Caleb Love from Arizona remembers the best moments of its preceding March Madness appearances
Caleb Love d’Arizona talks about expectations for her team in Big 12 and her hopes for March Madness. He also talks about his partnership with Ritz.
Kansas City, Mo. – The Arizona Wildcats Pulled 52.6% of the field and defended Kansas better than five days earlier to beat the Jayhawks 88-77 in a quarter-final match of the Big 12 Thursday at the T-Mobile Center.
The victory moved Arizona to 21-11 and in a Big 12 semi-final match against Texas Tech Friday around 6.30pm, keeping alive the possibility that the Wildcats can always recover a preferential series of the NCAA tournament on the selection Sunday.
Kansas fell to 21-12.
Henri Veesaar, leaving the bench while UA coach Tommy Lloyd chose to put Trey Townsend back in the starting formation, led the Wildcats with 19 points and four rebounds – while Townsend added 16 points and three rebounds.
The Arizona held the Kansas at 41.9% shooting.
Arizona called for a time dead with 5:43 to do after Kansas reduced the AU advance to 70-69 on a dickinson reversal, which had started to injure the Wildcats inside after having marked mainly outside before half-time. Dickinson collected 19 points and 12 rebounds at that time after having collected 33 points and 10 rebounds against Arizona on March 8.
But Henri Veesaar rolled inside for a score and picked up Dickinson’s fault, then converted a three-point game to give the Wildcats an advance of 73-69 with 5:02 to go, and UA was launched from seven with four to go before Dajuan Harris was gying with Bryant with 3:24 with 3:24.
But Arizona scored six consecutive points to move forward 82-72 with 1:37 to play and hung on to the Jayhawks, who had to go to overtime a night earlier to beat the UCF and reach the quarterfinals.
Led 45-37 at half-time after shooting 53.3% in the first half and by making 7 of the 11 3 points, the Wildcats took advances of 10 points at the start of the second half, but the Kansas made a race of 10-1 to equalize the match at 50 when Zeke Mayo struck a step back at 3 points from the right corner with 3:43 p.m.
After the Arizona scored twice inside, Mayo struck three others with 14:03 to play to reduce the advance of Arizona to 54-53 and the advance remained in one figure Veesaar made its three-point game with five minutes to do.
In the first half, Arizona pulled 53.3% while hitting 7 of the 11 points to 3 points to take a 45-37 advance at half-time on the Jayhawks.
Veeesaar led UA with 10 points while hitting the two points he took, while the first -year striker Carter Bryant also hit two 3 points on the bench.
Dickinson collected eight points and nine rebounds to lead the Kansas, but counted six of its points on two 3 points while the Wildcats managed to defend the interior.
Kansas pulled 33.3% in total, but only made 4 of the 17 shots inside the arc, and the Jayhawks kept it almost half mainly because they reached 7 of the 15 points at 3 points.
After UA has taken lead of up to 12 points in the middle of the first half, a 3 points from Dajuan Harris from Kansas reduced the AU to only 38-35 entering an expiration time with 2:42 to do in half-time.
The Jayhawks have further reduced to three with 1:54 to do when KJ Adams hit two free throws, but Veesaar hit a 3-point key with 56 seconds remaining in half time.
None of the two teams finished early, with Dickinson and Veeesaar exchanging 3 points which led to a draw of 9-9 four minutes in the match, but the Wildcats made a sequence of 10-0 with 3s of Carter Bryant and Kj Lewis.
Arizona continued to take two advances over 12 points in the middle of half-time, but the Kansas then finished 3 of Guards David Coit and Dajuan Harris around the eight-minute media time to reduce the AU’s advances to six points and 3S of Zeke Mayo and Harris each fired in Kansas less than three.
AU coach Tommy Lloyd has chosen to start Trey Townsend on Veesaar at Power Forward after Townsend had 13 points and seven rebounds in Kansas on March 8, although he ended up playing Veesaar 15 minutes from the bench anyway. Townsend collected four points and two rebounds in 14 minutes.
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