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LOS ANGELES — Not two minutes after halftime, Tommy Lloyd spun around and faced the fans behind his bench, nearly all of them bedecked in red. Arizona’s coach waved his arms, asking for noise. Begging for some energy. It was not the first time he or a staff member did so Thursday evening at Crytpo.com Arena, nor was it the last. But it made sense to look to the crowd for help. No one on the bench or on the floor had any answers.
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Another Arizona team has played its way out of the NCAA Tournament well before its presumed expiration date, and it’s going to be a thing until it’s not a thing. This time it was No. 6 seed Clemson, driving with the emergency brake on all night, sitting back as the missed shots and inexcusable defensive lapses compounded for a more talented team, winning what was basically a Sweet 16 road game by betting its opponent would do what it’s done before.
Arizona takes one step into the mud, and sinks.
“Arizona has a higher standard,” Wildcats center Oumar Ballo said after the 77-72 loss, in a locker room where most sets of eyes were fixed on the floor. “If you don’t make it to the Final Four, if you don’t win the (championship), it’s not going to be a successful year. Some programs would settle for the Sweet 16. But we have higher standards. This was not a failure, by any means. But it was just not a success, either.”
It was a failure. It was a failure that the entire basketball operation will have to wear, because it can’t figure this out.
“We had the ability to get to a Final Four and we didn’t,” Lloyd said. “And that happens. It’s nothing to look down upon.”
It does happen, yes. And defining a season entirely on NCAA Tournament results is at least a little unfair, especially when everyone can point to regular-season or conference tournament championships that preceded them. You get banners for those, too. But they’re not absolution for an inability to change the ending when you’ve seen the ending twice before.
Houston dragged No. 1 seed Arizona through the mire and left it there in 2022. Princeton did likewise to the No. 2 seed Wildcats in 2023. On Thursday, it was Clemson controlling pace and back-cutting for scores while the second-seeded Wildcats looked lethargic and unnerved, uploading a zone that flummoxed Lloyd’s crew so much that it went 10 minutes between made shots, absolutely schooling Arizona on multiple baseline out-of-bounds sets for easy buckets.
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“It’s boring,” Ballo said. “It’s boring to play those types of games, when teams just want to slow down, run the clock. It’s just boring. You just want to actually play good basketball and run. But we let them dictate the game.”
The good-natured big man probably didn’t mean to indict everyone there, but, well, he did.
Clemson ranked 257th nationally in adjusted tempo coming in. The Tigers truly may be boring. But being bored is not an option in the NCAA Tournament. If you can’t impose your preferred tempo, there has to be a plan to swim to the other side of the molasses pool, or at least willfulness to beat a team at its own game. That’s what this moment required.
And this team started by taking and missing bad shots and failing to get the stops that could get it out and running, which would’ve set the terms of engagement. This team couldn’t figure out a zone they said they prepared for or make shots they say they practice every day, scoring only because Clemson couldn’t stop fouling. This team neglected to foul after a bucket with 15.4 seconds left and the deficit cut to three, and instead let Clemson run clear up the floor for a game-sealing layup. This team wasn’t ready for the moment. That’s a problem winning 83 percent of your games outside this event can’t hide.
“It wasn’t on him,” Wildcats guard Caleb Love said of Lloyd. “We were the ones that were out there. He put us in position to succeed all year.”
A collective breakdown, creating a deep and abiding and specific anguish.
The Final Four will be played a couple hours up the interstate from campus in Tucson. Arizona was spot-on in its belief that it had the parts to get there. This is why senior Pelle Larsson stood starkly still at the final horn, as Clemson players sprinted by him in celebration. “Just blank with emotion,” Larsson said. This is why Love had to compose himself with deep breaths in the locker room, rewriting so much of his basketball story in 2023-24 only to wind up answering for a night when he missed all nine 3-pointers he took. “We’ve been through so much,” Love said, fighting back tears. “I’m sad we couldn’t finish it.”
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It is why Love’s friend and workout partner, sophomore guard Kylan Boswell, similarly beat back emotion when told of the burden Love was putting on himself for the loss. “It’s not one man’s job to win a game,” Boswell said. “We’re not even in the game without Caleb Love’s performance tonight. He’s Caleb Love, though. He has that type of name. He holds himself to higher standards.”
In the locker room, Lloyd thanked his players for the work they put in and how they helped change the Arizona men’s basketball culture for the better. They won 27 games. They won a regular-season title. Then they were finished before they were finished, again. Not a failure. Not a success. A program with undeniable promise, spinning its wheels in the mud.
With those locker room doors still closed, a man in black athleisure attire jogged down the hall and stopped by the entrance. He was from Alabama, which had started pregame warmups. He brought with him two clipboards that Arizona staffers evidently forgot to pick up after the game. On Thursday, there was a lot left out there on the floor.
(Photo of Jaden Bradley: Harry How / Getty Images)
