SAN DIEGO — Well, at least it got interesting.
And it almost got really interesting.
With just more than 14 minutes to play Friday at Viejas Arena, Wright State, a No. 16 seed that had to win a play-in game two nights earlier just to earn the right to play Arizona, trailed the top-seeded Wildcats by just eight points.
The Raiders had the ball and Trey Calvin had a great look at a 3-pointer, and with the ball in the air, the non-Arizona portion of the crowd prepared to get loud in support of the underdog.
The shot missed. The crowd groaned.
Barely a dozen seconds later, Dalen Terry made a 3-pointer for the Wildcats. A Wright State turnover and an alley-oop to 7-1 Christian Koloko made it a 13-point lead.
The Wildcats weren’t done. A scramble left the ball in the hands of Bennedict Mathurin, who drilled a 3 for a 16-point lead. Another Mathurin jumper extended it to 18, two free throws by Koloko made it 20. You get the idea.
By the time Tim Finke converted a turnaround jumper with 11:17 to play, it only cut Arizona’s advantage to 18. The Raiders would get no closer than 13 the rest of the way.
In the end, the result was predictable, Arizona winning 87-70 to advance to a second-round game here Sunday against the winner of Friday’s late game between No. 8 Seton Hall and No. 9 TCU.
“The 1-16 game is never easy,” Arizona first-year head coach Tommy Floyd said after his tournament debut. “There’s a lot of pressure. You could feel the start of the second half when they made a run and cut it to eight or six or whatever. I think more fans got behind it than just Wright State fans.”
Wright State finished its season 22-14, but the Raiders were more than cannon fodder.
“We didn’t win the game,” coach Scott Nagy said. “But what was nice for me is in the timeout (when it was 50-42), I just looked at the players, all I said was hey, and they all shook their head, we got it, Coach, now we can play. And that was a good moment for me. I didn’t have to say anything. All of a sudden they were excited.”
Unlike Texas Tech, the other highly seeded team here this weekend, Arizona did not play something resembling its best game of the season. But the Wildcats weren’t bad, even with an uncharacteristic 19 turnovers, and they were missing point guard Kerr Kriisa (sprained ankle; status unknown for Sunday).
The fact the game even came close to being close was a credit to Wright State. By time the arena was even half-full, Arizona had a 21-7 lead. The Wildcats seemed to do as they pleased.
They showed off their depth as well. For some teams it might have been a concern that an all-conference first team player like Azuolas Tubelis had two fouls in under eight minutes but the Wildcats just subbed in Koloko, another first-teamer and the conference Defensive Player of the Year.
Koloko had 17 points, 13 rebounds, six assists and five blocks — the first player in tournament history with that line.
Asked about that he said, “It feels good. I don’t know what to say. I was just playing basketball and it happens.”
What also happened: Raiders star Tanner Holden, who had 37 points in the play-in win over Bryant, got his first field goal Friday after 49 seconds ... of the second half. Holden said it was a “different game” and “nothing they were doing,” but he had just 12 points on 3-of-11 shooting.
“Great player (but) we have great size across the board,” Lloyd said. “We have physical defenders and we can guard him and we were trying to do a really good job playing clean and not fouling him and making him finish over the top.
“This is a guy that scored 37 points on shots at the rim. Maybe a mid-range shot or two. Doesn’t shoot many 3s. He made like 15 free throws last game. We really needed to do a good job keeping him off the line. I think our guys did a good job of that and our size probably impacted him a little.”
