Sean Miller had this kind of reaction several times on Saturday. File photo by Pat Shanahan, The Arizona Republic.

I’m going to write very little about Arizona’s close call against Utah on Saturday afternoon. No need. Wildcats coach Sean Miller said it all after the game.

I’m here to be your press conference transcriber.

Not a very sexy job, but it probably best serves you on a day like this when the Wildcats avoided an NCAA Tournament bubble-bursting disaster by nearly losing to Utah — a team that entered McKale Center 0-12 away from home and lost to the Cats by 26 points in Salt Lake City last month.

Arizona’s expected Saturday walk in the park turned into high anxiety. The drama had a happy ending as the Wildcats finished on a 12-0 run to win 70-61, but they drew the ire of Miller, who is never afraid to unload his emotions after a game.

So, let’s tell most of the story in Miller’s own words.

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Jesse Perry (right) prepares to block a shot from Stanford's Aaron Bright in the second half. Photo by Jason O. Watson-US PRESSWIRE

The Arizona Wildcats don’t have Derrick Williams. They don’t have MoMo Jones. They don’t have an injured Kevin Parrom.

They don’t have the run-and-gun sensibilities of the great Lute Olson teams. They don’t have a true low-post scorer. They don’t really have a guy you would call a 3-point ace.

But they do have defense.

Never mind defections and injuries and a lack of height, the one thing Arizona can most control — effort on defense — has provided something that seemed to be in short supply just a week ago: Hope.

The Wildcats locked down Stanford on Saturday, winning 56-43 with the kind of stellar defensive effort that was the fuel for an improbable sweep of the Bay Area schools.

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Pointed in the right direction? Sean Miller sees reasons for optimism. Photo by Chris Morrison-US PRESSWIRE

Arizona Wildcats coach Sean Miller, after a home loss to Oregon on Jan. 14, used his press conference opportunities to alternately blast his team’s effort and carelessness with the ball.

Neither has been a problem since then. Imagine that.

In the past three games, Arizona has played with passion and as if ball security were as precious as playing time. The Wildcats are coming off perhaps their most well-rounded game of the season Thursday night, an 85-61 victory over Washington State.

The Cats have won two of the past three games, with the loss at Colorado being avoidable if they had been merely awful from 3-point range rather than a horrific 3 of 20.

Hold the applause — considering the level of competition hasn’t been stellar — but the trends are moving in the right direction for Arizona, which is 14-7 overall and 5-3 in the Pac-12 heading into Saturday’s spotlight game against Washington.

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Sean Miller has been simmering lately over effort and turnovers. Photo by Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE

Arizona Wildcats coach Sean Miller never comes to a news conference unprepared. No matter the Qs, he always has the As.

Miller always sits down with a message to deliver, and, man, has he delivered a couple of doozies in the past week. He was all the way wound up about his team’s first-half effort after Saturday’s home loss to Oregon, and he arrived at Tuesday’s press conference intent on mocking his team’s inability to take care of the ball.

There weren’t many questions that Miller couldn’t turn into a treatise on turnovers.

He called the Wildcats “inept” at taking care of the ball. He deadpanned that “you want to catch the ball with two hands” and that he would remind his players that they will be wearing blue uniforms this week and that they should pass the ball to the guys wearing blue.

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Sean Miller's mood was sour for most of the afternoon. Photo by Chris Morrison-US PRESSWIRE

Arizona Wildcats coach Sean Miller was relentless. During the game? Yeah. After the game? Maybe more so.

The Wildcats nodded off in the first half against Oregon. In McKale Center. On CBS national television. An odd time to put out the milk and cookies.

The second half started with similar sleepiness. The Ducks went up by 17 before Solomon Hill’s one-man comeback effort led to a late-game battle. Arizona took a brief lead with less than three minutes to go, but it missed four shots in the final minute and lost 59-57, with the Cats getting what “we deserved,” Miller said.

He was just getting warmed up.

