Regular-Season Pac-12 Champ Arizona Wins Conference Tournament Too
Arizona pulled off the unusual double by wining both the Pac-12 regular-season and conference tournament titles, and the Wildcats pulled off the later without point guard Kerr Kriisa.
Buoyed by the noise made by a large contingent of Arizona fans at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Arizona overcame a 12-point deficit with 17:17 left in the second half and rolled to a 84-76 victory over a hot UCLA team in the Pac-12 tournament championship game on Saturday.
It was the first time since Arizona pulled off the double in 2018 that a team won both the regular-season and Pac-12 tournament titles in the same season, and only the fourth time in the past 13 years that a team finished alone in first place and also won the Pac-12 tournament.
Conference player of the year Bennedict Mathurin led the way for Arizona (31-3) with 27 points, but the statistic of the game was Arizona's 11 blocked shots, including six by Oumar Ballo and four by Christian Koloko.
It is Arizona's eighth conference tournament title, the most of any Pac-12 team, and the win presumably assures the Wildcats of a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.
--The 68-team NCAA tournament field will be announced on Sunday at 3 p.m. (Pacific time) on CBS--
Second-seeded UCLA (25-7) will be going to the NCAA tournament too, but the Bruins had been playing well enough lately that it seemed they might knock off the Wildcats, especially since Arizona was without Kriisa, who missed his second straight game with an ankle injury and is questionable for the Wildcats' first-round NCAA tournament game.
Jules Bernard led UCLA with 19 points, and the Bruins got another big game from Jaime Jaquez (18 points). More significant perhaps was the fact that Johnny Juzang showed signs of snapping out of his scoring slump by putting up 16 points on 7-for-15 shooting. Juzang's three-point shot at the 17:17 mark of the second half put UCLA ahead by 12 at 53-41.
But it took Arizona just a little more than five minutes to outscore the Bruins 15-2 and grab the lead. The Wildcats took the lead for good when Mathurin's three-pointer with 9:43 left put the Wildcats ahead by a point. The Wildcats then scored on nearly every possession thereafter to prevent UCLA from regaining the lead.
Arizona shot 66.7% from the field in the second half and 51.9% for the game. The Wildcats, who lead the nation in assists, had 20 assists on their 27 made field goals. Arizona began the day second in the country in assists-per-field-goal at 65.2%, and Saturday's 74.1% might have put the Wildcat on top in that telling category.
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Cover photo by Stephen R. Sylvanie, USA TODAY Sports
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