One of the biggest games of the Big 12 basketball season came to a close on Saturday evening, with Tommy Lloyd and the Arizona Wildcats outlasting Kelvin Sampson’s Houston Cougars in a statement win.
Both teams entered the game ranked in the Top Five, with Arizona fourth and Houston second. Arizona led early on and pushed through with a six-point halftime lead. As you could guess, the Cougars didn’t go away easily, and this game was tight til the end. When the final seconds on the clock wound down, Arizona remained standing at the end of the battle, with a seven-point win to show for it.
Here are three big takeaways from Arizona’s 73-66 win over Houston.
GREAT TEAMS PUT GOOD TEAMS AWAY
Well, it may sound simple, but great teams have to find a way to put good teams away. When you let elite groups like Houston hang around, they always make a run, if not multiple. That was the case on Saturday as Arizona led by as much as 10 points in the first half before things got down to nearly a one-possession game a few times. With a little more than a minute remaining, Arizona led by just four before Jaden Bradley scored six straight to give his squad some breathing room.
Arizona still has to take care of things over the next few weeks, but it’s going to be hard to keep them off the one line in the NCAA Tournament come March.
WHEN YOU NEEDED A HERO
If you polled all of Arizona’s fans before this game and asked who would be the leading scorer for the Wildcats, I’d wager not a lot would say Anthony Dell’Orso. Coming off the bench, the veteran guard gave Arizona 22 points, going 8-14 from the field, 2-5 from three, and 4-6 from the free throw line. He played right around 34 minutes of the contest, a much larger workload than his usual 21 MPG. This is mainly due to the foul trouble that plagued Motiejus Krivas and Tobe Awaka, which kept Dell’Orso in the spotlight.
In one of the biggest games of the year, it’s guys like Anthony Dell’Orso who will be remembered for their effort. Providing 20+ bench points against a Kelvin Sampson defense is never easy, and Arizona needed every bit of his production tonight.
CLEAR THE RUNWAY
If the Big 12 announced its league champion with four games remaining, we’d have our answer. Well, that’s not how this works. That said, Arizona now holds a clear advantage over the rest of the field with four games to go. The Wildcats and Cougars were tied in the league standings before tipoff, each at 11-2. Arizona is now the lone squad with just two losses in conference play, sitting at a dominant 12-2. Now, they still have to take care of business against Baylor, No. 8 Kansas, No. 6 Iowa State, and Colorado, but they’ve got the formula figured out.
We’ll learn a lot more about the Big 12 race in the next few weeks, but for now, Arizona sits atop the throne. Here’s what a look around the league standings looks like following their win.
Arizona, 12-2Houston, 11-3Iowa State, 10-3Kansas, 10-4Texas Tech, 10-4
There can always be strange changes in a league like the Big 12, but as of now, the runway is clear for Tommy Lloyd’s group to land with a Big 12 title in their hands.
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