Arizona wins if they can play their normal game and score a lot. Most games see them scoring above 80 points.
In our last 5 games the Cougars have held the opposition to 53 points twice, That includes Illinois.
Over past 2 seasons Cougars are 47-0 when allowing below 64 points.
Thus the same formula applies. Can Sampson’s killer defense and rebounding get the job done?
Az lives and dies on Mathurin’s scoring and the Lob inside to their Center. Teams screw up by fronting the Center. Az players then lob it over their heads and the Center gets a dunk.
Sampson knows this. He also has Edwards to guard Mathurin.
I would disagree that Arizona lives and dies on those things. They generate a ton of screened movement and cuts and attack defenses in multitude of ways that opens the lanes for Mathurin to attack, or scrambles the D enough for bigs to get freed for Lobs.
That are not a static, standstill offense. Hell, Mathurin doesn’t even iso attack that much until the defense is moving and scrambling.
It is true those two components are critical for success, but so is shooting and Arizona survived a bad shooting night for TCU. They have survived losing the turnover battle, losing the offensive board battle, and, again, that was vs TCU.
They aren’t a 2-trick pony. Their entire offensive system generates good looks, lobs, cuts, lanes and each player plays to strengths accordingly.
Not saying Houston won’t give us hell, but it isn’t quite as simple as all that.
I have not watched Az or TCU much this year, but what surprised me in their game is how easy the TCU point guard was able to get into the lane on virtually every possession. If that happens with Shead, I like our chances.
Could it be that ESPN and these sites are projecting UH favorably in this game because they want high ratings? I like our team but I don’t understand some of the projections for this game. Arizona looks dang good. Maybe @pesik can chime in. Also, I know about their offense but how good is Arizona defensively? Will we be able to score on them?
we have blown out all our recent teams, and arizona has not looked amazing in recent games…
all the computers absolutely love us, they have all season(which dont account for depth issues)
tcu just murder arizona on the offensive rebounds (gave up 20 to tcu), we are known for offensive rebounding
their defense
their defense is good by default, they are really tall, and have 7ft shoot blockers in the post, but they arent very physical nor do they press… its about can you shoot over 6’7 guards
can we score on them? yes - through offensive rebound put backs, their offense is turnover prone (so turnover point)… for our half court offense we will likely struggle in ISO, but we can find shots with ball movement, they play help D a lot, so its about beating your initial defender and when the help comes swing it to the open man
Arizona is a top-20 Defense, and they typically play man to man. They sometimes go jumbo with 2 agile 7-footers, both of which can defend the perimeter, specifically Koloko, and the 6-7 Terry who has a 7+ wingspan at SF. Other times they go “Small” with one 7-footer and Terry at the 4 and lots of perimeter quickness.
They don’t typically gimmick it up, but they can in blitzes.
They are a very good rebounding team, but have a penchant for losing focus on the defensive boards for stretches. Vs TCU they limited TCU to just 6 in the first half, then allowed 14 in the 2nd/OT.
Their Turnovers are much better with Kerr Kriisa at PG, but he’s still limited so they will use Kier and Terry at PG for stretches. Tubelis is also a bit TO prone from the post, but even that is also streaky. They do give up a decent bit of 2nd Chance and Turnovers, but, again, factor in Pace and there’s simply going to be more rebounds and possessions for those. Vs slower paced teams their totals won’t typically be so glaring.
That said, they are young and prone to lose focus and intensity at times, but as the graph above explained, they are viewed as elite for their ability to limit 10-0 runs while also going on their own 10-0 runs on offense. They were the second best team in this record, but Houston was third, so, who knows. Haha
We started off against Illinois with a lot of off ball movement that led to some easy buckets, but then got away from it later. Maybe all the iso plays were to preserve energy. I don’t think we’ll get away with that tonight.
Yeah and every Arizona fan who says the TCU player flopped is apparently too biased to see that he clearly stepped directly on the Arizona player’s foot at full speed and fell down as a result of that + getting pushed.
That non call is like a 10x higher stakes version of the goal tend against Bama. I and all of us saw it as a goal tend. Bama and it’s fans all went back to get a masters in geometry and physics to explain why it wasn’t a goal tend.
For Zona it will always be a good no call by the refs, and for TCU it will always be an egregious case of refs swallowing their whistle to help Arizona.