At the halfway point of Pac-12 play, the Arizona Wildcats’ T.J. McConnell barely leads only one statistical category in conference play and is far down the list on some others.
He’s never been the Pac-12 Player of the Week, not even this week when UCLA’s Norman Powell beat him out despite McConnell’s eight steals against Oregon State.
And, barely averaging double-digit points, McConnell is not even the top scorer on his own team.
So why is McConnell a candidate for the Pac-12 Player of the Year, maybe one of two top choices at the midway point along with Utah’s Delon Wright, while there’s also a trio of big-time scorers (Stanford’s Chasson Randle, Colorado’s Askia Booker and WSU’s DaVonte Lacy)?
Although freshman wing Stanley Johnson is Arizona’s leading scorer (14.6 points in conference games), McConnell probably gets the vote as best player on the league’s best team, a quality coaches often use when making their end-of-season selections.
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There’s also the intangibles.
Let others explain:
Oregon State coach Wayne Tinkle: “He is everything to this team.”
Former Wildcat great Sean Elliott: “I like our chances this year. … because you have T.J. McConnell. To me, he’s really big.”
Former Wildcat forward Aaron Gordon: “Even though Stanley is one of their best players, I think it really comes down to T.J. McConnell. … He’s killing it.”
And UA coach Sean Miller: “Last season, this season… no player we’ve recruited has been more impactful than T.J.”
While McConnell isn’t the kind of guy to ramble on about what he’s doing right — routinely crediting others for whatever happens — here are five qualities that make him impactful:
1. He takes care of the ball.
McConnell is averaging the 18th-most assists per game in the country (5.8), but this is the real number that matters: He has a 3.1 assist-turnover ratio over UA’s nine Pac-12 games, which now leads the league after USC’s Jordan McLaughlin and Wright both sank below him after posting negative ratios when their teams played each other Sunday.
After McConnell posted six assists to just one turnover in a limited possession game against Oregon State last Friday, Miller said, “He’s playing at a very high level.”
2. He’s a ball thief.
Miller’s pack-line defense doesn’t encourage large numbers of steals — preferring to have off-ball defenders sag back and protect the gaps rather than jump out to gamble for the ball — but McConnell is still fifth in the Pac-12 in steals with an average of 1.7 per game after collecting eight on Friday.
A combination of talent, experience and determination has a lot to do with that.
“You have to trust me when I tell you this,” Miller said. “He is where he’s supposed to be on every possession, and he can do it guarding the other team’s point guard or guard or off the ball.”
3. He’s got glue.
The Wildcats suffered a big hit in leadership when Nick Johnson left after last season. But while the Wildcats’ chemistry has taken longer than last season to settle, McConnell has helped with a combination of experience, intensity, humility — and humor.
“He’s kind of the glue that keeps everybody together,” Elliott said. “You cannot overvalue those guys. Good seniors in today’s college game are worth a ton.”
McConnell, a veteran of the postgame press conference, answered one question last week by jokingly quoting Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch — “I’m just here so I don’t get fined” — and explained away his sudden re-emergence from extreme knee pain by saying trainer Justin Kokoskie just “rubbed my knee really well.”
4. He’s opportunistic.
Teams such as Oregon and Utah have practically dared McConnell to shoot, guarding him lightly and sometimes going under screens that leave him alone in front of the basket at midrange.
He’s made them pay for it, scoring 21 points on 9-for-14 shooting on Jan. 8 at Oregon while helping UA run away with a surprise 80-62 blowout.
“I knew when the Pac-12 started, they were going to force me to score,” McConnell said at Oregon. “When I was driving, every other team was packing it in, (but Oregon) kind of stayed on their man.
“It kind of freed up the shot for me, and I just knocked them down.”
5. He’s best when they need the most.
Possibly more than any UA player this season, McConnell’s offensive production tends to rise when the Wildcats are in trouble. He was almost a lone picture of aggressiveness in the Wildcats’ 58-56 loss at Oregon State, scoring 13 points, six rebounds and six assists, and against Utah on Jan. 17, he nailed 6 of 7 shots for 12 points in the first half, setting the tone for UA’s big 69-51 win despite an otherwise shaky start for the Wildcats.
“We really needed him in the first half,” Miller said after the Utah game. “A big reason we were winning was his outstanding play on both ends in the first 20 minutes.”
Rim shots
Arizona recruit Allonzo Trier was named to USA’s Basketball’s Junior Select team that will play in the Hoop Summit game on April 11 in Portland. Three remaining UA recruiting targets were also among the 11 players named to the Hoop Summit team: Ivan Rabb, Stephen Zimmerman and Caleb Swanigan.
