Just another thriller at McKale Center. Because of when you think of Arizona-Lipscomb basketball, you think thriller. That’s just the way it is.

It is, on one level, a great ending, a great story. The Wildcats win on a 3-pointer released with one-tenth of a second (or less) left. The stuff dreams of made of.

But out of all the wonderful things you’ve seen at McKale Center, watching the Wildcats pour off the bench in celebration to mob game-winning shooter Nic Wise to beat Lipscomb in overtime shouldn’t be one of them.

Lipscomb, folks.

“Tonight was a reflection of trying to hang in there under some very difficult circumstances,” first-year UA coach Sean Miller said after Monday night’s 83-82 victory. “We’re not a very good team.”

He did add: “We’re working hard day to be better.”

OK. That’s something.

Still, the truth is, Lipscomb, a preseason co-favorite in the Atlantic Sun Conference, has a better chance of being in the NCAA Tournament than Arizona.

And that’s just kind of sad.

Through 10 games of the nonconference season, it is obvious that 5-5 Arizona does not have, will not have, an NCAA Tournament resume. The postseason door is open just a crack because the young Wildcats, if they can get everyone healthy (Jamelle Horne, Kevin Parrom), figure to have a reasonable chance of playing their best ball in March for the Pac-10 Tournament.

The league is so bad that maybe the Cats could get hot at the right time, run the table in Los Angeles and earn the league’s automatic berth to the NCAAs. If you’re clinging to hope, that’s it.

Miller has been saying since the day he arrived in spring that he was fully anticipating growing pains. He didn’t sell anybody on the promise of a 26th consecutive NCAA Tournament for the Wildcats.

What might have been interpreted as sandbagging can now be interpreted as truth.

TucsonCitizen.com’s Steve Rivera asked Miller after the game how much his team practiced late-game situations.

“We do,” he said, “but, like everything, we’re so far away from being good at it.”

Besides, he said, Arizona isn’t advanced enough to be working on special situations. It is still trying to get a grip on the most basic of fundamentals.

“If we didn’t win the game tonight, one of the things that is overwhelming that you would ask yourself is, ‘Why do they keep running around us like we’re not there?’” Miller said.

“I mean, I’ve been in 18 seasons as a coach, this is my sixth as the head coach … I don’t know if I have ever seen a team that has a harder time rebounding a miss. One of the reasons that the game went into overtime is they had a couple of loose-ball plays.

“I just really feel like I could put my suit on and get on the floor and get that ball. It’s not that hard. The ball’s there, you gotta dive on it. The shot goes up, you have to block out. Running fast, playing with great effort is really hard for our team. We’re just going to keep working on that.”

Horne, out with a foot injury (perhaps for more than a month), is the team’s best rebounder. Without him, the Wildcats were out-rebounded 37-31.

Lipscomb had 36 points in the paint and 18 second-chance points. Arizona had 22 and eight.

“When one player goes down,” Miller said, “it can really change what you do.”

That’s the fragile state of Arizona basketball. The Wildcats are young. They have no scorers to bring off the bench. Not terribly deep right now. Not overly skilled on offense. Still learning Miller’s man-to-man scheme on defense.

Many of the young players are learning how to deal with basketball adversity for the first time.

Add it up: No margin of error.

Well, very little margin of error — about one-tenth of a second at home against a small private college from Nashville.

“We just have a long way to go,” Miller said.

Yep. How do you feel about the NIT?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 1:39 am and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: Nic Wise, Sean Miller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.