Arizona Basketball: 2018-19 Keys to success against Stanford

Arizona Basketball won their second game of conference play with an 84-81 overtime win against Utah on Saturday. What do they need to do against Stanford to remain undefeated in the Pac-12?

Arizona Basketball is 11-4 this season quietly putting together a decent record. All four of the Wildcats losses have come to teams ranked in the Top-60 of Ken Pom’s Index . Two of those losses came from powerhouse Gonzaga and the talented Auburn Tigers, both ranked Top-10 at the time of the matchup.

The past year has been a rough one with the FBI Investigation into Arizona’s recruiting process as well as losing players like Deandre Ayton, Allonzo Trier, Rawle Alkins and others. The whole scandal is still being figured out and the most recent update is Ex-Arizona assistant Book Richardson reached a plea deal in his case. How has this affected the play of the Wildcats?

It looks like Arizona has finally put all this noise to the side as they ride their second four game win streak of the season thus far. They have been carried by the play of underclassmen Brandon Williams and Brandon Randolph as well as upperclassmen Chase Jeter and Justin Coleman. Before I go into my two main keys for Arizona, I will briefly touch on how Stanford’s season has gone.

Stanford currently sits at 7-7 on the season with nothing too out of the ordinary happening in their schedule, winning the game they should have and losing the games they should have. The Cardinal had a pretty tough non-conference schedule facing teams like Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas, San Francisco and Florida.

Key 1: Jeter and Randolph

In my article about Pac-12 Bid Predictions, I wrote about the possibility of Arizona winning the Pac-12 Tournament to secure themselves an automatic bid. I mentioned the potential Arizona has with former McDonald’s All-American Chase Jeter and former Top-40 recruit Brandon Randolph.

Chase Jeter had a solid night against Utah, going for 21 points, 13 rebounds an 4 assists on 8-12 shooting. Randolph was not as efficient shooting 7-19 but also put up 20 points. In Arizona’s current four game win streak, Randolph has scored double figures all four and Jeter in three, the only mishap being where scored 7 points against Colorado, shooting the ball just six times. The Wildcats also started the season on a four-game win streak with Jeter and Randolph scoring double figures in all four as well.

Arizona has lost four games this season and only in two of them did Jeter and Randolph both score double figures. The first instance was a three-point loss to a trending Alabama team and the second was their loss to Auburn where their bench only scored four points. It is visible how important these two are to the overall success of Arizona.

Key 2: Offense in the Paint

This relates back to the success of Chase Jeter. The 6’10 big man is shooting 65% percent from the field without attempting any threes. They are going to need to him do what he does best and work the paint for points against Stanford. The Cardinal hold their opponents to under 30 percent from three which is the best three-point defense in the conference.

Arizona as a whole is a bad three pointing shooting team, ranked 246th in the country with a 37% three-point percentage. The combination of their own shooting abilities with how well Stanford defends the arc shows why Arizona should not settle.