Steady Wildcats will meet motivated Aggies in NCAA Tournament second-round game

Brayden Burries was a freshman, maybe, about four months ago, struggling to adapt to college basketball against high-level opponents such as Florida, UCLA and UConn that Arizona men's basketball played in November. Then he dropped 28 points on Alabama in mid-December and hasn’t been the same since.

And Ivan Kharchenkov, the Wildcats’ third freshman starter, hasn’t been a freshman since, well, forever.

Kharchenkov was playing top-level pro ball in Germany a year ago and signed a contract to stay there until 2027 until it was bought out, allowing him to play for UA instead. More evidence: He dropped a double-double on defending national champion Florida in his first college game.

“Sometimes the coaches try and be funny and say, 'You're a freshman,’ that I'm a freshman,” Kharchenkov said last week. “I'm like, I'm a freshman class-wise. I'm not a freshman basketball-wise.'"

So, on a stage when freshmen are supposed to sometimes feel jitters or maybe even freeze in the moment, there's been predictably little evidence of it so far in Arizona’s three freshmen.

The three led Arizona into a second-round NCAA Tournament game against Utah State on Sunday at about 4:50 p.m. by all scoring in double figures to help UA easily dispatch LIU 92-58 in a first-round NCAA Tournament game Friday.

After Friday's game, UA coach Tommy Lloyd was reminded that his top three scorers were freshmen, and he appeared puzzled over that notion, too.

Freshmen?

“Honestly, I don't look at them as freshmen, you know what I mean? “ Lloyd said. “I just look at them as really good basketball players. They have high IQs, they have great character, obviously, they're talented basketball players, and they put the work in.

“When you have that combination of elements, I don't think it matters what year you are in school. And I would have been more surprised had they come out and been a little bit nervous today than play the way they did.”

In UA’s locker room, Burries buzzed about being “grateful” and “enjoying the moment” with teammates and in front of friends and family from his nearby home of San Bernardino. The Wildcats’ fourth key freshman, forward Dwayne Aristode, said he “felt calm” during a game in which he chipped in four points and four rebounds off the bench.

And Kharchenkov, who put together yet another double-double against the Sharks with 14 points and 10 rebounds, referred to something that might be considered jitters but was basically just reality.

It is a do-or-die event, even if you feel your chances of winning are pretty good.

“The mind always will think about it like, 'Oh, this could be one of the last games.' But then you also always want to step out of it, and just focus on what's now,” Kharchenkov said. “It’s like any other game, especially when you get luck out of the equation. If your effort is high, when you do all the things that you can control, then you just finish another game.”

The games could get much tougher for the Wildcats, more threatening to their 33-2 season, more threatening to their bid to become the first Arizona team to reach the Final Four in a quarter-century, starting Sunday.

Utah State enters the second round at 29-6, without the crushing interior size, overall talent and overall resources as Arizona, but with a spirit and edginess that helped it win the Mountain West regular-season and tournament titles. The Aggies beat Villanova 86-76 on Friday.

Utah State outshot (55% to 44%) and outrebounded (37-27) its higher-seeded Big East opponent, and crushed it in the paint (42-26), sending the sort of message Aggies coach Jerrod Calhoun appeared to be interested in sending.

“We did not like our seed,” Calhoun said. “We were not too fond of being a nine seed. We won 28 games. We won the regular season title, we won the tournament title. So when this team has an edge and they play with a little bit of swagger and a little bit of toughness and resilience, we can cause a lot of problems.”

Junior forward and local hero Mason Falslev indicated he’s accepted that sort of thing.

“I’ve been here four years and I've been 8-, 9-, 10- seed,” Falslev said. “Might not have as much money as other programs, but I'm just happy we got the win in the first round.”

Falslev said he’s excited to get a chance to play Arizona, “because you don't get to play as 1-seed every day,” and that is the one good thing about being a No. 9 seed, if you look at it that way.

As a No. 9, you get a chance to prove yourself against a pretty good team right away in the first round and a No. 1 team in the second.

You can change perceptions pretty quickly.

“I 100% feel like we were underseeded,” Utah State guard MJ Collins said. “We won 28 games, swept through the Mountain West. It's like, what else could we have done? We have multiple quad one wins. Other teams had one quad one win and got a higher seed than us."

It is true Saint Mary's received a No. 7 seed with only one quad win victory, a Feb. 28 home win over Gonzaga, and that Villanova actually had only two quad one wins while Utah State had four.

So Collins went on.

“So it's like, how can you value that over us?" he said. "But that’s the beauty of it. You gotta stick to it. David and Goliath. And we have Goliath on Sunday. It's our time to show the world who Utah State is.”