Arizona downed its 3rd Pac-10 team in a row by taking out Stanford on Thursday night 76-68 and Derrick Williams turned in his 4th 20 point game in a row. The Cats are on a great streak right now and it couldn't come at a better time as Pac-10 leader Cal comes to Tucson on Saturday. After this win, Arizona sits alone in 2nd place and the game on Saturday will be for bragging rights of who will sit atop the Pac-10 leaderboard. Arizona led this game at the break 37-34 and never looked back.
The Cats only shot 33% from the field but hit 7 three pointers and were 27-34 from the FT line. Derrick Williams was 8-9 from the FT line and Nic Wise hit 10-12. What's even more unbelievable about the game on Thursday is that Derrick Williams had 23 points and 8 rebounds in only 30 minutes. Kyle Fogg finished with 15 points and Nic Wise finished with 14 points. Arizona had 10 assists and only 10 turnovers in the entire game. Compare that to Stanford who had 13 assists and 18 turnovers. The Cats also pulled down a whopping 19 offensive rebounds. Coach Miller had this to say about the game:
"We'll take this win. It wasn't pretty, but I really attribute it to the fans and their energy. They are really the reason for the win. I was pretty disappointed by some of the play early in the first half. We had some great opportunities to come out, revved up from the crowd and we missed out. Obviously we are playing better, three or four weeks ago we wouldn't have been able to win a game like this, shooting the way we did. Stanford did a very good job at times to make us miss, but shooting 33 percent and winning is hard to do."
Landry Fields turned in 31 points and was basically unstoppable all night. Jeremy Green hit up the Cats for 25 points, shooting 20 times in the game, making 9 and shooting 11 FT's, making only 5 of them. Other than those two top performers, the Cats really limited the Cardinal all night.
Next up: California in Tucson at 3:30 on Saturday for a chance to take over the Pac-10 lead.