“I spent about an hour and a half this afternoon motivating, begging, pleading, yelling, screaming, subbing,” Miller said in his postgame news conference. “It’s a shame that didn’t come from within.”

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Coach Sean Miller said his team’s skirmish against Oregon State on Thursday night is a “closed book” after the Pac-12 reviewed the incident and found no cause for further action.

That means that Arizona backup center Kyryl Natyazhko and Oregon State post Joe Burton, who were each ejected for leaving the bench, won’t be suspended for the next game. The Wildcats play host to Oregon at 1:30 p.m. Saturday on CBS.

“We want to be a team that competes really hard in between the lines. You have to keep your cool, and in a very emotional game keep your emotions attached to what it is all about — and that’s winning.

“I don’t think the intent of our group, or any one player, was to do anything more than win the game. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, decisions were made that aren’t right.”

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UCLA's Jerime Anderson dunks on the Cats in the first half. Photo by Kelvin Kuo-US PRESSWIRE

Too small defensively in the post and overly reliant on the 3-point shot is no way to go through a basketball season.

Which is making for a frustrating year for Arizona.

The Wildcats are coming off a 65-58 loss at UCLA on Thursday night in which the Bruins exposed and exploited both major weaknesses.

The 6-10 Wear twins — Travis and David — knifed through and worked over UA’s defense, combining for 34 points and hitting 13 of 16 shots. Meanwhile, UCLA defensively cut off Arizona’s driving lanes — sagging off undersized frontcourt players Jesse Perry and Solomon Hill, daring them to shoot.

Perry and Hill combined to go 0-for-4 from 3-point range, and they just haven’t been good enough out there to make defenses pay.

Arizona shot 3 of 17 from 3-point range.

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Derrick Williams salutes the student section after his game-saving block against Washington. Photo by Chris Morrison, US-PRESSWIRE

Coaches coming, going and staying. NCAA champions. Memorable games. Unforgettable players.

The year that was in Arizona Wildcats athletics was packed with storylines, good and bad, and we’ll be buzzing about some of it for decades to come.

The longest-standing sports bloggers at TucsonCitizen.com — myself included — voted for the biggest UA stories of the year, trying to sort out individual accomplishments from big games from off-field news … balancing big sports with those that don’t get as much coverage.

Here are the results. The top 12 Arizona Wildcats sports stories of the year:

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Josiah Turner is averaging 7.1 points in seven games. Photo by Chris Morrison-US PRESSWIRE

They are Josiah Turner’s own words. Three games after riding the pine for all 40 minutes against Ball State, the Arizona Wildcats freshman was asked what he had learned.

“It made me realize what was going on and that coach Sean Miller don’t play around,” Turner said.

Yeah, coach Sean Miller don’t play around.

He already had to suspend freshman center Sidiki Johnson, who then announced his transfer on Monday. And, now, comes more trouble for Turner.

The school announced Tuesday night that Turner has been suspended for Wednesday night’s game at Florida because of violations of team policy. Turner missed practice, according to a tweet from Jeff Goodman of CBSSports.com

On Monday, Miller talked about how Turner had been making progress on and off the court since the early season “attitude adjustment.”

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Sean Miller finished second to Iowa State's Fred Hoiberg in 'Shots from the Heart' last season. Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images

Arizona Wildcats head coach Sean Miller, who reached the final of the “Shots from the Heart” free throw shooting contest last season, will participate in the charity event again this year.

He will be one of 64 head coaches competing in an NCAA Tournament-styled bracket, which you can find here at collegeinsider.com. Miller’s first-round foe is NAU’s Mike Adras.

Arizona assistant James Whitford will participate in the bracket matching assistant coaches from across the country.

Too bad Miller’s brother, Archie — the first-year head coach at Dayton — isn’t in the bracket. He was a career 84.6 percent free throw shooter at North Carolina State.

The “Shots from the Heart” raises awareness and money for the fight against heart disease and honors the memory of former coach Skip Prosser.

Here is the press release from UA:

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