becomes...do we have enough time to figure it out? I think we do.

There is plenty of time. And I'm sure the Oregon game was a nice wake up call/attention grabber and guys will hopefully put their individual concerns and complaints aside and put the team first.

I dunno where to look... there are THREE effing threads about this game.

Can we move on yet?

RichardCranium wrote:I dunno where to look... there are THREE effing threads about this game.

Can we move on yet?

Thanks to TV, we won't begin to know the answer to that question for another 1 hour, 45 minutes.