SEATTLE — When Arizona and Oregon get together, all bets are off. Conjuring up memories of the "Pac-12 after dark" era, the Wildcats and Ducks staged a wildly entertaining 40 minutes of basketball Sunday night at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle. Arizona emerged with an 87-83 victory to advance to the Sweet 16 of the 2025 NCAA Tournament.
The game had a little bit of everything, including a "class B technical foul" for hanging on the rim and a three-on-one fast break that Arizona botched when both Caleb Love and KJ Lewis tried to catch an alley-oop and ran into each other. "That was fun tonight. We had a lot of fun," Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said after the game. "I guess we had a three-on-one fast break where two guys went for the alley-oop and it didn't go in, and my good friend, Steve Kerr, texted me like 'What was the hell was up with that three on one?'
All jokes aside, Arizona was at its best in the biggest moments — especially Caleb Love. Arizona's fifth-year senior leader scored a game-high 29 points on 10-of-18 shooting. Tobe Awaka, who battled foul trouble throughout the game, racked up 12 points and 14 rebounds in just 22 minutes. Anthony Dell'Orso, Jaden Bradley, and KJ Lewis also finished with 12 points, complementing Love's performance.
Here are the highlights of Lloyd's postgame press conference:
Lloyd: 'Tremendously proud of these guys'
"It was a great game and tons of respect for Oregon and Coach Altman. If you could take the outcome, the negative part of the outcome, away from either team, it's fun competing against them. That was fun tonight. We had a lot of fun," Lloyd said. "Giving credit to a lot of these guys here. We've really been talking about just kind of developing — I don't want to say unemotional, but a real steady approach, zero-zero score, so-what-now type mentality. These guys executed it to perfection today. To go down 14 or whatever we did early and then not panic and just realize how much time was left in the game and just to literally take a lead by halftime, that says something about this group."
"Just tremendously proud of these guys and all three of 'em individually. Tobe, you know, he's a beast, a double-double in the first half. Henri Veesaar's in foul trouble and those two become quite a duo. So Tobe had to carry a heavy load. Delli hit a big three, had a nice little shake. Was that a dunk on that baseline drive or not?"
Lloyd on Caleb Love: 'He was obviously the best player on the floor'
"And then Caleb was sensational. We've had a lot of conversations, and Caleb has so much potential and he's so good already. What's cool is how much better he can get. And his approach today, just staying steady and staying unemotional. I think there were a couple ball-handling errors I probably would have taken back. But I'm picky."
"I was just really proud of how he came out and played in that moment. It just says so much to me about his development as a player and a person, and he was obviously the best player on the floor today, and he was able to carry us to victory. So thanks to C-Love for that."
"Caleb's really grown in his leadership role. I think that as a young player, the spotlight was on him in such a way that — the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I think for a long portion of his career Caleb kind of had to just take care of himself, which I totally get, I totally understand."
"But this year I've really seen him kind of grow into that leader role and be more mature about it. He's unbelievable with his teammates. I get asked a lot what it's like to coach Caleb, and I just tell them it's really simple. I've never had one bad experience. Never had one bad experience. I've never had one talk-back, never had one bad body language with me, never had anything like that."
"So he's been a great gentleman for me to coach. And I don't know if people — people that have this perception of him otherwise just don't know him. I'm really proud of the leader he's become. I told Caleb coming into this tournament, even this tournament's not going to define his career or make his life better. He's been through so much already. He's so ready for the next step. I think when this college thing ends for him, I'll be sad because I'm going to lose a great player, but I'm also going to be happy for him, and I think he's going to have a sense of relief and he's going to kind of — a burden is going to be lifted from him in his life and he's going to be able to move forward into his next phase of his life and his basketball career and I don't see any way he's going to be denied from reaching his dreams."
Lloyd on falling behind 19-4 to start the game
"I just think we wanted to stay steady. I knew there was so much time in the game and so many possessions, you just didn't want to dig a deeper hole. I felt like if we cut it to nine then seven — I mean, I've been in so many of those games where I've been on the other end of 'em. You almost feel like it's inevitable that a good team's going to come back on you."
"So I wanted them to feel that and I wanted our guys just to hang with it. I think we kind of tried some things with the game plan, maybe a little bit too much scheme early, but I think it was the right plan and when our guys got settled into executing it, I think it was pretty effective."
"And maybe you saw that after kind of those first two media timeouts. We kind of settled into executing our plan and we really didn't make any adjustments from the plan A that we had coming into the game. So Jack Murphy and TJ Benson and Rem Bakamus did a great job kind of giving our guys a winning plan tonight."
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