Arizona’s first true road test of the season comes with a clear assignment: handle Auburn’s pressure, silence Tahaad Pettiford, and get enough help from the bench to walk out of The Jungle with a win.
Tommy Lloyd’s team is 2-1 after home wins over Cal Poly and Northern Arizona, and Friday night offers a chance to reset the narrative after the season-opening loss to UCLA in Las Vegas. Auburn, meanwhile, is in Year 2 of the Steven Pearl era and gets a shot at payback after Arizona rolled to a 97-68 win in Tucson last year.
The Wildcats will have to manage this one without Clemson transfer RJ Godfrey, whose physicality would have been useful in a matchup like this. That leaves Mo Krivas, Ivan Kharchenkov, and Arizona’s new backcourt to carry the load in a game that should tell plenty about where this team stands.
The biggest defensive job belongs to Pettiford. Auburn’s 6-foot-1 guard averaged 15.4 points and 3.8 assists last season as a sophomore, though his shooting numbers dipped to 39% from the field and 29% from three. He’s already put up 44 points in Auburn’s first two games, and his ability to attack downhill and get to the foul line makes him the engine of the Tigers’ offense.
Arizona’s best answer is simple: make Pettiford miserable. Caleb Holt, the Wildcats’ 5-star freshman and elite perimeter defender, looks like the natural matchup and should spend the night attached to him. It’s a big chance for Holt to show what he can do on that end, especially in a loud road setting.
Arizona also needs more than the starting five. Through three games, only 49 of the Wildcats’ 269 points have come from players off the bench, which works out to about 18%. That’s a low number, even with two blowouts already in the books.
Lloyd will lean heavily on his starters, but the second unit has to give him something. Cameron Holmes and JJ Mandaquit are the names to watch there.
Holmes is leading the bench with 6.7 points per game, and most of that scoring has come in transition over the last two games. If he can give Arizona solid minutes on both ends against a quality opponent, it could matter a lot both for Friday night and for his role moving forward.
Mandaquit has been sharp as a distributor, posting a 15-to-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, but he hasn’t done much scoring yet. He’s 4-for-12 from the field and 2-for-2 at the line. He, Maksim Brnovic, and Ugnius Jarusevicius should all get chances, and Arizona needs at least one of them to chip in as a scorer.
Auburn’s defense has been strong from deep, though the sample comes against SE Louisiana and Appalachian State, two teams outside the top 200 at KenPom. Still, the Tigers are holding opponents to 24.6% shooting from three, 15-for-61, which is one of the better marks in the country.
Arizona hasn’t exactly lit it up from outside either, hitting 27.5% of its threes so far. That matters here because Auburn’s frontcourt brings size, including 7-foot, 280-pound Narcisse Ngoy and 7-foot rim protector Bukky Oboye, who has eight blocks in two games. If the Wildcats want Krivas and Kharchenkov to have room around the basket, they may need the perimeter shots to fall.
Derek Dixon is 7-for-22 from three, Kharchenkov is 3-for-10, and Holt is 1-for-11, but all three are better shooters than those numbers suggest. Friday night would be a good time for that to start showing up.
Arizona and Auburn tip off at 7:00 PM MST on Friday, Nov. 13, on ESPN2.
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