Arizona-LIU scouting report: On Bradley's honors, Blackbirds and point shaving

No. 16 seed LIU (24-10) vs. No. 1 seed Arizona (32-2) | NCAA Tournament first-round game | Viejas Arena, San Diego | 10:35 a.m. | TNT | 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Probable starters

ARIZONA

0 G Jaden Bradley (6-3 senior)

5 G Brayden Burries (6-4 freshman)

18 F Ivan Kharchenkov (6-7 freshman)

10 F Koa Peat (6-8 freshman)

13 C Motiejus Krivas (7-2 junior)

Key reserves

30 F Tobe Awaka (6-8 senior)

3 F Anthony Dell'Orso (6-6 senior)

2 F Dwayne Aristode (6-8 freshman)

LIU

0 G Malachi Davis (6-4 senior)

2 G Greg Gordon (6-5 senior)

33 F Jamal Fuller (6-5 senior)

1 F Jomo Goings (6-5 junior)

22 C Shadrak Lasu (6-8 sophomore)

Key reserves

6 F Mason Porter-Brown (6-6 junior)

15 F Caleb Johnson (6-7 senior)

How they match up

How they got here: Arizona went 16-2 to win the Big 12 regular-season title and earn the No. 1 Big 12 Tournament seed, then beat UCF, Iowa State and Houston to win the Big 12 Tournament and received the West Region’s No. 1 seed.

LIU went 15-3 to win the Northeast Conference, earning the right to host throughout the conference tournament, when it beat Chicago State, Wagner and Mercyhurst. Technically, LIU became the first team to clinch an automatic NCAA berth by beating Wagner on March 7 because Mercyhurst is transitioning to Division I and not eligible for the NCAA Tournament until 2028.

Series history: Arizona has only played LIU once and not for three-quarters of a century, back when LIU was known as the Long Island Blackbirds and a national power. But on Jan. 29, 1951, UA upset Long Island 62-61 at Bear Down Gym.

LIU overview: After two single-digit-win seasons rebuilding the Sharks, former NBA standout guard Rod Strickland has his best LIU team yet, having returned three starters from a 17-win team last season and adding veteran transfers around them.

LIU is aggressive defensively, ranking 54th in defensive turnover percentage (18.9) and 15th in block percentage (blocking 13.9% of opponents’ two-point shots).

Offensively, the Sharks often go through forward Jamal Fuller and point guard Malachi Davis, who played sparingly for ASU in 2023-24. Fuller is a threat to score in multiple ways, shooting 43.8% from 3-point range, 57.2% from two-point range and he also draws 4.7 fouls per 40 minutes, hitting 77.0% of his free throws when he does get to the line.

Davis averages 14.4 points and 3.4 assists, while combo guard Greg Gordon averages 14.1 points and 2.9 assists.

He said it: “The easiest comparison to Fuller would be (Iowa State’s) Joshua Jefferson. He’ll bring up the ball and initiate offense, he’ll come off ball screens, but he's a much more aggressive scorer than Jefferson. Driving, shooting 3s, he's capable of both.

“Davis is dynamic. He’s one of the guys that need to score for them to put points on the board. He’s more of a driver, but a capable shooter. Gordon plays the three, four. He's a non-shooter but really high energy. He's very dominant in the paint. And then there are other guards, like (Jomo Goins and Mason Porter-Brown) that they need to score, they need them to come in aggressive. They have the freedom to do what they want to score. The key is to stop Fuller and their three guards.

"Their bigs are more connectors, they score off offensive rebounds, dunk downs, things like that.

"(Defensively) they're really aggressive on the ball. They try to strip you and get steals, and are very handsy. We’ve gotta be careful about that — they do a great job on the ball, pressuring and forcing you to drive. And then from there, those big guys do a great job of protecting the paint. There’s going to be multiple guys in there trying to contest shots and block shots.” — UA assistant coach Ken Nakagawa, who scouted the Sharks

Key players

LIU

Jamal Fuller

A Division II transfer from Toronto who transitioned smoothly to LIU last season, Fuller tested the transfer portal but returned to the Sharks and put up an all-around production that he was named to the NEC’s all-conference team.

