For their part, the Utes showed energy to stick around against a far superior opponent.
It didn’t take long for Arizona to show why it’s the No. 1 team in the country.
After Utah scored on its opening possession of Saturday’s Big 12 opener for both teams, the Wildcats quickly pushed out to a double-digit lead at 14-2, turning four early steals and a couple offensive rebounds into quick points.
“I think we just put a lot of pressure on the rim, forcing them to follow early. I think that opened up the 3-point game as well, and, you know, we just kept coming,” Arizona forward Tobe Awaka said about the fast start. “I thought our game in transition was fluid.”
That eventually turned into a 97-78 victory for the Wildcats over the Runnin’ Utes.
It was a welcome change for Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd, who had seen his team have much more interesting games their last two times at the Huntsman Center — one included Utah knocking off the then-No. 4 Wildcats in December 2022, and the last time was a three-overtime thriller that Arizona won two years ago.
While the Wildcats’ win Saturday was never really in doubt, especially after they extended their lead back out to 19 at halftime after weathering a mini-Utah rally midway through the first half, Lloyd said he “never felt comfortable.”
“I thought we came out in the game and we really had great early effort, early energy, and, you know, we were able to kind of build a little bit of a cushion and play off it,” Lloyd said. “But what I will say is, I never felt comfortable. I mean, I played in this building too many times, and Utah, they kept coming.
They kept coming. They kept coming. They’ve got some talented players, and I thought they had stretches of the game where they played really well tonight, so I want to give them credit as well.”
Time and time again, Arizona showed that when an opponent makes a mistake, the Wildcats know how to answer and make them pay.
That’s been one of the secret sauces behind a 14-0 start to the 2025-26 campaign, which now includes a 1-0 start in Big 12 play.
Against a Utah team that came into the first weekend of league play as the last place Big 12 team in the NET rankings, the Wildcats were more than equipped to take advantage of miscues.
Arizona ended up with 11 steals, while Utah had five. That helped the Wildcats double up the Utes in points off turnovers and own a more impressive 15-6 edge in fastbreak points.
The Wildcats, with a superior inside game, also held a 43-30 rebounding edge, including 14-10 on the offensive glass. If there’s a mini win for Utah, the Utes were only outscored 15-11 on second-chance points.
“In terms of deflections, that’s something going on during practice all the time, being up to the touch, being up in the gaps, recovering, all that kind of stuff,” Akawa said.
“I think we’ve been really focusing on the principles in the process, and then the outcome shows itself out during the game.”
On a day when a couple other Big 12 powers fell, Arizona didn’t let Utah entertain any of those ideas. Earlier in the day, No. 17 Kansas was tripped up 81-75 by UCF and Baylor fell 69-63 to TCU (both the Jayhawks and Bears were on the road).
It’s the first time in the 29-year history of the Big 12 that Kansas and Baylor have started league play 0-1.
Even No. 8 Houston found itself down eight at Cincinnati at halftime before earning a tough seven-point win. Arizona, though, sent a statement in its Big 12 opener.
“We’ve been talking about coming out with a fresh, new mindset. What happened in the nonconference, it’s just things of old. It’s a new season. We start off 0-0,” Akawa said of starting conference play.
Utah, to its credit, fought back time and again.
The Utes were down 17 eight minutes into the game, but they followed that with an 11-3 run, then cut the Arizona lead to single digits four times over the next minutes, one of the most competitive stretches of the contest.
Eventually, Arizona went on a 10-0 run to build that lead back up, then finished the first half on another 8-2 flurry to make it 58-39 at the half.
Utah started the second half a bit slow and fell behind by 24, but in front of an appreciative, energetic crowd of 8,339 fans — that admittedly had plenty of Arizona supporters, too — the Utes kept the fight going until the final buzzer.
They simply didn’t have nearly enough answers against a balanced Arizona attack, and fans started to stream for the exits with five minutes to play.
Wildcat seniors Jaden Bradley and Awaka each had a team-leading 18 points, while Bradley added five assists, four rebounds and a steal, and Akawa also had 12 rebounds, two blocks, two steals and an assist.
Then there was the trio of Arizona’s fab freshmen.
Brayden Burries (17 points, 11 rebounds, three assists, two steals), Koa Peat (17 points, three assists, three steals, two rebounds) and Ivan Kharchenkov (13 points, three rebounds, three assists, three steals) showed why Arizona is a perfect blend of veteran leadership and youthful talent and is playing like a national title contender.
“When you have multiple guys who contribute, you’re a little more comfortable sticking to a kind of closer subbing rotation, where guys have certainty and know where their opportunities are going to come,” Lloyd said.
“And then the other thing is, it’s just a luxury of having a lot of good players, and we don’t ever want to be a program that’s just relying on one guy. We want our good players to love playing with other good players and we want to be a program (where) guys want to make each other better.”
Things are looking different on the other sideline as Alex Jensen goes through his first season trying to rebuild the Utes into a winner.
“When they score 97 points, and nobody scores 20 or more, I think that’s the thing everybody wants,” Jensen said of Arizona. “They share the ball, and they play their roles well and play well together, so anyway, credit to them. Valuable lessons for us to have moving forward in the Big 12.”
Utah, after seeing a chance to win at Washington on Monday evaporate when its offense went cold in the second half, ended up scoring the same amount of points, 39, as the Wildcats in the second half.
Terrence Brown put up a solid 26 points to go with a team-high six assists and four rebounds. He also had five turnovers.
Don McHenry added 15 points, four rebounds and two steals, while Keanu Dawes, the lone Ute with Big 12 experience, had 15 points, nine rebounds, two assists, two blocks and a steal.
Of that trio, only Dawes had a good second half in the loss to the Huskies, but against the Wildcats, they combined for 26 points on 42.8% shooting after halftime.
It’s a game-to-game improvement, at least.
“I think we’re at a good spot, but not exactly where we want to be,” Dawes said. “Like I mentioned that point in the game where we got to (within) eight, I think that’s the type of team we can be all the time, but we’re not consistently there.”
Arizona, meanwhile, made the routine look routine on Saturday, and started its Big 12 journey on a positive note in the process — something a few other league teams can’t say from their first-weekend efforts.
“We wanted to get off to a good start,” Lloyd said, “nd obviously, we’ve been really focusing on (it’s) just a new year. You’re starting to conference season 0 and 0, so let’s treat it as such. Let’s be excited to play, and I thought our guys did that.”
Category: General Sports
