UA basketball: Arizona 101, Oakland 64

This wasn’t a night for formalities.

During Arizona’s 101-64 drubbing of the Michigan-bred Grizzlies, Kampe went with a casual sporting look. Then he appeared to go on and have so many salty conversations with officials that he was twice whistled for technical fouls and thrown out of the game after 29 minutes.

Then there was UA coach Sean Miller, who said he opted to go without a tie in order to be more comfortable — but chose a game when he would never have to loosen the thing. His Wildcats went up 26-4 early, effectively ending the game after, oh, about eight minutes.

Miller and his players, clearly, didn’t need to be formal. They just went to business, moved to 11-0, extended their nonconference winning streak to 38 games and their home-court streak to 29 and finished perfect at home in calendar 2014.

After giving up a bucket on the Grizzlies’ first possession of the game, Arizona wouldn’t let the Grizzlies make any of their next 16 baskets. Then the Wildcats led 45-25 at halftime and, just in case that wasn’t enough, started the second half on a 17-6 run.

The least polite of them all? That might have been UA center Kaleb Tarczewski, who barely allowed Oakland’s best player, center Corey Petros to even breathe for the first eight minutes of the game.

All but wrapped up and stored away consistently by UA’s junior 7-footer, Petros barely touched the ball early and didn’t even take a shot until over 10 minutes were played and the game was already out of hand.

“I think Kaleb Tarczewski is the best frontcourt defender in the country,” Miller said. “I’ve seen him for three years defend all kinds of players and styles from all over the land, really. He doesn’t get the recognition because he’s not a great shot-blocker, but what he’s able to do being in position and in physicality.

“He was really good about Petros for most of the game, and then he had a couple of tough calls go against him, and he wasn’t able to be as aggressive.”

Well, that may have been nothing compared to Oakland’s plight, the way Kampe saw it. Petros fouled out with 5:23 to go, and three other Grizzlies had four fouls each.

And then there was that matter of play. Oakland shot just 25.8 percent from the field in the first half and, even though the Grizzlies are known for three-point shooting, hit just 2 of 13 long shots before halftime.

More? Arizona out-rebounded Oakland 50-22 and enjoyed 20 more trips to the free-throw line than the Grizzlies were able to make.

Which of those facts bothered Kampe the most wasn’t clear. His statement of comments issued by UA didn’t note anything about the ejection, and Miller said he wasn’t sure what was under his coaching friend’s collar, either.

But Miller knew this: Kampe wasn’t worried about it.

“He’s fine,” Miller said. “That’s not the first time he’s been thrown out.”

Miller smiled slightly when asked what Kampe was bothered by, noting that “he knows what he’s doing,” and appeared to reflect briefly back on the 2013 Pac-12 tournament referee controversy when he was asked if he’d ever been thrown out.

Miller was assessed a technical for arguing a turnover against Mark Lyons in a Pac-12 semifinal game against UCLA that season, and the incident later led to allegations that the Pac-12’s then-officials coordinator Ed Rush had improperly prodded his officials to monitor Miller (which later led to Rush resigning).

“I don’t think I have” been thrown out, Miller said. “If I had a do-over, I’d have gotten thrown out one time. You can take that one to the bank.”

For Kampe, maybe it was just a matter of not wanting to see anymore of the game. When he was tossed, Arizona led 72-40 with 11:30 to go, hours, it may have seemed, since that initial 26-4 UA run.

“The first 12 minutes of that game was probably as bad as I’ve ever seen us play,” Kampe said. “We didn’t handle the moment of playing the No. 3 team in the country, which is a very good team.”

Arizona didn’t want them to handle it well. Plagued earlier this season by slow starts, the Wildcats did exactly the opposite for both halves Tuesday.

“We respected Oakland because they can make the three-point shot, and Coach Miller was talking about how talented Petros was offensively,” UA wing Stanley Johnson said. “We try to play good defense and get on the run fast, and I think that reflected in the scoring.”

Arizona’s 101 points was the most a Miller-coached UA team has scored in regulation. They scored 107 at Cal in a triple-overtime win during the 2010-11 season and twice previously scored 100, the last against Fairleigh Dickinson last season.