Loss to Houston in 2022 NCAA Tournament forced Arizona Wildcats to toughen up

What Lloyd described was something of a privileged honeymoon, a 2021-22 season featuring 33 wins, Pac-12 regular season and tournament titles, and a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed, all driven by four eventual NBA Draft picks plus notable Baltic ballers in Azuolas Tubelis and Kerr Kriisa.

“We had a good first year,” Lloyd told the media on Jan. 21 in Stillwater, Oklahoma. “We had a kid named Benn Mathurin and a kid named Christian Koloko, a kid named Pelle Larsson. I mean, I had some good players the first year.”

Lloyd then took a deep breath before finishing. There was that ending, after all, when Arizona had to face the same program it will on Saturday in a game with first-place implications in the Big 12.

“We kind of ended up limping into the NCAA tournament against a really tough Houston team in San Antonio when we were one seed,” he said, “and Kelvin Sampson kicked our butts wearing sweats. That was the toughest thing that year.”

Sampson, the Cougars’ veteran coach, was wearing dark sweats below his red short-sleeve shirt that day, a workmanlike look for a workmanlike team.

Seeded fifth but enjoying fan support at nearby San Antonio, the Cougars held Arizona to just 33.3% shooting, outrebounded UA 37-35, scored 24 points off 14 Arizona turnovers and, more than anything, controlled the pace and limited the Wildcats’ normally free flowing offense to just a few spurts of life here and there.

“I knew we were going to make them uncomfortable,” Sampson said after the game. “That’s what we do.”

Basically, yes, Sampson’s guys did kick the Wildcats around, the way UA’s previous performance might have foreshadowed. Arizona only reached that Sweet 16 game because Mathurin and Koloko pulled out a series of clutch plays that allowed the Wildcats to survive a second-round overtime game with TCU, which outrebounded UA 48-44 and collected 20 offensive rebounds that led to 19 second-chance points.

“I knew this was going to be a hard game,” Lloyd said after that one. “TCU plays in the Big 12 and they’re battle-tested and they’re great defensively, and just so hard to keep off the glass. ... they get a ton of credit. They’re really hard to play against.”

Lloyd tried to spin it positively, saying after the Houston game that he thanked his players for making a great debut season as the Wildcats’ head coach, but vowed afterward to recruit and coach with creating toughness in mind.

That approach might have helped the Wildcats avenge all of their regular-season losses the next season – though they lost to Princeton in the first round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament – and contributed to their final Pac-12 championship last season.

The funny thing was, neither Houston nor Arizona was in the Big 12 in 2021-22. While TCU was, the Horned Frogs finished just fifth in what was then – imagine this – just a 10-team league.

TCU was a legit Big 12 team and, of course, so was Houston when it joined the conference last season: The Cougars debuted by losing just three conference games and winning the Big 12 by two games.

Arizona won the Pac-12 regular-season titles by three games in 2021-22, won the conference tournament title 2022-23 and then won the regular-season title again last season by one game.

Now the Wildcats are trying win a Big 12 title in their first season and it’s probably no surprise that Houston is standing in the way.

After UA avenged a loss at tough-minded Texas Tech on Feb. 8 at McKale Center, Lloyd said he has always felt Arizona had a “physical program,” but added a qualifier.

“You know, there’s different levels to the physicality,” he said. “Obviously, with Houston probably being at the top of the list.”

When they lost 73-70 at Kansas State on Tuesday, the Wildcats (17-7, 11-2) fell out of a first-place tie with the Cougars (20-4, 12-1). But they’ll have a chance to pull back into one — and pick up a potentially valuable tiebreaker — by beating Houston on Saturday at McKale.

The game will also give the Wildcats a chance to prove, exactly, how tough they really are.

“I’ve definitely heard who they are and what their DNA is, and I definitely respect coach Sampson and their program,” center Tobe Awaka said. “But that being said, you have to take the battle to them. If you play scared, they’re going to take advantage. The best thing we can do is play to our strengths, and I think toughness and grittiness are some of those things.”