KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Arizona guard Jaden Bradley had just emerged from the locker room, his left wrist tightly taped after a collision left him holding it in pain. Koa Peat was mired in foul trouble, and Houston was making a big run in the Big 12 tournament title game
Oklahoma was by several measures the superior team at the Alamo Bowl. Except for one critical category.
The 12th-ranked Sooners turned the ball over six times Thursday night, allowing 14th-ranked Arizona to rally from an 11-point third quarter deficit for a 38-24 win.
A tip drill on a third-quarter Jackson Arnold pass turned into a fumble recovery for Arizona safety Gunner Maldonado, who returned the ball 87 yards for touchdown that shifted the course of the game. Originally ruled an interception, officials changed the call to a catch and fumble by wide receiver Jalil Farooq forced by a Dalton Johnson hit.
Whatever it was, it was the fourth forced turnover of the day for Arizona and the third involving Maldonado, who recorded two fumble recoveries and an interception.
It also allowed the Wildcats to add another football to the turnover sword. Which is a real thing. Arizona used it to stab footballs with Oklahoma logos for each of its forced turnovers. It eventually ran out of room for more footballs.
Oklahoma held a 24-13 lead while driving inside the Arizona at the time of the turnover. Instead of extending a double-digit lead, the Sooners allowed the Wildcats to close within 24-21 after a two-point conversion.
Two plays later, Arnold threw his third interception of the night, this one to defensive back Martell Irby. This turnover set up Arizona to tie the game at 24-24 with a field goal. After a forced Oklahoma punt, Arizona's offense drove 95 yards on eight plays capped by a 57-yard go-ahead touchdown from Noah Fifita to Jacob Cowing.
Oklahoma's next drive ended with — you guessed it — another turnover. Isaiah Ward sacked Arnold, forcing Oklahoma's sixth turnover of the day.
This inspired yet another appearance by the turnover sword.
The Wildcats converted the turnover into another touchdown for a 38-24 lead with 2:56 remaining, and the game was all but over.
Arizona overcomes otherwise big offensive night by Oklahoma
Oklahoma held a 562-to-383 edge in total offense. It outrushed Arizona 201 yards to 29. But Arizona claimed a 6-to-1 edge in forced turnovers, an advantage that was too much for Oklahoma to overcome.
Arnold completed 26 of 45 passes for 361 yards with two touchdowns. He accounted for two-thirds of Oklahoma's turnovers with three interceptions and a lost fumble. Farooq fumbled twice.
Arizona was efficient when it had the ball. Quarterback Noah Fifita completed 24 of 38 passes for 354 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. Tetairoa McMillan caught 10 passes for 160 yards and a touchdown, while Cowing tallied seven receptions for 152 yards and a score. The Wildcats averaged 9.3 yards per play.
Arizona caps its season with a seven-game winning streak to finish 10-3. Oklahoma fell to 10-3 with the loss.
Unacceptable.
No. 2 Arizona can’t lose to No. 15 Princeton.
Not after what Princeton almost did to Georgetown in 1989. Not after what Princeton did to UCLA in 1996. Not after what Arizona State did to Nevada on Wednesday!
This is bad for Arizona fans, who will have to take prank phone calls from ASU fans and endure taunts from now until eternity. This is bad for Tommy Lloyd, who will have to deal with unflattering comparisons with Sean Miller. This for the Pac-12, which is fighting for relevance like buggy whip manufacturers in the age of the Model T. And it’s bad for the nation, with President Joe Biden having picked UA to win it all!
Unlike Sun Devil fans, Wildcats boosters plan their lives around Arizona men’s basketball. In the Phoenix area, ASU basketball is an afterthought. Down in Tucson, UA hoops is life.
Arizona went scoreless over the final 5 minutes, proving that nerves come into play at even the highest levels of basketball. Blueblood teams simply cannot allow plucky contenders to keep the score close in games like this. It looked like UA had things under control after halftime, but the Wildcats couldn’t match the intensity of the Tigers when it mattered most.
Brackets are busted. Gambling money has been lost. And pride has been shattered.
Tommy Lloyd was on top of the world just a week ago after winning the Pac-12 for the second year in a row. Now? He probably doesn’t want to get off a plane in southern Arizona for a couple of weeks.
He’s going to have to answer whether this loss was worse than Sean Miller falling to Buffalo in 2018.
From here, it wasn’t. Miller had the No. 1 draft pick in Deandre Ayton, plus a slew of blue chippers. On top of that, Buffalo’s coach at the time, Nate Oats, now leads Alabama, which earned the top overall seed in this year’s tournament.
But maybe … No one thought much of Buffalo at the time. And even though Princeton’s big moments in the Big Dance came a million years ago, the Tigers are known to backcut and fundamental their way into shocking big schools.
Regardless of which loss you think was worse, who wants to even have that conversation?!
Especially after Arizona State and the Flyin’ Bobby Hurleys looked like they could qualify for the NBA playoffs just a day earlier. This is the kind of thing little-brother fanbases, like ASU men’s basketball supporters, live to hold over their in-state rivals, which have national title aspirations every year, like UA.
The Pac-12 is fighting for relevance. This doesn’t help. At all.
If the conference disintegrates in the next five years, analysts will be looking back to this loss to ask whether it was the beginning of the end.
And poor Joe Biden. The president is trying to bring together a divided nation and picked UA in a play that could have won him support in a vital swing state. Instead, he looks like a bandwagoner kissing up to earn brownie points. And if it feels unfair, tough cookies. This is what comes with tradition and expectation.
ASU fans have been looking forward to having their weekends free. UA fans have been budgeting for flights and hotels in Houston for the Final Four.
This is completely unacceptable.
