As Arizona walked off the floor following a 57-54 loss to UCLA on Dec. 14, it faced an unfamiliar reality. For the first time in Tommy Lloyd’s tenure as the Wildcats’ head coach, his team had a losing record and more questions than answers.
Four weeks later, Lloyd’s group is rolling. Arizona has won seven games in a row, including five conference games by double digits. Lloyd and his players might not have foreseen this streak coming, but it happened because they never lost hope and never stopped working. “We knew that we were a winning team,” Junior guard Jaden Bradley told HoopsHQ. “We went through a rough patch at the beginning of the season, but [Lloyd] always told us to stick with it, take it day by day, game by game and the results will show up.”
The most impressive result came of all was a beatdown of No. 25 Baylor Tuesday night in Tucson. The Wildcats led by as much as 27 points and led for all but 1 minute, 10 seconds. The season is far from over, but the turnaround feels complete. “We got off to a little bit of a rough start (to the season),” Lloyd said after the win. “We wanted to build and we wanted to get off to a good start in conference. That was important for us. I think we’ve done that, but it’s a mile. We just finished a lap. We’ve got three more hard laps to go.”
Arizona will have to bring that fight as it next plays two consecutive road games against Texas Tech (today at 2 p.m. ET on ESPN2) and Oklahoma State, followed by Colorado and No. 2 Iowa State at home. Winning those games will require continued strong performances from the four-man backcourt of Bradley, Caleb Love, sophomore guard K.J. Lewis and Campbell transfer Anthony Dell’Orso. The group has also become comfortable pushing itself when one of its members isn’t at his best. On Tuesday it had to function with just eight points from Love, its leading scorer. “I think it says a lot,” Lloyd said. “Caleb’s a team guy and I feel good that when he’s not playing well we’re okay. For me there’s some reassurance that ‘we’ve got this’ because it’s a lot of pressure on a guy to play good every single day.”
“It could be anybody’s day,” Bradley added. “Coach always harps on that. Whoever’s day it is, we’re gonna help them.”
Lloyd’s three-man frontcourt rotation of Tennessee transfer Tobe Awaka, Oakland transfer Trey Townsend and 7-foot sophomore Henri Veesaar has likewise propelled the Wildcats to the 16th-best offensive efficiency in the country as well as the nation’s 25th-highest defensive efficiency, according to KenPom.com. On Tuesday,Veesaar scored a career-high 19 points on 9 of 11 shooting. Veesaar’s improvement has helped overcome the absence of 7-foot-2 sophomore forward Motiejus Krivas, who is out for the remainder of a season following foot surgery. “He’s a pro,” Baylor coach Scott Drew said of Veesaar, who has yet to record a start this season. “First time I saw him on film I was like ‘he’s a pro.’ I don’t know how Tommy does it year in and year out. He finds them dudes, develops them. He does a great job.”
Lloyd pushes back against the notion that his group has arrived, but given the way things started, he has reason to be optimistic about where this team is headed. He promised his players if they kept working the results would come. Now that they’ve come, everyone wats more. “We’ve still got a lot of stuff to clean up and get better at, but we’re trending in the right direction,” Bradley said. “I feel like when March comes, we can be a scary matchup for any team.”
