Long road through college basketball paying off for Arizona senior Jaden Bradley

That bond had to break physically this season when Love ran out of college eligibility and jumped onto the Portland Trail Blazers’ roster, but it grew stronger in a way that both players will probably never forget last weekend.

Even though Love wasn’t there, he knew all about the buzzer-beater Bradley hit to beat Iowa State in the Big 12 Tournament semifinals last Friday in Kansas City.

Just like Bradley, and anyone who watched the Wildcats last season, knew all about that 60-foot buzzer-bomb Love threw in against the same team a year earlier, sending that game to an overtime period in which Love also helped UA beat the Cyclones.

“I’m always communicating with him, always watching him, and the stuff he’s doing I’m proud of him,” Bradley said. “He’s seen it. I don’t know if he watched it live or saw the clip, but he was like 'I know you hit a big one. I hit a big one.’ I appreciated that.”

In the moment, the shot moved Arizona on to the Big 12 championship game the Wildcats won a day later against Houston, which Bradley kick-started with 13 points before suffering a finger injury in the second half. (UA coach Tommy Lloyd said all was good with Bradley and other UA players entering this week).

But in the big picture, it was another image of how Bradley has become not only the Wildcats’ leader but a player not afraid to take the clutch shot, after years of playing more secondary roles at Arizona and Alabama.

He had shown that ability earlier in the season, making clutch plays that led UA to wins over UCLA and UConn in the first month of the season when freshman guard Brayden Burries had yet to emerge.

Against UCLA, he drove inside for a layup and hit a 3-pointer within a 90-second span late in the game, giving UA a 65-63 lead with 1:03 left, while also driving to the basket to make layups or draw fouls.

He's "a hell of a player,” UCLA coach Mick Cronin said then. “He definitely ain't gonna miss layups.”

Five days later at UConn, Bradley drove in for a layup that gave UA a 67-64 lead with 16 seconds left that helped them hang on to a 71-67 win at Storrs, Conn.

In Kansas City on Friday, the same kind of confidence emerged. Bradley had the ball in his hands, directing teammates before opting to shift rightward and launch his game-winner. There was no hesitation, no last-minute fumbling or indecisiveness.

Also, Lloyd decided not to call a timeout, knowing that could backfire against Iowa State and its complex defense.

So it was just go.

“When I looked at JB driving the ball up, he wasn't looking at me. He was waving everybody down,” Lloyd said. “He kind of plays chess out there a little bit, moved the guys around where he wanted them. And he got to a spot. It's a shot we've seen him hit a lot this year.”

With Love taking the big shots much of the time last season, Bradley didn’t have to take them himself very often. Even more so during his first season with Arizona in 2023-24, when Bradley played off the bench behind Love and Kylan Boswell.

Bradley was efficient as a sophomore that season, averaging 20.2 minutes while shooting 46.2% from the field and 82.5% from the free-throw line. But he took only 28 3s all season, hitting 13 (or 46.4%) of them, deferring to Love and Boswell at times.

“That’s how basketball goes,” Bradley said. “If you look at it from a professional level, you get traded to a different team, you have different teammates that do different stuff. So my first year (at Arizona), I come off the bench, be a good role player, a good locker room guy. I was able to do that.

“Second year, became a starter. C-Love is a great player. I learned a lot from him, but then this year, just a little a bigger role, because we’ve got some younger guys. I'm the one giving out the advice, giving the nuggets, but they're putting their own spin on it. Each year it’s just kind of growing in my role.”

As a freshman himself at Alabama in 2022-23, Bradley actually played a variety of roles: He moved into the Tide’s starting lineup after nine games, but fell out of the lineup over the last six before transferring to Arizona, having also considered the Wildcats as a McDonald's All-American in high school.

He doesn’t speak poorly of that experience, either.

“I had a great time at Alabama. It just wasn't for me,” Bradley said. “Arizona was great. I believed in the coaches. They believed in me. They really turned my career around."

After the Iowa State game last Friday, Lloyd said he was lucky to get Bradley after he left Alabama, that he played an important bench role “while we were still trying to figure out what we were doing building the program.”

The help went both ways.

Bradley says he remembers how Lloyd drilled fundamentals into him, details like swivels and pocket passes.

"At first you look at him like, 'I don't want to do that stuff,'" Bradley said. "But it really helps my game. The small stuff is really going to help in the long run."

That's what his college career has been all about: the long run.

It led up to the Big 12 Player of the Year award Bradley won last week, to his Iowa State buzzer-beater, to the Big 12 Tournament MVP award and who knows what else in the NCAA Tournament and in the more distant future.

“That shot he hit (against Iowa State) — guys, I'm not going to say I've seen him hit it a lot. But I've seen him get that pull-up going right and get a little momentum and swing through with that leg a number of times," Lloyd said.

“He's just become a refined basketball player. For a guy like him, when maybe things don't happen as fast as you want, to be steadfast and continue to work and get better, it says a lot about their character.

"This guy's going to play basketball for a lot of years to come, and he's going to have a great career.”