What Tommy Lloyd and Benn Mathurin said after Arizona’s loss to UCLA

The Arizona Wildcats fell flat in their first marquee Pac-12 game of the season, falling to UCLA 75-59 Tuesday night in Los Angeles. Our recap of the game can be found here.

After the game, coach Tommy Lloyd told Brian Jeffries on the UA postgame show that Arizona got some good looks but was also disjointed on offense at times. Lloyd said the staff will have to to watch film this week to better figure out what happened.

Lloyd credited UCLA as being a team “has been there and done that” whereas Arizona is still trying to get its feel on the ground.

Lloyd and Benn Mathurin spoke to the media postgame and had this to say:

Lloyd on starting Pelle Larsson over Azuolas Tubelis: “He hadn’t done anything since Thursday so I didn’t know how he was gonna be. I didn’t want to put a ton of pressure on him to start the game. Hey, he had a real injury. He was hurt on Thursday and our trainer did a great job getting him ready to play. And for him to come out and give an effort tonight and play decently, I’m proud of him and it shows a lot about his character.”

Lloyd on whether Tubelis will be back to 100% by the Arizona State game Saturday: “I hope so. We’ll see how we come out of this. We need to get back home and rest and get in our own beds and everybody tighten up with their school stuff. We have two good days of prep and hopefully we’ll be fully energized for a rivalry game.”

Lloyd on exposing Arizona in isolation: “They do a great job and they always have of picking matchups. They have four guys that they’re comfortable isolating, and if you isolate guys at this level, you surround them with good shooters, it’s sometimes hard. You got to pick your poison a little bit. Tonight their plan really worked for them.”

Lloyd on whether UCLA’s offense caught Arizona off-guard: “They play like they play. We knew they were going to try to pick on some matchups and they did it. It worked out for them. We’ll see how it works out next time.”

Lloyd on Kerr Kriisa’s 0-12 shooting night: “Kerr is a tough kid. He didn’t play well today. When you’re a good, aggressive player, you’re going to have nights like that. And he wasn’t the only one. So we definitely aren’t gonna pin anything on him. He’s our guy and going forward he’s gonna deliver. I’m confident in that.”

Mathurin on the team’s poor shooting performance: “It was a hard night for us hitting shots. We needed to adjust. Like me, I missed a lot of shots. I could have been better. I’m going to be better next game.”

Mathurin on what made UCLA so effective on offense: “They have a pretty good offense to be honest. They play a lot of iso and we were not really prepared for the iso. But we said as a team we just go from there.”

Mathurin on whether Arizona was unprepared: “They had a pretty good plan against us. We needed to prepare a little bit better. That’s the first game but we’ll play them in a week. We’ll adjust.”