While the Bruins posted a last-second victory in Westwood on Thursday, the Wildcats slipped up 14 miles east an hour earlier.
UCLA men’s basketball (18-11, 11-5 Pac-12) will take on Arizona (19-9, 9-6) in Pauley Pavilion on Saturday with a bye in the Pac-12 tournament on the line. UCLA jumped up into a tie for first place in the conference standings after beating Arizona State on Thursday, while Arizona lost to USC elsewhere in Los Angeles.
The Wildcats failed to break the 50-point threshold for the first time all season in their 57-48 loss to the Trojans, but coach Mick Cronin said he will never make the mistake of underestimating a team coached by Sean Miller.
“Miller and I go way back. People try to make things out of stuff because we coached in a real heated rivalry,” Cronin said. “I would never play a Sean Miller-coached team and not know we have to be unbelievably prepared.”
The first time the two teams faced off this season, the visiting Bruins beat the then-No. 23 Wildcats in Tucson by double digits. Arizona shot 25.4% from the field that night, just the second time it failed to shoot higher than 30% this year.
The Wildcats did it for a third time Thursday against the Trojans, shooting 28.1% from the field and 11.5% from long range. Arizona was without its third-leading scorer and former five-star forward Josh Green, who missed the game with a lower back injury.
Green scored 11 points on 3-of-11 shooting last time out against UCLA, while his fellow five-star freshman guard Nico Mannion scored five points on 2-of-14 shooting.
“We’re just going to do the same thing we did last time,” said freshman guard/forward Jake Kyman. “Defense is our mindset every game. We’ve got to focus on the best players and try to get the ball out of their hands, and make other players do what they’re not used to.”
Mannion’s scoring output was less than half of his season average, and UCLA kept him out of the assist column for the second time all year.
The Bruins’ leading passer, redshirt freshman guard Tyger Campbell, averages 4.9 assists per game and leads qualified Pac-12 players with a 2.6-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio. Campbell put up 14 assists Thursday against Arizona State, becoming the 10th Bruin in program history to break that mark.
UCLA had nearly 10,000 fans in attendance for Campbell’s double-double against the Sun Devils, and there will likely be more flooding Pauley Pavilion on Saturday against the Wildcats.
“We hope for more,” said freshman guard/forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. “Hopefully the crowd had fun (Thursday). I know we had a lot of fun, jumping around after the game, hitting shots and everyone going crazy. So hopefully, come out Saturday please.”
Tipoff between the Bruins and Wildcats will be at 7 p.m. Saturday.
