It took a trip into another time zone and against a couple of pretty good defensive teams to realize there was still a lot of work to be done for the Arizona Wildcats.

Great games and fantastic finishes – victories over California and Washington – don’t mean much when you’re on the road and trying to clinch a Pac-10 Conference title. Arizona found that out after UCLA defeated the Cats 71-49 at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday afternoon.

It meant Arizona was swept up in Southern California for the weekend and will now have to regroup when it returns home for the regular season’s final two games against Oregon State and Oregon.

Arizona coach Sean Miller spoke about lessons learned and finding some humility while on the road.

“Today we played a team that played at a high level,’’ Miller said in his brief postgame radio interview. “We needed to be at that high level.’’

Arizona is now 23-6 overall and 12-4 in the conference. Arizona still has a good chance to clinch its first Pac-10 title since 2005 next weekend. What it learned this weekend was there is still plenty to get better at and just because you’re 23-6 overall and on the verge of clinching a title it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve arrived.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2011 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.