One glaring problem the University of Utah basketball team has had is a shortage of options along its frontline.
The University of Arizona was happy to exploit that fact during the second half on Saturday night.
Arizona’s size wore the Utes down. Azuolas Tubelis, a 6-foot-11, second-year Lithuanian freshman, had a monster night, finishing with a career-high 32 points on 14-for-24 shooting to go along with eight rebounds and five assists as the No. 6 Wildcats took charge in the second half for an 82-64 win at the McKale Center.
Tubelis’ damage, a big part of the Wildcats’ 56 points in the paint, came as Utah (8-9, 1-6 Pac-12) was without its center, Branden Carlson, who underwent an appendectomy on Jan. 8. Lahat Thioune started in his place for the second straight game, finishing with 10 points and two boards, all of it coming after the outcome was no longer in doubt.
Utah spent much of the first half in control, then kept contact in the early minutes of the second half as Arizona leaned on the Utes. They were within one at 46-45 with 12:24 to play, but the Wildcats (14-1, 4-0 Pac-12) reassumed control, embarking on a 21-0 run across 7:03. At one point, Tubeis scored on three consecutive possessions, two layups wrapped around a transition dunk. The second layup gave Arizona a 56-45 lead with 9:46 to play. That lead ballooned to as many as 22 at one point.
Playing in arguably the Pac-12′s toughest road environment, against an Arizona team that is among the leaders nationally in tempo, Utah was the one at the outset controlling how this game would be played.
The Utes were the ones controlling tempo, walking the ball up the floor, often bleeding the shot clock to single digits in an effort to get a clean look. They opened the game hitting six of their first eight shots, and while Arizona was making some hay in the halfcourt, it wasn’t doing much running.
Utah led by six on two separate occasions inside the final 6:00 of the half, but Arizona began to find some daylight. A midrange jumper by Pac-12 Player of the Year candidate Benedict Mathurin brought the Wildcats to within one at 28-27, a Christian Koloko second-chance bucket at the rim gave them the lead at 30-28 with 1:55 before halftime.
Arizona stretched that lead to six, but credit to Utah for having an answer via a Gabe Madsen 3-pointer from the left wing after his defender flew by after a ball fake. That triple sent the Utes to the locker room trailing, 34-31. The Wildcats got to that point in spite of turning the ball an uncharacteristic 10 times, while shooting just 1-for-12 from deep.
The Tribune will update this story.
from The Salt Lake Tribune https://ift.tt/3IcrPPk
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