Which Wildcat breaks out in the tourney? Questions for Arizona, Part 2

The Arizona Wildcats are going into the NCAA Tournament with three or fewer losses for just the third time in nearly 30 years.

For a program rich with success, Tommy Lloyd’s first year in charge has produced one of the school’s best teams ever heading into the Big Dance.

With all the intrigue surrounding the Wildcats’ chances to win it all, ArizonaSports.com editors Kellan Olson and Kevin Zimmerman preview Arizona’s place in the NCAA Tournament by running through six big questions.

After we asked our first three questions in Part I, here is our second installment before Arizona faces Wright State on Friday at 4:27 p.m. MST.

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Who is Arizona’s most important player for the tournament?

Kevin Zimmerman: The tempo and physicality the Wildcats play with surely helped an elite athletic team pour in points during the regular season. But if we’re talking about making the first few rounds easy for the team and then beating other teams with multiple pro prospects on it, I think Christian Koloko is the most important player.

He is the eraser of mistakes and the fireman putting out fires. He’s a unique prospect because of how well he moves, double-teaming on a 3/4 court press, running back to cover a guard leaking out to the corner, helping from that weak side when the guy in the other corner drives with the ball, and rebounding a miss or contesting said opposite corner when the driver kicks a pass out.

Koloko is also the elite lob threat that creates gravity for an offense that really doesn’t have that many shooters. All-in-all, his low-stat games don’t express how important Koloko is to Arizona. His erasing and fire-extinguishing have also gotten him in foul trouble, including in a loss to Tennessee.

Often times that foul trouble has come amid blowouts where it hasn’t been made a bigger deal. It is something to watch if Arizona gets a tough opponent that puts Koloko on the bench early in a game.

Kellan Olson: Arizona’s elite offense is going to get bogged down for stretches of the tournament. Maybe it’ll be just a few minutes here and there, or maybe it’ll be more prolonged. Whatever the case may be, Bennedict Mathurin has been the go-to bucket for the Wildcats all year, igniting runs on his own.

I really want to go with Azuolas Tubelis here because his overall playmaking and slashing are underrated — and I’ve made the case that he’s the Wildcats’ best player — but ankle injuries this year have hampered his effectiveness.

Mathurin meanwhile has grown into a legitimate scorer this season, a true top dog with the ball. Something I loved toward the end of the year was him ending up with at least nine free throw attempts in three of his last five games, including 15 in the Pac-12 Championship. Depending on how Arizona’s high-low game is working, Kerr Kriisa’s health and how consistently the Wildcats can get in transition, they might need to rely on Mathurin a whole lot.

How he handles it will determine if they win a title or not.

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Arizona’s well-balanced roster will surely have at least one player have a breakout performance in March. Who is your pick?

Zimmerman: Dalen Terry picks up the best perimeter-oriented opponent, plays like a point guard and can cause the most trouble in transition as a scorer or playmaker. He’s also the cliche heart-and-soul guy, even if Kriisa gets a lot of credit in that role as well. I think Terry will have his moment in the tournament that cements him down the path of becoming one of the most beloved Wildcats.

Terry is 20 pounds and a jumper away from being a very appealing NBA prospect, but it’s the intangible stuff that will pop. He also has the potential to drop 20 points out of nowhere, I think.

Olson: Kriisa and the aforementioned Tubelis would have been mine if they were 100% healthy. I’m going to go with Koloko. I’ve seen this dude singlehandedly dominate a handful of basketball games defensively and I don’t think he ever gets enough credit for the work he puts in every possession to run down the floor and fight for post position.

I think that type of sentiment is going to grow the longer Arizona stays in the tournament. A couple of his defensive clips will make the rounds on NBA Draft Twitter, probably the ones where Koloko’s terrific mobility as a 7-foot-1 big with a 7-foot-4 wingspan. He’s in the right spot almost every time with that athletic profile too, and it’s going to allow him to manhandle a few of Arizona’s big games in this tourney.

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Across Arizona’s strong rotation of its top eight players, who worries you the most?

Zimmerman: I can’t not go with Kriisa here. Part of it is his ankle injury, which could either keep him out or severely limit him if he tries to play through it at some point.

Besides that, Kriisa is exciting if not erratic. He takes 82% of his total shot attempts from three-point range and yet shoots a bleh 35% from deep this year.

Kriisa is an even better passer when you consider he averages 4.9 assists per outing and rarely navigates inside the arc and does not have the deepest bag in terms of his ball-handling. You could look at that as a positive or understand he has limitations.

Other erratic things:

– He has recorded four or more turnovers in 10 of 31 games played.

– His shooting performances in percentages over his last 15 games look like this: 27, 0, 33, 39, 17, 64, 38, 50, 22, 29, 25, 57, 29, 25, 0.

He is fun! He is erratic! But I understand Arizona fans would not trade him for many people.

Olson: In the same vein as players of the past like Kaleb Tarczewski and Kyryl Natyazhko, Oumar Ballo is every Arizona center that has led to me throwing remotes and punching air over the years. Like those two guys, Ballo is a very large human being who works really hard. I always applaud that.

He also does things that drive me nuts.

From his floater that never goes in, to his brainfarts with positioning on both ends of the court, Ballo is great at devouring undersized frontcourts. Beyond that, it’s tough. When he gets a post touch and doesn’t have a mismatch, the play rarely goes anywhere and his touch is heavily reliant on getting within a few feet of the rim.

Ballo has really improved this year over the season and finds more consistent ways to impact the game, most notably defensively. I just worry if an extended Kriisa absence leads to more Ballo minutes, particularly in the dual-center looks.

Even if that’s not the case, I am more worried about the potential of Koloko getting into foul trouble during a pivotal game. He could only play 19 minutes against Tennessee, a loss, and 15 versus Colorado, another loss. That’s two of the three defeats Arizona had all year. Good thing college basketball officiating is consistent and lenient about contact! Ah, well.

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