Holt's happy homecoming helps Arizona Wildcats hand Auburn historic homecourt loss

AUBURN, Ala. – Alabama native Caleb Holt canvassed his Arizona teammates for help and somehow came up with about 50 tickets for friends and family to watch him play Friday at Neville Arena, about three hours away from his hometown of Huntsville.

That wasn’t nearly enough.

“Lot of family here, lot of people,” Holt said, grinning. “Probably a hundred and fifty.”

It likely was no problem.

Whoever paid for the remainder probably considered it money well spent. Because they just watched their guy throw down, literally in some cases, 24 points to help Arizona hand Auburn a historic 80-69 loss on Friday.

The Tigers had won 69 straight nonconference homecourt games, not losing to a non-SEC opponent since Oklahoma State beat them in 2015-16, but, poof, Holt and the Wildcats blasted through that barrier.

UA center Motiejus Krivas had 16 points and 12 rebounds while Ivan Kharchenkov had 19 points and eight rebounds, both players excelling in the second half while UA overcame brief Auburn second-half leads and eventually surpassed what was a four-point halftime advantage.

But UA coach Tommy Lloyd has been able to count on those two veterans for that sort of thing regularly so far this season.

With Holt there was gobs of talent, for sure, but also Friday’s game was only the fourth game of his college career and you'd think maybe he was facing a wall of home-state pressure, too?

Nah. Not really. Not the way Holt played, and not the way he spoke afterward.

“I wasn’t really nervous,” Holt said. “Just more excited.”

That much was evident early Friday. Holt said he didn’t want to make it about him and just wanted to win but, with Kharchenkov limited early, the Wildcats simply needed him to explode a little.

So he did.

Holt put in the first two 3-pointers he took early in the game, then hit a jumper with 7:26 remaining to give UA a 22-20 lead with about seven minutes left in the first half. He had two free throws during UA’s 10-0 run at the start of the second half and then, when Auburn took a 54-53 lead midway through the second half, changed that all around, too.

Thomas Dowd, who led Auburn with 15 points and hit 4 of 5 3-pointers, had taken a loose ball from Krivas' turnover, but then Holt swiped it from Dowd and threw it in for an uncontested dunk that gave UA a 55-54 lead.

So much for nerves.

“It was an incredibly mature performance for a 19-year-old guy like that to come back home and to play the way he did,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said. “When we landed yesterday -- thank God there were flights so we got here on the plane -- we came to the gym and shot a little bit.

“I kind of peeked down, nothing crazy, and I saw Caleb shoot a few balls. I'm like, `oh, it's pretty tight. It felt good.’ So I had a good feeling about how he was going to come out today.”

Holt had his 24 points with over four minutes to go, when UA held a 70-64 and hung on from there. He added nine rebounds and five steals, with two turnovers.

His scoring, rebounding and steals were all career highs but in name only, since Holt was only playing in his fourth game and figures to surpass them at some point, maybe often, this season.

“The great thing about Caleb is his best days are ahead of him,” Lloyd said. “I think he's a really unique player in that he's this ferocious competitor and has this this bundle of energy. We’re trying to help him harness it and find his way and (play) sophisticated high level basketball with it, and he really wants to learn.

“To me, that gives this guy a really, really high ceiling, and it's a joy to coach him every day. He's grateful, he's fun to be around, and he wants to deliver for his teammates and that makes him special.”

With his burst of energy affecting the game throughout, Holt, as much as any of Arizona’s players, was responsible for holding the Tigers off. Auburn took three brief leads in the second half, but Holt threw down his dunk after the first one, while Kharchenkov and Krivas made layups to help offset the second two Auburn leads.

It was a different sort of feeling than Lloyd said he had when Arizona lost to UCLA 84-75 in its season opener on Nov. 2, often chasing the Bruins.

“We were battling back all game, and we had to make the run to come back,” Lloyd said of the Wildcats' loss to UCLA. “Sometimes you make that run to come back, and you just take a little bit of a breath, and it feels like the team that was ahead makes a run again.

“That was the case tonight, so we were fortunate."

Overall, Holt, Krivas and Kharchenkov combined for 59 of Arizona’s 80 points, so it was probably no surprise that Auburn coach Steven Pearl noted that “they have three lottery picks on their team, and their lottery picks …really delivered for them.”

But, the way Holt expressed it, it wasn’t an individual thing. Well, it had to be, to some degree, but Holt basically said he tried to stuff the individual goals inside the team goals.

“All my insides was like, `I want to go out and kill,’ but I just tried to stay even keel,” Holt said. “I tried not to make it about myself, tried to make it more about the team than myself.

“I knew I was coming home. I wanted to play good, but I didn't want to try to put too much pressure on myself. I just wanted to go out there and win at the end of the day.”

So he had a little fun in his backyard, and won, too.