Arizona visits Oregon in marquee Pac-12 matchup
Arizona travels to Eugene Thursday to face the ninth-ranked Ducks in a pivotal, early season game between two schools that have literally dominated the Pac-12 Conference in recent years.
Since the conclusion of the 2012-13 season when UCLA won the regular season title, Arizona or Oregon have been the conference’s regular season champions six times. The Wildcats took the crown outright in 2013-14, 2014-15, and 2017-18. Meanwhile, Oregon won league in 2015-16, while the two schools tied for the regular season title in 2016-17. The same dominance is seen in Pac-12 Tournament championships with Arizona winning the four-day tournament in 2015, 2017, and 2018 and Oregon earning the automatic NCAA Tournament bid in 2013, 2016, and 2019.
The brewing rivalry has seen its fair share of heart-stopping thrillers, as well as the occasional blowout such as Oregon’s 73-47 win over Arizona last season. In fact, the Ducks have won three-straight games over the Wildcats to shrink Arizona’s advantage in the series, under Head Coach Sean Miller, to 10-9 overall and just 3-5 in Eugene.
No. 24 Arizona (11-3, 1-0 Pac-12) look to turn the series around tonight in facing one of the top teams in the nation. The Ducks climbed to has high as No. 4 in the national polls after a solid non-conference, advertised as one of the toughest non-conference slates in the country. However, the reality of league play quickly settled in as the Ducks first fell at Colorado before responding and winning at Utah in Salt Lake City last week.
Meanwhile, Arizona easily dispatched rival Arizona State, 74-47, last Thursday to set up tonight’s nationally-televised showdown.
Interestingly, Arizona is doing all the right things to be a great basketball team this season, but lacks the eye-popping results. The Wildcats are the only team in the country to rank in the top 15 in offense and defense field goal percentage, a statistic that statistical gurus like Ken Pomeroy love to use in predicting a club’s future success. Arizona ranks No. 10 in the country with a shooting percentage of 49.1 percent. Defensively, the Wildcats are holding opponents to just 36.9 percent. However, Arizona has yet to defeat a nationally-ranked team, dropping games to now top-ranked Gonzaga 84-80, now fourth-ranked Baylor 63-58, and unranked St. John’s. The three losses were by a combined margin of just 12 points, with two of the setbacks being away from home.
Against the Ducks, Arizona will try to squash the same demons that plagued them in each of the three losses, notably rebounding and long stretches where their own shots were not falling.
That won’t be easy.
Like Arizona, Oregon is one of the best offensive teams in the nation, ranking No. 11 at 49.0 percent shooting. Senior point guard Payton Pritchard is playing like college basketball’s player of the year. Pritchard is one of four players nationally averaging at least 18 points, four rebounds and five assists per game. As a team, the Ducks have shot above 50 percent from the floor seven times and boast a 12-1 record this season when hitting at least 40 percent of their field goal attempts. The Ducks only have one player standing above 6-foot-10, which makes them an intriguing matchup for the Wildcats. They are tall at the guard positions, and can run out a litany of mid-sized forwards with quickness that can create unique matchups for the Wildcats on both ends of the floor.
That said, Arizona features a much quicker, more athletic roster than last year, giving Miller and the coaching staff more options to counter the types of lineups the Ducks will put on the floor.
The real “X Factor” in a game of this magnitude will be the play of Arizona’s freshmen. The trio of Nico Mannion, Zeke Nnaji, and Josh Green have been stellar this season, but have yet to face the level of scrutiny and fan hostility they will experience in Eugene. How they handle the situation will go a long way in determining Arizona’s success.
Breaking Away from the “Norm”
Normally, in a situation like this, you would tell your star freshman point guard to not make the game about him and Oregon’s vastly experienced Pritchard. However, Mannion is an intense competitor and seems to thrive when personally challenged by an opponent. Although every coach in America will openly tell their team that each individual player needs to outplay their matchup, they certainly don’t want to apply undue pressure. However, with Mannion, I would do exactly that and tell him straight up that he needs to better than Pritchard. Both point guards can be mouthy, at times, and both are over-the-top competitive. Miller should, in short, let Mannion be Mannion tonight for the following reasons:
- Mannion needs to lead the team by example and be aggressive in a way that creates dribble penetration into the paint. Oregon’s defense is dynamically insane and if the Wildcats are simply swinging the ball around the perimeter, they will lose and lose bad.
- Arizona, as a team, will need to match Oregon’s own intensity. There’s no one better than Mannion to lead that charge, talk a little trash and, if necessary, show some raw emotion.
- Arizona will need to score some sloppy buckets, whether it’s a result of winning loose ball scrambles, creating steals, scoring in transition, or simply hitting a running floater. If Mannion can set the pace, Arizona has an athletic group of Wildcats that will follow his lead.
Keys to Victory
These are obvious:
- Rebounding – Arizona can’t allow a team averaging 49 percent shooting to get second and third chances. The same goes for Oregon on their own defensive end. If either team is controlling the offensive glass, the other will be in trouble.
- Paint Scoring – There are times when Oregon’s defense appears impenetrable. The same could be said of Arizona’s Pack-Line version of man-to-man. Barring either team getting hot and torching the nets from beyond the arc, the team that scores more from inside the paint or at the free throw line will win.
- Bench Scoring – It’s difficult to imagine Arizona winning without production from the bench. Effective bench scoring is like opening a release valve that allows the starters to play more freely.
- Senior Leadership – Oregon has the advantage, simply because their best player is the floor general, a senior, and absolutely heartless when it comes to stepping on the throat of an opponent. Pritchard is Arizona’s version of T.J. McConnell. We’ll have to wait and see how things start to play out tonight, but for some reason if Arizona’s Mannion, Nnaji, and Green are struggling early, experienced college veterans like Dylan Smith, Chase Jeter, Stone Gettings and Max Hazzard will need to play well and help the entire team keep its composure in moments of adversity.