SEATTLE – Arizona men’s basketball coach Lute Olson finds it kind of amusing.
While Washington has rolled over a fairly soft schedule, and UCLA has emerged as a popular pick, the defending Pacific-10 champion Wildcats have sort of been forgotten. Sure, Arizona was the preseason pick to win the conference, but then it lost to lightweights Connecticut and Michigan State at the Maui Invitational, and fell at Houston, and all of a sudden the Wildcats were out of the Associated Press Top 25 for the first time since the 1987-88 season.
Now, people are questioning if Arizona has enough to stay with the Huskies or Bruins, despite the fact that it has now won six in a row to improve to 8-3.
“The last time I looked, we still have that championship trophy at Arizona,” Olson said Friday. “Someone’s going to have to take it away from us, not media predictions. At the start, we were everyone’s favorite. Then we made the mistake of not playing Sisters of the Poor and some of the others instead of Connecticut, Michigan State, Kansas. In the end, I think we have as good a shot as anybody.”
Arizona gets its chance to show it is still the team to beat when it plays at No. 7 Washington (11-0) at 11 a.m. today in a nationally televised game at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
The rivalry between the Huskies and Wildcats has become one of the nation’s best, with Washington having won five of the past six, including a 70-52 victory in the championship game of last season’s Pac-10 Tournament.
“That’s good that they have, because now it’s our turn to swing it back the other way,” Olson said. “All of those games have been competitive games. This is a new year, new team. …I don’t think past history is going to have anything to do with it, frankly.”
For some Huskies, Arizona is still the team to measure themselves against, regardless of the recent success.
“When I was younger, in middle school, Arizona was the team,” freshman forward Jon Brockman said. “It was ‘Arizona, Arizona, Arizona.’ Me and my buddies would be in the backyard pretending to be Arizona. It’s going to be a fun game.”
So, who is the team now?
“We’re the team right now,” Brockman laughed.
“They are a very, very good basketball team,” Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said. “We look forward to the challenge. We want to play against the best competition.”
That’s something that Arizona has already done. It opened the season in Maui with a 12-point victory over Kansas before losing by nine to UConn and by three in overtime to Michigan State. Arizona has a 30-point victory over Virginia, won at Utah by 30 and has wins over solid mid-majors Northern Arizona, Saint Mary’s and Western Kentucky.
“We’ve been a little up-and-down but we’ve played a very tough schedule,” Olson said.
Like the Huskies, Arizona has been adjusting to the loss of some key players from last season’s team, in the case of the Wildcats current NBA players Channing Fry and Salim Stoudamire. The Wildcats are not as good offensively as they have been in the past (42.3 percent shooting, 29.6 percent on 3-pointers). Instead, Arizona is getting it done on defense, holding teams to 61.5 points on 41 percent shooting and forcing 22.7 turnovers a game. That defense will be challenged by a Washington team averaging 91.5 points on 50 percent shooting and turning it over just 15 times a game, including a program-record three against Arizona State.
“It will be an interesting contrast to see if we can make them make some mistakes with the ball,” Olson said. “They’ve been doing a good job.”
Hassan Adams has been Arizona’s best player, averaging 19.8 points and 6.8 rebounds. Guard Chris Rodgers averages 11.5 points and freshman Marcus Williams averages 10.1 points. Williams, who starred at Seattle’s Roosevelt High School, is one of the few Seattle-area prospects Romar has lost recently. He’s reached double figures in five of the past six games, averaging 14.2 points.
But the game-within-the-game could be the matchup of Adams and Brandon Roy, who along with UCLA’s Jordan Farmar are the top three candidates for Pac-10 Player of the Year. Bobby Jones will be the primary defender of Adams and Rodgers will be on Roy, but the two will surely go head-to-head at some point.
“I read somewhere where they picked Farmar to be Pac-10 Player of the Year, and Hassan,” said Roy, coming off a career-high 35-point game. “And they both played really good non-league schedules. But that upset me a little bit. I was like, ‘Hold on, I think I’m still in the running for that.’ “
Roy’s chances would improve with a regular-season Pac-10 title, one of the few accomplishments he hasn’t enjoyed at Washington. And that starts by beating Arizona at home.
“That’s at the top of the list,” Roy said. “I’ve been here four years, finished second twice, won a Pac-10 (tournament) championship, been a No. 1 seed. It seems like that’s the last little thing that’s lurking.”
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