I’m not disappointed by a 33-point loss.
In fact, I’m encouraged.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy that we lost by 33 points to Arizona Tuesday night, but by no means am I giving up on this team. If you want to know what the Billikens accomplished on Tuesday, just look at the reaction of Arizona coach Lute Olsen. He was not a happy camper following a dominant performance by his Wildcats … or was it?
The Billikens were missing one vital element in Tucson–depth. The Bills needed four more bodies on the bench to make Tuesday’s game close. When Olsen made his first substitutions, he took out all five of his starters and replaced them with a group of players that most analysts believe could be in the top 25 if they were their own team.
Think about it–five bench players that would start at virtually every school in Conference USA. It almost isn’t fair. But that isn’t the truly amazing part.
For about 12 minutes the Bills managed to play with and even outplay the Wildcats. It was at the eight-minute mark in the first half that fatigue set in, and the Bills’ chance at slaying Goliath disappeared. But can you blame them? Arizona played their typical game of press and run, which made the Bills work to bring the ball up the 94 feet of hardwood on every single possession. There was no walking the ball gingerly up the court and waltzing right into our offense. It was made tough, by design, and there were always at least three Wildcats pressuring the basketball, as the Bills attempted to move up the court.
Olsen knew that he had something the Billikens couldn’t match–depth. All the heart in the world cannot match a fresh body coming off the bench. The worst part of it all is that the Billikens did show heart but just didn’t have the manpower to make Tuesday a memorable night. We simply ran out of gas.
After the game, the Arizona players were quoted as saying that Olsen was acting like Arizona lost rather than having won. It is because somewhere in a 33-point victory, Olsen saw the mortality of his team come to the surface.
An undermanned, undersized, physically weaker basketball team showed Arizona’s Achilles’ heel to the world. Somehow, in a game that was one-sided on the scoreboard, the Billikens managed to lose the rebounding battle by only three. Also, the Bills turned the ball over merely 16 times–which may seem like a lot, but against Arizona 16 turnovers is anemic. What Olsen realized is that the Bills shot 12 percent from beyond the arc and still kept the game from becoming a laughingstock.
The Bills handled the pressure, the size and the strength of Arizona with not nearly enough physical resources. Bills coach Brad Soderberg did everything he could do. He rotated the Bills as often as he could; but no matter the rotation, he couldn’t keep fatigue from setting in. Players like Phillip Hunt put in yeoman’s effort during the game, there just simply weren’t enough Hunts to go around.
So where do the Billikens go from here? They go back to their schedule as usual and wait for conference play to begin. But, by no means, do they drop their heads because of a 33-point loss.
Arizona has blown out everyone from UCLA to Duke, and they have looked worse than the Billikens did on Tuesday night. So the next time that you see a Billiken player or read the recap on the Arizona game, remember–given a healthy squad of 12, who knows what kind of magic Soderberg could have conjured up.
