Jordin Mayes (middle) helps defend a drive to the hoop by Harvard’s Siyani Chambers. Photo by Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports

SALT LAKE CITY — Arizona Wildcats backup guard Jordin Mayes has scored at least eight points in a game only four times this season. Three of those occasions have occurred in March.

“Man, his favorite month is March,” said Arizona senior Kevin Parrom.

“He plays in March. I don’t know what happened at the beginning of the year, but I know Mayes is going to come through in March.”

Mayes scored eight points in Arizona’s 74-51 victory against Harvard on Saturday, hitting a 3-pointer and twice scoring on drives to the basket. He played 19 minutes — his fourth-highest total of the season — needed more after Parrom fouled out with 12:48 to play.

Mayes also had three assists, two on lob passes to guard Mark Lyons.

“He’s stepped up in the last month,” coach Sean Miller said of Mayes. “But today he played a really strong game on offense and defense.”

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Jordin Mayes reacts after making a 3-pointer against Colorado at the Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas. Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images

It’s Mayes in March.

That’s a good thing for Jordin Mayes and the Arizona Wildcats, as the junior guard’s recent play is reminiscent of the finest slice of his college career, which came in March 2011.

He made 10 consecutive 3-point shots in that happy month, starting in the Pac-10 tournament and running through the Sweet 16 upset of Duke. One round earlier, he sweetly stroked in 4 of 4 shots from behind the arc against Texas — and the Cats needed every one of them in a 70-69 victory.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I just like this time of year.”

Mayes has, once again, become an important reserve for Arizona after spending most of the season in a crater of lost confidence, a shooter reluctant to shoot, and shooting off target when he did.

He didn’t score as the Cats lost to UCLA in the Pac-12 tournament semifinals, but his previous three games — in which he scored 22 points after the calendar turned to March signaled that coach Sean Miller could trust him again.

“He’s like a new guy to me when I see him,” said senior guard Kevin Parrom.

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The Arizona Wildcats basketball team wrapped up its exhibition trip to the Bahamas on Monday with another blowout victory, and coach Sean Miller declaring the entire experience a success.

The most important thing was not the result of the two games but the 10 practices leading up to the trip, getting a jump-start on preseason teaching and incorporating five key new players into the rotation — four freshmen and senior point guard transfer Mark Lyons.

“There is no question, if we had to do it all over again, we’d do it the exact same way,” Miller said in a video interview posted by ArizonaWildcats.com.

“I know our team has gotten better. I know individually our guys have a better grasp of what we doing, especially the newcomers.”

Lyons has a team-high 19 points Monday as Arizona defeated the Bahamas All-Stars 99-57. The Wildcats beat another all-star team, the Real Deal Shockers, 136-66 on Saturday.

Senior wing Kevin Parrom scored 21 points on Saturday and 16 on Monday. Miller said the extra practices and exhibition games were particularly helpful for Parrom and junior guard Jordin Mayes, both of whom were limited last season by injuries.

Miller said this trip allowed both players to “to get their feet on the ground.”

Here are quick postgame interviews from ArizonaWildcats.com with junior college transfer forward Matt Korcheck and freshman 7-footer Kaleb Tarczewski.

Great game today. We got the W again today! We are very talented and we should get even better as the year goes on. The sky is the limit !!!

— Kevin Parrom (@KevinParrom3) August 14, 2012

Arizona Wildcats sophomore Jordin Mayes didn’t score against UCLA. He missed six shots.

But he was more than a pointless point guard as he went 25 minutes as the emergency starter for suspended Josiah Turner — about three times the minutes he had played in about five weeks since suffering a stress reaction in his left foot.

With no other true point guard on the roster, that was a big 25 minutes in Arizona’s 66-58 victory in the Pac-12 tournament quarterfinals on Thursday.

“Really valuable,” assistant coach James Whitford said on the KCUB (1290-AM) postgame show.

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Jordin Mayes is averaging 5.5 points per game. Photo by Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE

The return of Arizona Wildcats point guard Jordin Mayes is still uncertain, but it shouldn’t be much longer now.

Mayes, who has missed five games because of a stress reaction in his right foot, is experiencing less pain than he was last week and was “almost pain free” in a Monday workout, coach Sean Miller said on his weekly radio show on KCUB (1290-AM).

“But it’s a delicate balance,” Miller said.

“The one thing we don’t want to do is put Jordin at more risk than we need to. Although he can play this weekend, what’s best for him, I don’t know.”

