LAS VEGAS—Arizona showed that Sin City continues to be Wildcat Country on Satuday night, beating No. 14 Indiana 89-75 at MGM Grand Garden Arena.
Our full recap can be found here. Below is what coach Tommy Lloyd, center Oumar Ballo and point guard Kerr Kriisa said afterward:
Lloyd on Oumar Ballo: “Oumar’s a really good player. I mean, he’s a force. He’s our George Foreman. I mean, those body blows, and then he can throw some knockout punches, too. And he’s hard to play against. It’s really cool for me, especially, who has seen it on the other side, to see him come through it and it makes you proud as a coach. Oumar gets all the credit, because to hang with it like he did and to be in the position he’s in, it’s really inspiring for me as a coach, and hopefully it inspires other players who are struggling.”
On Arizona’s bench play: “Henri (Veesaar) is going to be a really good player, he’s just got to grow up a little bit. He needs to get some battle scars and some calluses, kinda toughen up, and he’s in that process. I really got after those young guys. We have five young guys that I think are gonna be really good players and great Arizona Wildcats. I brought them in my office, I don’t know if it was a day or two ago, before practice, and I told them they need to get better. They need to stop pouting and feeling sorry for themselves, because it is hard and I know what they’re going through. So to see those guys step up, like he and Adama (Bal) tonight, even Kylan’s minutes we’re good. It’s really encouraging. It’s a huge thing for this team because, if we get those guys settled into their roles and contributing, and then the nights where you play like Adama it really, really lifts our group we don’t have to ride Kerr so hard. Kerr tells me he’s playing too much so I’ve gotta reduce his minutes.”
On Pelle Larsson: “Pelle, he’s a great player. Pelle reminds me some guys I’ve coached in the past, maybe he’s just a little bit of a slow start. Pelle’s care factor is 100 percent. He cares so much about his team, he cares so much about how he’s contributing to the team, that maybe sometimes you get caught in a position where he’s overthinking things a little bit, put a little pressure on himself. To see him kind of settle into the game the way he did today was awesome. Listen, I think that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I think there’s a lot more we’re going to see from him here coming forward.”
On being able to handle a big-game atmosphere: “Obviously Arizona is a great program, so they’ve been in a lot of moments like this, and I’m sure they’ve had moments where they’ve hit it out of the park and moments where they struggled, like all programs. I know we’re a program that doesn’t shy away from the limelight, we don’t shy away from the moment. The bigger the game hopefully the better we are, and that’s the kind of culture we’re trying to establish.”
On letting Arizona play on when the opponent goes on a run: “There’s a reason for that. Obviously, I’m a new head coach, I’m learning, too. But I don’t love calling timeouts all the time. I think if you call a timeout when the first time a team makes a run on you, you’re sending a message to your team. Maybe we’re scared and we’re overmatched. So I don’t like it. I love to see our guys respond the way they do. And I think Kerr hit a huge three here in one of those runs kind of right in front of me, and I think he might even looked back to me and said something, so I almost gave him a T for taunting me. And then Adama had a huge three I think and one of those deals too. So it’s just really cool to see. And that’s what you want, you want poise in the moment because at the end of the day, you know there’s going to become a point in time where we’re in one of those games we don’t have a timeout. So you can’t rely on Coach to solve all the problems. We’ll give ourselves credit, I think our staff called one good timeout today, we came out with a little special play and got it back to Pelle for a dunk to kind of maybe take it from a 5- to 7-point lead, which is a huge deal down the stretch of the game. I love the way these guys play. We love getting up and down. And there is no panic, it’s fun. It’s fun being in those moments. So I like to tell our guys just let it rip and let’s run our stuff and trust our offense. And usually that’s that’ll be the solution in and of itself.”
Ballo on defending Trayce Jackson-Davis: “He’s a great player, and thanks to our coaching we had a great plan how to guard him. Zu guarded him sometimes, I guarded him sometimes, Henri guarded him sometimes. We have a lot of great, great bigs who can guard him. It was a great, great game plan and we executed it really good.”
On Arizona’s fans: “They had our back today. They came to Vegas to show up and cheer for us, and we’re grateful for them.”
On playing with Azuolas Tubelis: “This is my second season playing with Zu, but I feel like I’ve been playing with him forever. Whenever I catch a ball, I know what he’s gonna do and I know where to find him. And same thing for him. High lows. We’re just a great combo. We play for each other and play for our team.”
Kriisa on Arizona’s bench: “It’s huge, because people before the season were talking that we don’t have depth. But I think today our young guys really showed their character, and nobody pissed their pants, so you that’s a win. Those Adama threes, we needed each one of the three really bad at the time. I’m just proud of Adama, I guess he likes Vegas.”
On getting the fans involved: “I think we’re playing our best basketball when everybody’s having fun. I think the past has shown that when everybody’s 100 percent, you don’t even have to be locked in but just when you see our players, like when we have a little huddle and everybody’s like, smiling and stuff. I think that’s a huge part of our, I would say, with the program. A lot of teams, you look at them, like basically like we played against Utah, we didn’t look like we really wanted to be there.”