What to watch for when Arizona men’s basketball visits West Virginia

Halfway through its first Big 12 road swing, Arizona has already experienced how different such trips are compared to those in the Pac-12. For starters, there’s a lot more sitting around and waiting.

When the Wildcats play No. 21 West Virginia on Tuesday night it will have been away from home for six days, having left Tucson on Thursday afternoon. They spent three nights in Cincinnati, including Saturday after upsetting the then-No. 16 Bearcats, before flying to Morgantown on Sunday afternoon and spending two nights there ahead of the tail end of their debut Big 12 road swing.

This is one of three 2-game trips for Arizona (8-5, 2-0 Big 12) in its new conference, by far the lengthiest, and one of only two that will keep it out on the road in between games. The Wildcats are also scheduled to stay away from home in between games at Texas Tech on Jan. 18 and Oklahoma State on Jan. 21, while they’ll bus back to Tucson following a Feb. 1 game at ASU before flying to Provo to face BYU on Feb. 4.

All of this is a stark contrast from life on the road in the Pac-12, where other than the games against ASU the road trips were always double dips but against teams fairly close to each other. The days of having “travel partners” are over, as ASU was home on Saturday and visits Kansas on Wednesday.

Same goes for the common two-in-three-days format of the Pac-12, as the only times in Big 12 play Arizona will have just a day between games will be a pair of Saturday/Monday scenarios where three of the four contests will be at McKale Center.

Asked last week about having the longest of the road trips first, UA coach Tommy Lloyd said “I’ll let you know after.” It’s looking like it will be the most difficult of those three road swings, too, as both teams will have been ranked when the Wildcats face them.

Lloyd picked up his 15^th win (in 24 tries) against a ranked opponent at Cincinnati, now comes another chance. Here’s what to watch for when the Wildcats face the Mountaineers on Tuesday, a 5 p.m. MT tip that will stream on ESPN+:

A fairly familiar foe

Arizona is one of four former Pac-12 schools that joined the Big 12 this year, but it won’t face ASU, Colorado or Utah until later this month. Yet it has already played West Virginia, the teams meeting in the 4^th place game at the Battle4Atlantis on Nov. 29 with the Mountaineers pulling out an 83-76 win in overtime.

That was the first of seven consecutive wins for West Virginia, which jumped into the AP Top 25 this week for the first time in more than two years. For Arizona, that loss dropped it to 3-4 to mark the first time it was below .500 since 2010.

Quite a bit has changed for both teams since then. Arizona has won five of six and actually got votes in the latest AP poll, and while the Mountaineers have continued to win they’ve had to do so without senior Tucker DeVries. The son of first-year coach Darian DeVries has been out with an “upper body injury” since early December.

Assuming DeVries doesn’t play Tuesday that means the UA won’t have to contend with a 6-foot-8 wing who was shooting 47.3 percent from 3-point range and torched the Wildcats for eight 3s on 12 attempts and had 26 points.

West Virginia still has senior guard Javon Small, who had 14 points and eight assists against Arizona and leads the Big 12 in scoring (19.5 points per game) and minutes (35.7). He was named Big 12 Player of the Year on Monday after averaging 18.5 points, 11 rebounds and 5 assists in wins over Kansas (in Lawrence) and Oklahoma State.

Yet another defensive juggernaut

In Lloyd’s first three seasons at Arizona his teams faced opponents that ranked in the Top 25 of KenPom.com’s adjusted deficiency metric 15 times, no more than six in a season, and only three in 2023-24. West Virginia will be the sixth Top 25 defensive team faced already in 2024-25, third in a row, as TCU is 25^th and Cincinnati 7^th in that metric.

The Mountaineers are 15^th in adjusted defense, sitting fourth in effective field goal percentage (42.1). From a raw numbers standpoint they’re 7^th in field goal defense (37.1 percent), 9^th in defending the 2 (42.7 percent) and 9^th against the 3 (27.4 percent).

The UA shot 45.3 percent against West Virginia last time, second-best of any opponent against the Mountaineers this season, and had a 104.4 offensive efficiency compared to the 93.9 West Virginia has allowed in 2024-25. And that was when the Wildcats were still figuring out their offensive identity.

During its 4-game win streak, Arizona is shooting 53.5 percent and its efficiencies against TCU (137.9) and Cincinnati (103.8) were the worst and second-worst, respectively, allowed by those teams this season.

A chance to make an early mark

Arizona is one of four 2-0 teams in the Big 12, along with Houston, Iowa State and West Virginia. The Cougars and Cyclones are heavily favored in their next games, both at home, and while KenPom.com projects a 72-71 Mountaineers win it’s the UA that’s favored by 2.5 according to FanDuel Sportsbook.

The Wildcats and Texas Tech, which plays at BYU on Tuesday night after winning at Utah on Saturday, both have a chance to start out 2-0 on the road in Big 12 play and do so with 2-game road sweeps. Those aren’t very common in this conference.

Last season there were 36 instances of back-to-back road games, with only three sweeps. Fourteen resulted in splits and 18 had the road team going 0-2. All told, in 2023-24 Big 12 games were won by the home team 66.7 percent of the time, third-highest of any Division I conference, and only Houston had a winning road record.

Compare that to the Pac-12, where in its final season six of 48 trips were swept by the road team with 23 splits and 19 winless journeys. Arizona swept the ultra-tough Rocky Mountain trip to Utah and Colorado and split the other three, going 6-4 on the road.