Arizona vs. Ohio State: Wildcats look to improve on defense

If you’re an Arizona Wildcats fan, you can’t ask for much more heading into the team’s third-round NCAA Tournament game against 10th-seeded Ohio State at 2:15 p.m. Saturday.

The No. 2 seed Wildcats (32-3) cruised past 15th-seeded Texas Southern 93-72 in Thursday — but in that game, Arizona had defensive lapses that were uncharacteristic of one of the nation’s best defensive teams.

In fact, UA hadn’t yielded that many points in a single game since its last loss, 81-78 at Arizona State on Feb. 7.

Translation: The Wildcats will head into Saturday’s game against the team that knocked them out of the 2013 NCAA Tournament with a chip on their shoulder.

“I think we’ll have to play better (Saturday) to have a chance to beat Ohio State,” UA coach Sean Miller said.

“If you look at the final score and how Texas Southern scored on us, they scored on us easier than a lot of teams recently had. So, hopefully we got that out of our system moving forward here.”