Wildcats Destroy Cougars 85-61

Eddy Meola

Arizona dominated Washington State for an 85-61 victory. Kyle Fogg led the Wildcats with 20 points while Solomon Hill scored 17 and grabbed 11 rebounds. Brendon Lavender added 14 points. The game became so out of hand that even Max Wiepking reached the scoring column with a three-pointer in the final minute.

Arizona went up big late in the first half, and Washington State never threatened again as the Wildcats coasted to an easy victory. Momentum swung Arizona’s way after Faisal Aden—last week’s Pac-12 player of the week—went down for good with a knee injury minutes before the break. Arizona’s lead swelled from that point forward, topping out at 79-51 with four and a half minutes to go.

Despite the convincing victory, a second—decidedly negative—story line developed for Arizona. For the third time in the last four games, a Wildcat player was ejected. This time the offender was Josiah Turner. After the officials failed to call a push against a Cougar player who was fighting for position down low, Turner lashed out by shoving his opponent back. The referees whistled Turner for the technical, and ejected him because he had received one end of a double-technical foul just a minute earlier.

Prior to the ejection, Turner was having one of his best games as a Wildcat. He opened the second half with an explosion of scoring. After converting on two athletic lay ups, he stole the ball and dropped it in the hoop for a 48-29 lead. Turner could have added more points during the spurt, but he missed three consecutive free throws.

As a team, Arizona ended up missing eight straight free throws—one of the few negatives to an otherwise impressive Wildcat performance—to begin the second half. Still, the Cougars could not take advantage and Arizona actually increased its lead to 61-41 by the 11-minute mark when Lavender finally made a Wildcat free throw.

In the first half, Fogg scored eight points early as Arizona opened with an 11-8 lead five minutes into the game. Later in the half, Fogg sank his third three-pointer of the game to give the Wildcats a five-point lead. After Lavender made a three-pointer and one of two free throws, Arizona led 27-18 at the seven-minute mark. Then, with less than two minutes to go, Fogg hit another three to put the Wildcats up 37-25. After two free throws by Washington State’s Brock Motum, Kevin Parrom hit a deep three and Turner laid it up after a steal to put Arizona ahead 42-27 at the break.

The Wildcats recovered from a cold shooting performance in their last outing to make 7/12 three-point attempts in the first half. Arizona also did a superb job of taking care of the ball; the Wildcats had just two turnovers after the first 20 minutes. Fogg led all scorers at the break with an impressive 18 points off 7/11 shooting. Parrom chipped in seven points, two assists, and two rebounds.

For the game, Arizona made 15/26 three-pointers and only turned the ball over nine times.

After the game, Fogg complemented his teammates for “doing a good job of looking for (him).” Fogg went on to say that his team “feeds off each other’s energy…when one guy makes a shot it helps (the other players)...when we play as a team, we’re tough to beat.”

In looking ahead to the white-out game on Saturday against Washington, Fogg said, “I expect it to be just as big if not bigger (than last year).”