Duke, Kentucky, Kansas and Michigan State were all popular preseason picks to cut down the nets in April.
Arizona, meanwhile, was somewhat forgotten. That should change now, after the No. 4 Wildcats’ impressive 72-66 victory over Jabari Parker and the No. 6 Blue Devils in the NIT Season Tip-Off championship game at the Garden Friday night.
With thunderous chants of “U of A” reverberating throughout the arena, Arizona pulled away late from Duke and wore the Blue Devils down with depth, experience and the size of its mammoth front line. Coach Sean Miller received production from all eight players he used, seven of whom scored seven points or more.
“We’re an all-around team,” junior guard Nick Johnson said. “Really you could see it in the box score. … We’re a good team and we can play with anybody.”
In a game billed as a battle of freshmen possibly ticketed for the NBA Draft Lottery, Arizona’s veteran guards keyed the Wildcats dominant second half.
Johnson, named the tournament MVP, led the Pac-12 school with 15 points — 13 after halftime — while junior point guard T.J. McConnell, who sat out last year after transferring from Duquesne, added 10 points, eight assists and six rebounds. He was viewed as the missing link last year, when a talented Arizona team flamed out in the Sweet 16. Now, Arizona looks to him as a true point guard who can mesh the incoming freshmen talent — Aaron Gordon and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson — with the talented holdovers.
“He’s always in the right place,” Miller raved. “The only thing he tries to do is run his team and get assists, and in today’s day and age, that’s rare.”
Arizona (7-0) did a fine job on Parker, holding the sensational freshman below 20 points for the first time in his college career. The Wildcats used a number of different defenders on him, forwards with length, guards with quickness, and limited the Chicago phenom to 19 points.
Rodney Hood led Duke (6-2) with 21 points and eight rebounds.
Parker put together a spurt late in the first half, making three shots in a row, but he otherwise struggled on the offensive end, missing 14 of the 21 shots he attempted, his jumper off the mark.
“Jabari’s going to get a lot of attention, and he had numerous shots go in and out today,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “He has to keep shooting them.”
The 6-foot-8 Gordon was impressive in his own right, but in a subtler way. He was one of the many players Miller used on Parker, and he displayed patience beyond his years, distributing four assists to go along with his 10 points on six shot attempts, seven rebounds and two blocked shots.
Gordon sank a 3-pointer and then converted a three-point play as part of an 8-0 run that gave Arizona a 57-48 lead with 6:25 remaining.
“Aaron is not going to go score 30. He’s not a volume shooter,” Miller said. “He’s a basketball player and if you really think about what he did during the game, who he guarded — he guarded Parker and Hood. He had seven rebounds and he made a couple of the best passes on offense for us.”
It was telling that Krzyzewski praised his team’s effort and performance afterward, saying it was improved compared with its other loss, to top-ranked Kansas. It was a compliment lobbed toward Arizona, a team that looks capable of doing big things in March.
“I think we can be special, no question,” Miller said.