NCAA Tournament: What Went Wrong For Arizona?

The Arizona Wildcats are no longer a part of March Madness for 2022. They were eliminated from the tournament on Thursday by the Houston Cougars in the South Regional semifinals in San Antonio. The Wildcats had a tremendous regular season. They won the Pac-12 championship and then won the Pac-12 Tournament. They got a No. 1 seed, the first time since 2014 that Arizona had secured a top seed in the NCAA Tournament. A lot of progress was made, considering the wilderness Arizona had drifted through in previous years related to the controversy connected to the FBI’s investigation into the Wildcats and other college basketball programs. Yet, it still stings that the Cats were unable to return to the Final Four for the first time since 2001. Here are the foremost things which went wrong for this team:

Injured Kerr Kriisa

The deep-shooting guard who stretched the floor and added extra dimensions to the Arizona offense was able to play against TCU and then Houston, but he wasn’t effective. He missed nearly all of his 3-point shots and did not look like the same player compared to the healthy athlete who was playing well against Stanford in the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals until his injury late in that game on Thursday, March 10. Not having a full-strength Kriisa clearly limited what Arizona could do in the NCAA Tournament and represented an untimely piece of very bad luck for the program.

Azuolas Tubelis

The big man just didn’t have it against Houston. He was smothered by the Cougars’ defense. Teammate Christian Koloko played well against Houston and against TCU in the previous round, but Tubelis did not have the same success. Tubelis is not as quick on his feet as Koloko, and that lack of agility put Tubelis at a disadvantage against a very active and intense frontcourt from Houston. Tubelis was 0 for 8 from the field against Houston with four turnovers, a total nightmare of a game in a single-elimination tournament. No team, not even a No. 1 seed, will usually withstand a game that bad from a core player.

Mathurin’s Math

The numbers just didn’t add up for Arizona’s star and its best player, Bennedict Mathurin. He carried Arizona past TCU in this past Sunday’s overtime thriller, but he didn’t have the touch against Houston, going just 4 of 14 from the field and not making the high-impact plays he made late in the game against TCU. With Tubelis struggling, Mathurin had to carry more of the load, and against the team defense of Houston, that was simply too big an ask. Mathurin had a tremendous season, but he ran into an elite defensive team.

Two Did Too Much

The ultimate verdict on this team is that two men, Koloko and Mathurin, were asked to do a lot. If one or both were not playing their very, very best, this team needed to turn to other sources who could not always be relied upon. The Kriisa injury is part of this calculus, but Tubelis was the primary example, and Dalen Terry was also part of this picture. Arizona couldn’t find other contributors who could compensate for any instance in which the stars weren’t providing maximum production.

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