Azuolas Tubelis helps No.9 Arizona shake off loss of Kerr Kriisa in 99-61 win

So after muddling through four-turnover plagued minutes early in Arizona’s 99-61 win over Texas A&M Corpus, the Arizona point guard told coach Tommy Lloyd that he just didn’t feel too good – and Lloyd said he didn’t question it.

“He told me he couldn't go. He couldn't go,” Lloyd said. “So I was like, `OK.’ I mean, I'm in the heat of the moment, and I don't have time for a lengthy discussion or a follow-up question. Let's go to the ol' next-man-up deal. And Kerr knows I love him. I roll with him all the time. But in the heat of the moment, we’ve got to win the game.”

So the next man up was Kylan Boswell. And the man who's almost always up was, of course, Azuolas Tubelis.

Tubelis had his fourth straight game of 20 points or more, with 20 points and 13 rebounds, while Boswell took advantage of the extended point guard audition to collect eight points, six rebounds and eight assists over 24 minutes.

Then there were big men Oumar Ballo and Henri Veesaar who took advantage of the much-smaller Islanders, Ballo collecting 13 points and eight rebounds while Veesaar had 16 points and four rebounds.

Together, they helped the Wildcats quickly shake off the loss of Kriisa, who suffered what Lloyd said afterward was “not significant" (UA officially called it a "non-COVID illness). Lloyd said UA took Kriisa off the court and found he was “maybe a little dehydrated and things like that,” but that the illness did not change Kriisa’s status for the Wildcats’ showdown with Tennessee on Saturday at McKale Center.

While Kriisa was on the court, the Wildcats initially looked shaky. They had six turnovers over the first eight minutes of the game, leading to eight Islander points, and Kriisa had three of them.

But it might not have just been Kriisa’s illness that shook them up. It could have been the fact that the Wildcats were trying to sandwich Tuesday’s game in between a Top 15 win over Indiana last Saturday in Las Vegas and a Top 10 matchup with Tennessee this Saturday.

Or maybe it was simply that the Islanders were doing what they do defensively, and the Wildcats initially didn’t deal with it well.

Entering the game with the nation’s 14th highest defensive turnover percentage (25.3), Texas A&M Corpus Christi turned Arizona over half the time early in the game. The Wildcats' six early turnovers helped leave the game tied at 16 heading into the second media timeout with 11:51 left.

Still, the Wildcats managed to figure it out soon enough. While the Islanders went on to take a 25-24 lead when Ross Williams hit a jumper with 7:28 left in the half, UA had 3-pointers from Henderson, Veesaar and Adama Bal to take a 39-28 lead heading into the final three minutes of the half.

Then there was Tubelis. The Wildcats’ Lithuanian power forward finished the first half with 13 points to top the 1,000-point mark for his Arizona career, having needed only two points to become the 54th player in UA history with 1,000 points.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats only gave up one turnover over the final 12 minutes before halftime.

“I think it's just kind of recalibrating yourself and getting comfortable playing a team like this,” Lloyd said of UA's improved ball control as the game progressed. “We obviously warned the guys, but that doesn't mean that they're always going to do it. We kind of compared them to the Nicholls State or Southern teams we played earlier where they're really handsy and really aggressive.

“Obviously, they were getting a bunch of steals and they kind of hedged on ball screens, and that's something we haven't faced much this year. It was a calculated risk on their part that paid some dividends early, and then we kind of settled in.”

Kriisa, who is Arizona's third-leading scorer (12.9 points), did not return to the court or even the bench in the second half. But again, the Wildcats survived without him.

They pulled away easily from a 47-34 halftime lead, finishing the game by shooting 56.7% overall and hitting 15 of 27 3-pointers. Eight different players hit 3-pointers for Arizona, led by Cedric Henderson, who was 3 of 4 from beyond the arc.

Veesaar hit both 3-pointers he took while Boswell (2-4), Courtney Ramey (2-3), Adama Bal (2-6), Pelle Larsson (2-4) also hit two each, with everyone taking advantage of the Islanders’ emphasis on defending the inside.

“They’re a really scrappy team, but they also were helping (defensively) so it gave us more freedom to shoot 3s,” Veesaar said. “I think the young guys really benefited from it.”

In the end, Arizona had four players scoring in double figures, 11 players overall who scored and 16 total who played in the game, with Kriisa’s vacated minutes having offered even more opportunity.

“We've been riding (Kriisa) pretty hard and he's got a little bit of a bug and he just didn't feel it today,” Lloyd said. “That kid’s got tremendous heart and tremendous character. So I don't question anything and it actually played out well that some of our other guys got some extended minutes.

“It forced me to look down the line a little bit. That's a good thing for this program because we need those guys to develop.”