ARIZONA

Sidi Gueye

If Arizona gets up big as expected against the Sharks, it might be another opportunity for the Wildcats to play the talented and energetic but raw Senegalese big man, who made brief appearances against UCF and Houston in the Big 12 Tournament but picked up a goaltending call against the Cougars and can be foul-prone.

Sidelines

Pac-12 weekends

After two years of following the Big 12’s here-today-gone-tomorrow travel pattern of one-off away games all over the country, the Wildcats were offered an NCAA Tournament path to the Final Four that might appear familiar from their Pac-12 days.

That is, games Friday and Sunday in San Diego and, if the Wildcats win both, the chance to play on Thursday and Saturday in San Jose.

All games on the West Coast, two per trip, all flights under two hours, all arenas near significant UA alumni bases and reasonably reachable from Tucson.

Still, UA coach Tommy Lloyd wasn’t counting on all of that giving the Wildcats an advantage.

“If we're fortunate enough to move on, I'll probably be able to give you a better answer,” Lloyd said. “Obviously, playing close to home is nice because of the proximity for your fan base. That's the No. 1 thing right there.

“The travel part is not that crazy. There's not a lot of difference between a one hour flight and a two or 2½-hour flight. It's a little longer. I hope we are able to play long enough that it does become an advantage.”

Blackbirds’ dark days

When Hall of Fame coach Clair Bee agreed to take his powerhouse Long Island team into Bear Down Gym on the way back from a West Coast trip during the 1950-51 season, that created only his first headache.

The Wildcats upset the Blackbirds, 62-61, in what Star columnist Greg Hansen said was then UA’s “Game of the Ages,” though Bee wasn’t pleased that the game was officiated by two Border Conference officials.

“I don’t know who could win here,” Bee said.

About a month later, it became much worse for the Blackbirds. Star player Sherman White and several of his LIU teammates were arrested on charges of accepting bribes from a professional gambler in an alleged point-shaving scandal that included the Arizona game.

When asked about the scandal, UA coach Fred Enke told the Star, “The way we played that day, we would have won anyway.”

White was expected to become a top pick of the New York Knicks and receive a lucrative contract, but after a case in which he led detectives to $5,500 in bribe money he had hidden, White instead was barred from the NBA and served nine months in prison. He died in 2011 at age 82.

“It wasn’t the money, it was the peer pressure,” White told the New York Times in 1984. “I was naïve.”

Long-gone history

Not only did the LIU-Brooklyn basketball team’s prominence fade, but the Blackbirds moniker was retired in 2019 when the LIU-Brooklyn campus merged with LIU-Post of Nassau County.

So instead of having the Division I Blackbirds and Division II Post Pioneers, the schools unified the programs and turned to the Sharks identity to reflect its location surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound.

According to a 2019 New York Post story, LIU president Kimberly Cline told a group of alums and athletes that the school had heard Blackbirds was an offensive, racist mascot, and that a marketing firm encouraged them to “wipe the slate clean.”

"We’re in support of the president’s initiative in terms of combining the programs and doing different things between the universities and merging them in a concept she called ‘One LIU,’ ” former LIU Brooklyn athletic director Jerry Donner told the Post. “But with respect to the Blackbird, it’s iconic. It’s unique. It’s the only mascot in the country like it. Most of the alums I’ve been in contact with are very passionate about the Blackbird. It’s special."

More honors for Bradley

Named a third-team all-American by the Sporting News last week, UA point guard Jaden Bradley was also named a third-team pick by the United States Basketball Writers Association and the National Association of Basketball Coaches this week. He was an honorable mention Associated Press All-American.

UA freshman guard Brayden Burries, meanwhile, received honorable mention honors from both the Associated Press and USBWA.

Numbers game

0: Arizona losses in four previous NCAA Tournament games played in San Diego (two in 2014 and two in 2022)

7: Previous NCAA Tournament appearances for Long Island, but none since 2017-18, when the team was still known as the Blackbirds.

35: Previous NCAA Tournament appearances for Arizona, not including 1999, 2008, 2017 and 2018 appearances that were vacated because of NCAA sanctions.

— Bruce Pascoe