Brad Cesmat
Five things I took away from UCLA beating Arizona 75-71 to win the Pac-12 Title game in Las Vegas.
1)Free throw shooting is the achilles heel for the Cats
6-16 from the free throw line will get anyone beat. Doesn’t matter if you’re a #1 seed when the NCAA brackets are announced on Sunday. March Madness will have tight games. Aaron Gordon shoots 44% from the line(71-160) for the season. Think that number will be brought up a few times in the next week?
2)Nick Johnson didn’t touch the ball enough in the closing seconds.
Johnson led the ‘Cats in scoring with 22pts. Aaron Gordon made a poor decision taking air ball 3 down 71-68 with :23 remaining. Yes, Jordan Adams strip of Johnson was a big play, but Johnson has come up big several times. He was ballin hard
3)Kaleb Tarczewski is getting better and better.
12pts. 7rbs.was his line in the loss to UCLA. I liked how well he played through the tourney and even at the end of the season. In my mind he has emerged as one of the better “bigs” in the country.
4)Arizona red may dominate in the stands, but not on the court
In the two years that the Pac-12 Tourney has been played in Las Vegas, Arizona has easily brought the most fans. Credit UCLA for basically winning a game that was listed as “neutral court” but was really a Wildcat home game.
5)This loss won’t do anything to Arizona on Sunday
They will still be a number one seed. The angle of “wake up call” will be thrown around. I think that stuff is garbage. They lost a game and the Pac-12 tourney, that’s it.
BTW, can we make sure that UCLA and Arizona don’t play each other just once in the regular season next year?
