There are no bye weeks in college basketball, but Arizona has had the closest thing to it. The Wildcats haven’t played since lasts month, technically, with the win Jan. 31 at ASU setting the school record for best start to a season, and when they tip off Saturday at home against Oklahoma State it will be after six days off.
From playing. Not anything else.
“We practiced, we’ve been practicing pretty much every day,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said Thursday. “And we want to keep building and getting better. We understand we have a lot of challenges coming up. We want to rest and recover, but you have to have a mindset to continue to improve.”
While Oklahoma State (16-6, 4-5 Big 12) will present some challenges to Arizona, particularly if it plays like it did in knocking off No. 16 BYU on Wednesday, the gauntlet starts Monday. That’s when the Wildcats visit No. 11 Kansas, the first of four consecutive games against ranked opponents and seven straight contests that currently count as Quad 1 opportunities.
That makes Saturday’s game one with “trap” potential if the UA is looking too much ahead.
“Well, I’m sure they’re really excited,” Lloyd said about the upcoming slate. “I think they love the challenge. They love competing. But I also think our guys are mature enough to know that Oklahoma State’s going to come in here, and we’re going to have to be ready to play a really good game to find a way to get a W.”
Here’s what to watch for when the Wildcats and Cowboys tussle in Tucson:
A frenetic foe on the rise
Oklahoma State has already surpassed its regular season win total from 2024-25, coach Steve Lutz’s first year. It’s almost an entirely new roster for the Cowboys, who in addition to scoring 99 against BYU on Wednesday have an early-season win over SEC co-leader Texas A&M.
“I think they’re much improved from last year,” Lloyd said. “Coach Lutz has found a way to win everywhere he’s been. When I was watching that game against BYU they looked like a pretty good team to me.”
The Cowboys are one of the few teams the UA will face this season that play at a faster pace, ranking 13th in adjusted tempo per KenPom.com at 72.3 possessions per 40 minutes. Arizona is 25th, at 71.1.
The UA scored 96 points against Alabama, which has the third-fastest pace, and 101 against Kansas State (22nd). Neither of those teams are known for being as intense on defense as with the ball, though.
“They’re handsy,” Lloyd said. “You can see that at the start of the BYU game yesterday. I think BYU might have had six or seven turnovers in the first five minutes, so that’s definitely something that we have to account for.
“I think one of the things they do is they make the game kind of frenetic, and they play with great pace and great energy at both ends of the floor. These guys have a lot of freedom. He gives them enough structure that you have to be able to guard their actions. But at the same point, their guys that are good enough, good enough and have the confidence and the freedom to make plays individually. That makes for a dangerous team.”
Leading scorer Anthony Roy averages 19.1 points in Big 12 play and is shooting 46.8 percent from 3 in league action. He has six games this season with at least five makes.
“The guy can really, really shoot,” Lloyd said. “He can shoot from deep. And it’s one of those guys, you might tell your team like, well, if they’re shooting from that deep and we got a hand up we’ll live with that. I don’t know if you’re living with it with this guy.”
During TNT’s postgame show following the win over ASU, studio analyst Jalen Rose was the latest talking head to bring up Arizona’s lack of 3-point shooting as a concern. The Wildcats, who were 4 for 11 in Tempe, are taking the nation’s 4th-lowest percentage (27.0) of shots from the perimeter, at. In Big 12 play that number has dipped even further, to 23.9 percent, and the UA ranks 10th in league games in 3-point shooting at 33.8 percent.
Rose won’t be the last national guy to bring this up, and Lloyd is fine with that. He also still doesn’t think it’s an issue for his team.
“Listen, you guys can discuss anything you want,” he said. “With the way media is and the way social media is, and so many people have an opinion these days. Everyone’s trying to look for an outlying thing to find a chink in the armor, which is fine, that’s everybody’s right. I honestly don’t look at the 3-point shooting deal.”
Lloyd joked after Arizona’s last home game, Jan. 24 against West Virginia when his team hit 10 triples for the first time since mid-December, that the mini-posters put on every seat at McKale Center that say should have said “paint twos and free throws.” That’s been the Wildcats’ bread and butter, averaging 43.6 points per game in the paint and getting more than 22 percent of their scoring at the foul line.
“I want good shots,” Lloyd said. “I want foul pressure. I love layups. I like transition fast breaks. And I really like good open 3-point shots from our good 3-point shooters. Because to me, when we take that approach, then we then we can get the cumulative effect.”
During halftime the UA will honor the 2001 team that lost to Duke in the NCAA title game. That was the program’s last Final Four appearance, though there have been several times getting painfully close since then.
Nearly all of the players from that squad are expected to be in attendance, with Jason Gardner the one helping to get it all set up. Arizona’s Director of Player Relations since Lloyd took over in 2021, he was the starting point guard on that team as a sophomore.
“It’s crazy that we’re even sitting here talking about it,” Gardner said. “Just really can’t believe it’s 25 years ago. I think we kind of had it all, just kind of came up short in that championship game.”