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Jordin Mayes is averaging 5.5 points this season. Photo by Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE

Arizona Wildcats point guard Jordin Mayes, suffering from a stress reaction in his right foot, could optimistically return next week, coach Sean Miller said Tuesday.

Miller basically ruled out Mayes from this week’s home games vs. Colorado and Utah, saying an appearance from Mayes is “probably improbable.” After that, who knows?

Could be next week. Could be as late as the Pac-12 tournament next month.

“It’s a matter of when his pain subsides, and we anticipate it will,” Miller said.

“As it subsides, he will be cleared to practice, and he’s able to practice and handle the discomfort that he has, then we’ll clear him for games.”

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Jordin Mayes, averaging 5.5 points this season, might be done for the year. Photo by Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE

The Arizona Wildcats’ best basketball victory of the season came with distressing injury news.

Coach Sean Miller said after a 78-74 win at Cal on Thursday night — ending the Bears’ 17-game winning streak at Haas Pavilion — that sophomore point guard Jordin Mayes might have suffered a broken right foot.

Miller told reporters after the game that Mayes will undergo X-rays on Friday.

“We’ll take the win and we’ll cross our fingers and hope Jordin is OK,” Miller said in his postgame interview on 1290-AM.

Mayes — who broke the same foot over the summer, setting back his preseason conditioning — hasn’t been playing great and shooting to his standards, but he’s the only true point guard on the roster other than starter Josiah Turner.

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Jordin Mayes drives to the basket against Duke's Kyrie Irving in the NCAA Sweet 16. Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE

The one thing anyone can say about Arizona Wildcats sophomore guard Jordin Mayes is that he has a sweet shot.

And yet …

“He gets no sugar,” coach Sean Miller said.

You probably know what he means by that, and it’s ironic that Mayes’ big night against Duquesne — 19 points in a 67-59 victory at McKale Center on Wednesday night — came on a day in which Arizona was being celebrated for having the nation’s top-rated recruiting class.

Mayes wasn’t one of those headline-making recruits, coming in last season with another middlin’ prospect — junior college power forward Jesse Perry — who has worked out pretty well. The top recruit in that class — guard Daniel Bejarano — already transferred out to Colorado State. Go figure.

“He came here, and no one asked me about him. He just did his job,” Miller said of Mayes, who averaged 4.9 points last season as a backup to MoMo Jones.

“Year 1 became Year 2, still no sugar.”

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Kyryl Natyazhko celebrates after Arizona's win over Texas in the 2011 NCAA Tournament. Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images.

It doesn’t have to be decided this week, or next month, but Arizona Wildcats coach Sean Miller is going to have to make some decisions at center and point guard.

Those are the positions that are most up in the air as the Cats approach their exhibition opener Thursday night against Seattle Pacific. Somebody has to be out there for the opening tip, although Miller said that might not mean much at this point.

Junior Kyryl Natyazhko and freshman Sidiki Johnson are competing at center, which is the team’s biggest question mark.

“We’re not at that point where one player is a clear-cut leader,” Miller said.

“Both will get heavy minutes at that position. I would like to think that between the two of them, they can grow at that position and make us successful. Who is going to start, who is going to play more, it’s too early to tell and it’s not clear cut.”

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Jordin Mayes drives to the basket against Duke's Kyrie Irving in the NCAA Sweet 16. Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea-US PRESSWIRE

Here is the lead to this week’s Pac-12 Insider column from the Arizona Republic’s Doug Haller, who gives us a healthy dose of basketball amid the start of football camps. Click for the rest of the Haller’s notes from the Arizona Republic.

By Doug Haller

In perhaps the biggest off-season of his career, Jordin Mayes wears a protective boot on his left foot. He walks with crutches.

The Arizona sophomore point guard had started experiencing pain in last season’s NCAA Tournament, but decided to play through it. Once the season ended, the discomfort never subsided. Eventually, a stress fracture was diagnosed, and Mayes had surgery earlier this summer.

“We’re taking precautions with it, but the recovery process is going real well,” Mayes said. “It’s feeling fine. I should get off the crutches and off the boot in (less than) two weeks. Then after that, I’ll get back on the court and see what I can do then.”

The start of the season isn’t believed to be in jeopardy: Mayes expects to be back on the court in September. Still, the injury came at a bad time. Even with MoMo Jones gone, transferring to Iona, Mayes will have to compete for minutes in a crowded Arizona backcourt. Shooting guards Kyle Fogg and Brendon Lavender join Mayes and freshmen Josiah Turner and Nick Johnson. Wing Kevin Parrom also will contribute.

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