It could happen to any team in any tournament, but it’s Lloyd’s job to make sure it doesn’t happen to his squad or to his fans.
He had better win some games in March next season or the conversation around his program, his conference and even his nation are going to sound a lot different.
LAS VEGAS—The revenge tour is complete.
Courtney Ramey drained the go-ahead 3-pointer with 16.8 seconds left to give Arizona its second straight Pac-12 title, beating top-seeded UCLA 61-59 on Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena.
The second-seeded Wildcats (28-6) improved to 9-0 in revenge games under Tommy Lloyd, getting payback for a regular-season loss for the third time in as many games during the conference tournament. Arizona has now won nine Pac-12 tourney titles.
UCLA (29-5) had a chance to win it at the buzzer, after Azuolas Tubelis missed the second of two free throws with 5.8 seconds to go, but Dylan Andrews’ 3-point try was off the rim. As soon as it bounced, the Arizona-heavy #McKaleNorth crowd erupted.
Tubelis finished with 19 points and 14 rebounds, making 9 of 11 free throws. He was 5 of 17 from the field, missing all seven of his field goal attempts, but was 6 of 7 from the line a night after the UA as a team was 5 of 12 on foul shots in the semifinal win over ASU.
Ramey’s 3 was his only make of the night, and it came after Tubelis was off on a 3-point try but Pelle Larsson tapped out the rebound to the 5th-year transfer guard at the top of the key. Larsson finished with 11 points, four rebounds and five assists.
Oumar Ballo, who joined Tubelis on the All-Tournament team, had 13 points and eight rebounds.
Arizona shot 36.5 percent from the field and 30 percent from 3 but held UCLA to 36.7 and 21.1 percent shooting. The Bruins were without two starters, as wing Jaylen Clark missed the Pac-12 tourney with a leg injury and center Adem Bona, the conference’s Freshman of the Year, did not play after injuring his shoulder in the semifinals against Oregon.
In addition to missing Bona, UCLA had big men Mac Etienne and Kenneth Nwuba foul out but Arizona couldn’t take advantage inside, getting outscored 24-22. The Wildcats did have a 37-32 edge on the boards and limited UCLA to six second-chance points.
UCLA got 19 points from Amari Bailey, including a jumper with 2:52 left that gave the Bruins their last lead at 58-56, while Tyger Campbell had 16 and Jaime Jaquez Jr. had 14.
Campbell and Jaquez, the Pac-12 Player of the Year, combined to go 10 of 32.
Down 34-33 at the half, Arizona scored on its first possession but then went empty for almost four minutes, while UCLA built an 8-point lead at 43-35. During the drought the calls all went against the Wildcats, both offensively and defensively.
The UA trailed 46-37 after a Bailey 3 with 14:18 to go when Kerr Kriisa hit a 3, then on the next two possessions Ballo drew the fourth fouls on both Nwuba and Etienne in a 27-second span.
Eitenne fouled out with 9:35 left, and Larsson hit a 3 not long after to put Arizona back in front 50-48 to complete an 8-0 run. The lead was short lived, as UCLA scored six in a row and had a chance to make it bigger but Arizona’s defense clamped down in the halfcourt.
Kriisa swished a 3 to put the Wildcats ahead 55-54 with 5:23 left, its last lead until Ramey’s winning shot. Arizona had two other chances to go ahead in the final two minutes but turned it over, with Kriisa fouling out on a moving screen and Jaquez stealing it from Tubelis.
UCLA couldn’t capitalize, missing its final four shots, and when Ramey was called for a foul on Campbell with 5.8 seconds left the senior point guard made the first but missed the second, with Tubelis grabbing the rebound and getting fouled.
Offense was in short supply the first six-plus minutes, with Arizona not scoring for the first 3:33 and not getting its first basket until more than five minutes in. The pace picked up after that, with the teams combining to make 7 of 8 shots as the lead changed hands 12 times in the first half.
Arizona had multiple 4-point leads and then got up 27-22 on a pair of Tubelis free throws with 5:11 left, but UCLA went back in front on a 3-point play from Jaquez—with Tubelis getting his second foul on the play—with 3:05 to go.
The Bruins took a 1-point lead into the half on a baseline drive from Bailey in the final minute, on a play where it looked like he traveled, right after Larsson was called for steps on the other end.
Arizona now waits to see what its seed is and where it will play in the NCAA Tournament. The 2023 field will be announced Sunday at 3 p.m. MST.
The Arizona Wildcats are the outright 2021-22 Pac-12 Conference champions after winning both the regular season and conference tournament.
Arizona basketball survived a back-and-forth Pac-12 Tournament championship game in Las Vegas on Saturday night, beating the UCLA Bruins, 84-76.
The Wildcats managed to do so without the help of starting guard Kerr Kriisa the last two contests, as the Estonian suffered an ankle injury in Arizona’s conference tourney quarterfinal win over Stanford on Thursday.
Kriisa was seen walking without a boot or crutches before Saturday night’s contest after being wheelchaired out of the arena on Thursday and seen on the bench with a boot and crutches on Friday.
After trailing 40-35 at halftime, Arizona went on a 22-5 run over a nine-minute stretch in the second half to take a 63-58 lead.
That was largely due to Wildcats guard Bennedict Mathurin, who led the game in scoring with 27 points, 18 of which came in the second half.
Mathurin finished the night shooting 6-of-14 from the field (43%) and 2-of-6 from beyond the arc while going 13-for-15 from the free throw line (87%) in 39 minutes played.
The win improves Arizona’s overall record to 31-3 (18-2 Pac-12) and practically solidifies the Wildcats as a No. 1 seed for the NCAA Tournament.
And with selection Sunday at 3 p.m., there’s a chance Arizona could be the No. 1 overall seed.
,” Rodriguez said.