There was a point this season where the Arizona Wildcats were 4-5. After being ranked number ten in the preseason AP Top-25 poll, this was not the start that Wildcat fans were expecting to say the least.
Caleb Love and company’s poor start to the season had college basketball fans doubting the Wildcats early on. After being a top three seed in the past several March Madness tournaments this 2024-2025 season looked like a shadow of their former years after dropping five of there first nine games, three to unranked opponents.
Not only that but even their losing lacked consistency. In some losses their offense looked unstoppable but their defense had holes like Swiss cheese. In other losses their defense would allow 60 or less points but there offense couldn’t get get anything going.
Arizona dropped from the ninth best team in the country to out of March Madness contention in just two weeks.
But the Wildcats have crawled back, from the depths of forgotten DI schools, into the AP Top-25 poll as of Week 14. They are currently ranked 20th.
But what changed?
What Makes The Arizona Wildcats So Great
In early losses verses UCLA and Duke the biggest threat to Wildcat success showed itself: long stretches of no offensive firepower, they just couldn’t get a basket. Since their fifth loss, to UCLA, the ship has righted. They’ve scored 70+ in 12 of their last 13 games which directly corelates to their success. Arizona has won 12 of their last 13 and their only loss came versus Texas Tech’s physical defense which held them to 54 points.
But the bigger question is WHO has made the change. The answer? Caleb Love.
Caleb Love
The senior Wildcat captain is the heartbeat of this Arizona team and a lot of the Wildcat’s struggles early on were due to Love’s own struggles. In their first five losses Love averaged 12 points a game on 30% shooting. Even in wins Caleb Love was still playing bad, bad enough to get called out by other teammates and coaches.
“Obviously we all know Caleb, he has a well-documented story, and he’s my guy. But he’s not playing great right now,” said Arizona Head Coach Tommy Lloyd following an early season loss to Duke. “I just got to be 100 percent honest.”
Although he sold his player out, he followed his statement with this…
“But it’s my job to hang with him, because this isn’t the NBA. There aren’t trades. You’re not releasing guys. And I know this: Caleb’s had so much success in college basketball, if we hang with him, it’s the right thing to do, and we’ll be rewarded for that. So I’m going to hang with him and trust that better days are coming.”
Lloyd and the rest of the Arizona Wildcats were right to stick by Caleb Love, the second half of the season has been a highlight real for him.
Love has averaged 18.5 points a game since their Week 5 loss versus UCLA and has hit countless clutch shots to push Arizona back into the spotlight.
Defensive Improvement
Although they aren’t known for their lockdown D, the Arizona Wildcats have been able to scrap together strings of stops down late stretches of second halves- it’s been a key to their current winning streak. The Wildcats haven’t let up 80 points in the past ten games, opposed to letting up four of them in their first seven.
Their defense came up huge in a recent OT thriller versus the No. 3 Iowa State Cyclones. The Wildcats managed to get some stops late in the second half which allowed Caleb Love’s buzzer beater three to send it to OT.
Arizona would only allow the Cyclones to score four points in overtime and went on to win, legitimizing their resurgence.
The Coaching Mindset of Tommy Lloyd
Because of their 4-5 start, the worst start in recent program history, head coach Tommy Lloyd told press that it was difficult to trust his players and not call early timeouts in the second half in the beginning of the season.
But after Arizona’s recent victory versus BYU, Lloyd was speaking a different tune saying,
It looks as though Lloyd’s trust issues have been sorted out and now the Arizona Wildcats are rolling. In the head coach’s own words, “They’re playing so much better than I’m coaching now.”
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