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The best resume in college basketball belongs to the Arizona Wildcats, and the second-best isn’t within shouting distance of Tommy Lloyd’s team.
Following Wednesday night’s 71-67 road triumph over No. 3 UConn, Arizona became just the third team in the AP poll era — and the first since 1989 — to have multiple wins over top-three opponents in its first five games of the season.
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Behind the electric play of freshman Koa Peat, ‘Zona made a statement on opening night by toppling reigning national champion — and then-No. 3 Florida — at the Hall of Fame Series in Las Vegas.
Sandwiched in between their bookend victories over third-ranked teams was also a 69-65 win over chief rival and 15th-ranked UCLA. They have also hammered Utah Tech and Northern Arizona in a pair of buy games.
They almost certainly won’t be, but Arizona should be the No. 1 team in the country when the new Associated Press Top 25 poll is released on Monday. Their outrageous early resume more than justifies it.
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There’s something strange about watching the Wildcats play basketball though, something that almost makes the experience feel … wrong.
In the midst of the ongoing three-point revolution at all levels of basketball, the Wildcats do almost all of their damage inside the arc.
That’s not hyperbole. After nearly three full weeks of play, Arizona ranks 360th out of 365 Division-I teams when it comes to the percentage of shots taken from behind the three-point line. They made only two in their win over Florida and then proved it wasn’t a fluke by only making two in their win over UConn a couple weeks later.
The inside attack was on full display against the Huskies in a game where ‘Zona got 45 percent of its shots at the rim and 30 percent of its shots from — avert your eyes, analytics enthusiasts — the midrange. UConn took the more modern approach of attempting 21 percent of its shots at the rim and 52 percent from beyond the arc.
Against Florida, it was even…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/arizona-bizarre-play-style-producing-172453030.html
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Publish date : 2025-11-21 17:24:00
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