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The Arizona men's basketball team set out to prove that last week's near-upset at the hands of St. Mary's was just a fluke.
Mission accomplished, more or less.
Arizona used a
second-half run and a pair of double-doubles by sophomore forwards Hassan Adams
and Andre Iguodala to down San Diego State 83-71 in McKale Center.
After the Aztecs cut Arizona's lead to 43-36 early in the second half, the Wildcats
busted the game open with a 17-2 spurt to open up a 63-41 advantage. Junior
guard Salim Stoudamire had six points and Iguodala dished out four assists during
the five-minute span.
Iguodala scored 10 points and had 12 rebounds for the game, including 10 boards in the second half. Adams scored a team-high 19 and added 11 rebounds for Arizona (6-1), while junior center Channing Frye came a rebound short of a double-double with 15 points and nine boards.
Frye actually botched a dunk off a missed shot in the second half that would have given him 10 rebounds on the night.
"I had 15 and nine, and it would have been nice to have 17 and 10, but you do what you've got to do to win," Frye said. "It's not about individual things."
Arizona out-rebounded the Aztecs 46-39 for the game.
"Hassan got to the defensive boards and ended up with a double-double [and] Andre got to the offensive boards and ended up with a double-double, so that's a step in the right direction," said UA head coach Lute Olson.
Sophomore guard Chris Rodgers matched a career-high with 17 points for the Wildcats off the bench, tallying a game-high 35 minutes.
"I thought Chris Rodgers played really well for us," Olson said. "He did a nice job defensively and he took good care of the ball."
SDSU (7-4) was led by senior center Aerick Sanders, who scored a game-high 24 points on 11-of-19 shooting.
The Aztecs kept Arizona's lead to single digits throughout the first half, cutting the Wildcats' lead to 32-29 with less than three minutes to play in the first.
But Arizona finished the half on a 9-2 run, capped by Rodgers' jumper as time expired to give the Wildcats their first double-digit advantage, 41-31, heading into halftime.
SDSU refused to go away, trimming the UA's lead to 46-39 four and a half minutes into the second.
At that point, Arizona seemingly decided that enough was enough, scoring 17 of the next 19 points to go up by 22. The Aztecs would cut Arizona's lead to 10 with under a minute left but would get no closer.
Olson was concerned with what he saw as inconsistent play from his team.
"We played lights out in some spurts and we played like the lights were out in some other times in the game, and that's still the thing that's gonna keep us from being a good team," he said. "We have two more games to get ready for [Pacific 10 Conference play], so hopefully we can start putting full games together."
"It doesn't matter how you start, it's how you end," Frye said. "But I think we're a better team when we have better starts, so we're just trying to get better every game."
The Wildcats are off until Sunday when they host the Fiesta Bowl Classic. Arizona faces Liberty in its first game of the tournament on Sunday and will take on either Valparaiso or Louisiana-Lafayette on Tuesday.
Olson said the team will begin preparation for Sunday's game the day after Christmas.
NOTES
-- Freshman forward Ivan Radenovic, who was added to the UA roster last week and is eligible to play in Arizona's next game, said he is "very excited" to play with the Wildcats.
"This kind of basketball is much faster," said Radenovic of the difference between playing in Europe and the United States. "Everything's faster. That's the only thing."
"He's just an awesome player. He's versatile and he's someone I'm excited to play with," Frye said.
Olson said Radenovic will have no problems easing into the Wildcats' system.
"He likes to run," Olson said. "He has a great feel for the game, almost like [former UA forward Luke] Walton's feel for the game."
"He's just like us, except he doesn't speak very good English," Frye joked.
-- Stoudamire played just 12 minutes in the second half of the win due to a minor hamstring injury, according to Olson.
"It was a just a case of where he was limping a little bit," Olson said. "Chris [Rodgers] was playing so well that there was no need for him to be out [on the court]."
Stoudamire scored nine points in 31 minutes but was just 1-of-6 from beyond the arc.
-- NBA legend Bill Walton was once again on hand to see his son play in McKale, except this time he was rooting against the Wildcats.
Wearing an Aztecs shirt, Walton had a front row seat to see his son, Chris, play for SDSU.
A starting junior forward, Chris Walton was not at the top of his game, scoring just four points on 2-of-7 shooting. The 6-foot-10 Walton was averaging nearly eight points per game.
-- With his face gracing the cover of the official game program, UA senior guard Fil Torres decided it would be a good night to have a career game.
The seldom-used Torres scored four points, all from the free-throw line in the final minute, as the Aztecs continued to foul the Wildcats down the stretch in a futile attempt to catch up.
"If they kept fouling him, he might have gotten in double figures," Olson said with a smile.