Deandre Ayton and Dusan Ristic are everything for Arizona
It would appear that since Arizona has played 29 games with Deandre Ayton in the lineup, any possible punishments will retroactively affect the Wildcats’ record regardless of whether Ayton continues to suit up for the Pac-12 program. For the short-term, Ayton’s presence is enough to carry UA into the NCAA tournament, but for the squad to make a deep March Madness run, much will depend on the continued brilliance that has come from pairing the 7-foot-1 freshman with Dusan Ristic, the team’s 7-foot senior.
Earlier this season, Sam Vecenie of the Athletic did a deep-dive on Arizona’s efficiency when both bigs share the court. It was clearly an evolving scenario — the college game has very much adopted the NBA’s pace-and-space ethos, and forcing at least one 7-footer to guard smaller 4s on the perimeter, while being relegated on the other side of the ball to the mid-range seemed an absurd proposition. And yet, against Tier A and conference opponents, it worked — through nine games, Arizona was +30 when the two played together.
With two games remaining on the Wildcats’ Pac-12 slate, though, it’s worth examining how the experiment has played out with a larger sample size. The result? Very well for a team that needs its offense much more than past Wildcat squads. Per Hooplens.com, the two bigs have played 563 Pac-12 possessions, helping UA to score 1.20 points per possession and connect on 62 percent of its twos. The duo are a bit of a wash defensively — 1.09 PPP— but as the Wildcats control the defensive glass, allowing opponents to grab just 25 percent of their misses, at least the team has diminished second chance buckets.
Perhaps it is a bit jejune to proclaim the pairing of a likely top-three NBA draft pick and a seasoned big as “effective”, but in today’s college game, very rarely have teams been able to meld old school methodology with new school strategy. This could have gone horrible wrong for coach Sean Miller, and why it has worked is two-fold.
To start, Ristic is impossible to double-team. His usage rate — 20.6 percent — ranks fourth on the team, yet only Ayton and Allonzo Trier are more efficient scorers (1.068 points per play, which ranks in the 90th percentile of Division I); on the block, that rate rises to 1.078 points per play. And while his passing skillset isn’t Maravich-like, he has spent four seasons fighting off double-teams, so he is more than capable of finding seams within Arizona’s halfcourt offense, which is why the two bigs so ably feed off each other. Nine of Ristic’s 14 assists in Pac-12 play have been to Ayton; whether dump downs, high-lows, or lobs, Miller and Co. have countered opponents’ perimeter pressure by exacting some classic big-to-big passing.
As for Ayton, we all know about his athletic abilities and preternatural body control, and how both enable the frosh to score 1.19 points per play, a rate that ranks second to only Fletcher Magee of Wofford in DI (among those who have at least 400 plays). But what sets Ayton apart, and the second reason why the two bigs have excelled, is his passing; he may only have an assist rate of 8.5 percent, but his points per plays and assists (per Synergy Sports) is third on the squad — 1.29. He is skilled at looking over his opposite shoulder, finding the open Wildcat, and then whipping a cross-court pass that causes a defense to shift for only a moment, which is more than enough time for that guard to drive the lane and lob it back to Ayton for a easy bucket.
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By partially running the Wildcat offense out of the post, Miller has ensured his two most efficient players have a touch on just about every possession. And since Arizona rarely fields a lineup without the frontcourt duo — Keanu Pinder is the other Arizona big who sees significant playing time, and he has paired with either Ristic or Ayton on just 200 or so Pac-12 possessions, per Hooplens.com — the Wildcats are guaranteed a functioning offense.
Miller’s status, and whether he returns to the sidelines, and Trier’s status, and whether the wing returns to the court (following a post-drug test suspension), are both unknowns, but as Ristic and Ayton go, so goes Arizona, and so far, no one has shown an ability to ably slow the two.