KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Caleb Love scored 27 points to lead the Arizona Wildcats over shorthanded Texas Tech 86-80 in a Big 12 tournament semifinal game Friday at T-Mobile Center.

Arizona’s rubber-match win, coming after the teams split the regular-season series, moved Arizona to 22-11 and into the Big 12 tournament championship game against Houston at 3 p.m. Saturday. It also may have put the Wildcats back in consideration for a preferential top four NCAA Tournament seed.

Texas Tech dropped to 25-8 and is projected to receive a No. 3 seed on Sunday.

Arizona shot 50% and held Texas Tech to just 42%, though the Red Raiders hit over 50% of their field goals in the second half to keep the game within single digits for most of the second half.

Love scored his 27 points on 10-for-15 shooting while hitting 5 of 8 3-pointers. KJ Lewis added 12 points, eight rebounds and six assists despite continuing to deal with a sore right wrist, ripping off a wrap over it during the first half.

Kevin Overton led Texas Tech with 19 points but the Red Raiders were playing without two of their top three scorers: All-Big 12 first team forward Darrion Williams wore a boot Friday after playing against Baylor in a Thursday quarterfinal game, and forward Chance McMillian did not play because of an upper body strain.

In addition, Texas Tech forward JT Toppin, the Big 12’s Player of the Year, threw up in a trash can in a tunnel adjacent to the court because of over-hydration, according to ESPN’s coverage of the game. Toppin had just 10 points and five rebounds in 24 minutes while missing both 3-pointers he took.

Because the Big 12 tournament semifinals didn’t have either Kansas, Kansas State or Iowa State for the first time ever, depriving the event of nearby rooting interest, the Wildcats’ fan support was audible inside the half-empty T-Mobile Center.

While it wasn’t the sort of “McKale North” atmosphere supporting the Wildcats at recent Pac-12 Tournaments, UA fans were the biggest group on hand for the late semifinal game Friday.

Leading 47-39 at halftime, Arizona took early second half leads of up to 14 points before the Red Raiders chipped away. TTU scored seven straight points, capped by a 3-pointer from Overton, to cut UA’s lead to 64-59 with 9:08 left.

Overton later hit his fourth 3 from the right corner to pull the Red Raiders within 70-66 with 6:14 left and at that point, TTU was shooting 57.1% from the field after making only 32.4% in the first half.

But Texas Tech never came any closer from there.

In the first half, Love scored 17 points while Arizona held Texas Tech to just 32.4% percent shooting and took a 49-37 halftime lead.

Arizona shot 65.4% from the field, though the Red Raiders tied UA with 17 rebounds and scored four more points at the free-throw line.

The Wildcats outscored the Red Raiders 9-4 over the final 2:01 of what was a one-possession game for most of the first half, with little-used point guard Conrad Martinez turning a steal into a layup with 1:12 to go.

The Wildcats jumped out to a 9-0 lead, with Love scoring the first seven points of the game off a 3-pointer, a 12-footer and two free throws.But Texas Tech hit 5 of 6 3s over the next six minutes to take a 22-19 lead after Christian Anderson and Kevin Overton hit 3s on successive TTU possessions.

The game score remained with three points, with Texas Tech missing its final 12 3-pointers of the half, until Townsend hit a pair of free throws to give UA a 40-35 lead with 2:01 left in the half.

Arizona entered Friday’s game at 21-11 and Texas Tech was 25-7. The Red Raiders are fighting for a potential No. 2 NCAA Tournament while UA is projected to be hovering between a 4 and 5.

Arizona lawmakers are debating a bill that would protect utilities from wildfire-related lawsuits, a move that would likely send shockwaves through the insurance industry. 

The bill would make it harder to prove that utilities are to blame for wildfires started by faulty or poorly maintained equipment while also limiting damages. In exchange for reduced liability, utilities would need to file plans every two years detailing the steps they’re taking to limit the risk of wildfires.

The bill, as currently written, doesn’t really require utilities to stick to those plans. If a utility doesn’t follow its plans or is negligent in maintaining its equipment, it is still protected from claims.

The insurance industry has been reeling from wildfires, and the bill could have the unintended effect of shifting the burden of wildfire claims from utilities onto homeowners’ insurers.

“There’s no free lunch in this,” Marcus Osborn, an insurance company lobbyist, said at a public hearing on the bill. “You’re either going to pay in higher insurance premiums or you’re going to pay in higher utility costs.”

Some homeowners in Arizona have seen their rates triple this year while others have had their coverage dropped.

That’s largely a result of insurance companies trying to cover their losses as wildfire claims stack up. Hippo, an insurance startup that went public via SPAC in 2021, reported $42 million in losses as a result of the recent Los Angeles wildfires. Lemonade, another startup that went public in 2020, is expecting to lose $45 million from the same disaster.

Compounding risks from wildfires have given other startups an opening. Kettle, for example, sells reinsurance and models possible wildfire outcomes to help other companies backstop their wildfire risk. Still, the overall trend has been toward higher costs for homeowners.

The Arizona bill is being mooted as states throughout the Western U.S. grapple with the threat — and fallout — of wildfires made worse by climate change and over a century of fire suppression.

For decades, fires in the U.S. were stamped out as quickly as possible. Before, low-intensity fires would race through the understory, killing weak saplings and transforming dry leaf litter into rich ash that fertilized the soil. But as fires were suppressed, understories grew thick with brush and years of accumulated leaf litter.

Those conditions created what wildfire experts call “ladder fuels,” which help carry low-intensity fires from the forest floor into the canopy, where they can turn catastrophic.

Against that backdrop, climate change has been compounding the risk of high-intensity canopy fires. Rising temperatures have exacerbated droughts, according to a study published in November, by increasing evaporation. In other words, what little precipitation does fall to the ground ends up back in the atmosphere more quickly than before, leading to even drier conditions.

Warmer winters have also been to blame. Lower snowpack leads to drier spring conditions, and insects whose populations were usually kept in check by bitter cold temperatures have been thriving. For example, warmer temperatures and voracious pine beetles killed more than 100 million trees in California between 2014 and 2017.  Those dead trees became an ideal fuel that drove wildfires in subsequent years.