No. 11 Arizona Wins in OT Against Santa Clara

By Francisco Romero

Playing against Santa Clara in the opening round of the DirecTV Wooden Legacy, the Arizona Wildcats were able to squeeze out a 75-73 win over the Broncos.

Santa Clara’s Junior Guard Jared Brownridge was unstoppable finishing the game with 44 points; he scored seven three-pointers and was 15-15 from the free-throw line.

Arizona’s head coach Sean Miller had nothing but praise for Brownridge after the game; “You can’t say enough good things about him. Look at what he did tonight, it’s not just 44 (points), it’s 44 out of 73.”

Miller said there were a lot of lessons learned during Thursday’s game; one thing he would like to improve upon is on the defensive end, “We have such a long way to go on defense, it’s not even close,” said Miller. “The last two years, if you saw Arizona play, you saw two of the nation’s best defensive teams and we are just starting the ascent to potentially one day arrive somewhere in the stratosphere of that. That doesn’t at all mean that Brownridge didn’t earn his baskets tonight and that Santa Clara didn’t execute their game plan, they really did. Did they play against an outstanding defensive team tonight? No.”

Arizona’s senior Ryan Anderson led the Wildcats effort with a double-double, scoring 17 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. Mark Tollfson added 13 points, while center Kaleb Tarczewski finished the game with 12 points.

Anderson was not surprised by Santa Clara’s effort against the Cats; ““Santa Clara did a great job playing us physical. Their coaching staff put them in a lot of good positions defensively. They made it really difficult on our team. What we sign up for at Arizona is to play tough games and to take everyone’s best punch. Definitely Santa Clara gave us a great run tonight.”

Arizona improved its record to 5-0 in the season. Santa Clara’s record stands now at 0-6.

Arizona continues the DirecTV Wooden Legacy Tournament and plays Providence Friday night.