TUCSON, Ariz.—Sean Miller isn’t just coaching the basketball players at Arizona. He’s coaching the students who root for the Wildcats, too.
The first-year coach met with students this week to teach them some tactics to use while cheering on the Wildcats, and he credits them for helping Arizona beat Rice 66-49 Thursday night.
At the start of the game and early in the second half, the student section known as the “Zona Zoo” chanted “boing” with each Rice dribble, “pass” with each pass and “brick” with each shot.
It seemed to rattle Rice. The Owls made two of their first 20 shots as the Wildcats took a 24-6 lead.
“Anyone who was in the building understood that our students, they were almost like another defender out there early on,” Miller said. “Their togetherness and support is so appreciated. There never has been an Arizona team that needs McKale to be at the heightened environment more than this team.”
Nic Wise had 15 points, seven assists and five steals and Jamelle Horne scored eight of his 13 in the final 5 ½ minutes to help Arizona pull away.
Freshmen Solomon Hill and Derrick Williams, moved into the starting lineup, scored 12 and 10, respectively, for Arizona (2-0).
Freshman Arsalan Kazemi, the first Iranian to play major college basketball in the United States, had 13 points and 10 rebounds for the Owls (3-1). Tamir Jackson, also a freshman, added 11 points for Rice.
“It’s a really ugly game when you turn the ball over and you shoot like that,” Rice coach Ben Braun said. “Our guys were just frustrated that the shots weren’t going down and they started compounding that with turnovers.”
The Owls used a 9-1 run to make it 44-38 on Connor Frizzelle’s driving floater in the lane with 13:20 to play.
“It’s not our offense that lets teams back in, it’s our defense,” said Wise, the senior point guard who decided to come back to school after Miller was hired. “... We’ve just got to learn to keep locking up for 40 minutes and never let our guard down.”
Miller called a time-out to get his team back on track.
“We weren’t playing particularly well on offense throughout the game,” he said. “We took some bad shots, turnovers. It wasn’t a fast-paced game. To have 17 turnovers, it’s tough to score when you can’t get a shot. We went through a stretch where in conjunction with poor offense we didn’t play great defense.”
But Hill made a baseline layup, Wise sank a 16-footer and Williams had a dunk. The Wildcats led 52-40 with 10 minutes to play and Rice never got it to single digits again.
“We’re not a very good team right now,” Miller said. “We’re I think a team that can get a lot better. I think tonight if you watched us we had great effort on defense at times, and that’s a starting point.”
The Wildcats scored the first nine points of the game against the Owls, who made just two of their first 20 shots.
Three-pointers by Wise and Kyle Fogg put Arizona up 24-6 with six minutes left in the half.
Rice, though, responded with a 14-4 run to cut it to 28-20 1:55 before the break on Kazemi’s put-back after an Arizona turnover. The Wildcats scored the last five of the half. Brendon Lavender made two free throws with 1:37 to go, then Fogg’s 3-pointer with 8 seconds left gave Arizona a 33-20 lead at the break.
Kazemi scored 11 of Rice’s 20 first-half points on 4 of 4 shooting. The rest of the Owls made 2 of 27 shots. The Owls shot 29 percent to Arizona’s 45 percent for the game.
“We are rebuilding,” said Braun, who as coach at Cal played many games at McKale Center. “I really liked what I saw out of some of our freshmen tonight in Arsalan and Tamir. They really played hard. We just have to take care of the ball and that’s indicative of a young team.”
The Wildcats leave Friday for Hawaii, where they will meet Wisconsin Monday in the first round of the Maui Invitational. Rice is home against Furman on Tuesday, then hosts No. 3 Texas on Nov. 29.
