Arizona made some headlines when it was revealed the struggling football program would be playing the first half of the basketball team’s game on the stadium’s video board in an attempt to motivate fans to show up for their matchup against Houston.
That strategy worked for the football team since they completely dominated the Cougars to snap their five-game losing streak and keep their bowl chances alive.
However, the basketball team wasn’t so lucky.
They suffered their first loss of the season, 103-88, on the road against Wisconsin.
The Wildcats never led at any point during the game, and despite making a run in the second half to tie things up following their 11-point halftime deficit, they weren’t able to sustain that level of play while the Badgers continued to score.
Defense has been an issue for Arizona on the hardcourt in the past, and that was on full display during this contest.
They allowed Wisconsin to shoot 48.1% from the floor and 44.4% from three (12-27), while also putting them on the foul line a staggering 47 times where the Badgers made 41 of those shots.
It was a recipe for allowing 100 points, and the Wildcats departed to Tucson trying to figure out how they can avoid that type of performance going forward.
For head coach Tommy Lloyd, his message was simple.
“We have to play smarter and we have to play better. I kind of warned our guys that they were adept at drawing fouls certain ways and we just didn’t play smart enough,” he said per Jason Scheer of 247Sports.
Fouls were the story of the game, with Arizona committing 32 of them, but it’s hard to argue the whistle was going against them when Wisconsin was also called for 31 fouls and allowed the Wildcats to shoot 40 free throws.
“You have to adjust to how the game is being called. We’ve probably had officials now 10 times and that was definitely the tightest we’ve felt it called. We’re getting officials from different parts of the country, I don’t know, but it was definitely the tightest. We have to adjust,” Lloyd added.
It’s still early in the campaign, so this road loss in a tough place to play isn’t going to ruin their season, but it was a bit concerning to see this type of performance, no matter if it was their third game of the year or not.
