Future Is Now for Youthful Arizona

Get used to this Arizona team.

“Somebody said after the first game in New York I looked shocked,” Coach Lute Olson said.

“I am shocked.”

No one should be. Not anymore.

The Wildcats added the scalp of No. 5 Illinois to their collection Tuesday, fending off the final frenetic onslaught of Frank Williams’ 30-point performance to beat the Illini, 87-82, after leading by as many as 19.

Add this triumph to the others.

There was Maryland, when the Terrapins were ranked No. 2.

Florida was ranked No. 5.

Texas was No. 23.

The lone loss was to then-No. 8 Kansas on Saturday--a rare “L” in McKale Center--and the Arizona players say they learned plenty from it.

This is a Wildcat team that was unranked entering the season and picked to finish fourth in the Pacific 10 Conference after a mass defection to the NBA left Jason Gardner as the only starter back from a Final Four team.

Memo to the Pac-10: A new favorite has upended UCLA and surged past Stanford and USC.

Arizona is looking more like fourth in the country, and the seventh-ranked Wildcats are doing it with seven freshmen on a roster that doesn’t include a senior for the first time in 57 years.

“I think this team got a lot of motivation from hearing we might not make the tournament, we might not finish well in the Pac-10,” Gardner said. “They said with this hard schedule, we might go into the Pac-10 at 0-7.”

They’ll be no worse than 4-3--and probably a lot better than that--with a game against Purdue Saturday at the Wooden Classic in Anaheim and a Dec. 15 game at Michigan State still ahead.

There are similarities between what Gardner is doing for Arizona this season and what Jason Terry did three seasons ago after the departures of Mike Bibby, Miles Simon and Michael Dickerson and the arrival of the freshman class that included Michael Wright and Richard Jefferson.

Gardner--a junior who flirted with the NBA draft after last season--played 40 minutes for the third time in five games and had 23 points, five assists and six rebounds in the victory over Illinois in the first game of a doubleheader at America West Arena.

Arizona State (4-2) defeated Utah, 71-62, in the second game behind Curtis Millage, a transfer from L.A. Southwest College who scored 18 points. The Utes fell to 3-3.

But to call this team Jason and the Freshmen would do a great disservice to Luke Walton and Rick Anderson, two savvy junior forwards.

Anderson, the son of Long Beach City College Coach Gary Anderson, scored 18 points and had seven rebounds in 21 foul-plagued minutes in a whistle-filled game.

Walton--there should be no need to mention the lineage--scored nine points, but he had three steals, five rebounds, and four assists, often on back-doors or one-handed seeing-eye bounce passes through the lane.

He also played a good deal of the defense on Williams, a player often touted as the second-best point guard in the country--though he probably should take a seat behind not only Duke’s Jason Williams and Chris Duhon but Gardner as well.

Frank Williams’ final five minutes were stunning--he scored 16 in that stretch to get Illinois as close as four with 36 seconds left--but he scored only 14 the first 35 minutes.

The shooting trouble he and Cory Bradford displayed are two reasons Illinois--ranked as high as No. 2--is only 6-2, with the other loss to Maryland.

Arizona and Illinois have met often lately--three times last season, including Arizona’s victory in the NCAA Midwest Regional final.

But while Illinois had four starters back, only Gardner and Walton played regularly for Arizona.

The new cast is a talented one, and it showed when Gardner found himself trying to hold a lead in the first half with four freshmen on the court and Anderson and Walton on the bench in foul trouble.

The Wildcats held on nicely, and led by 16 at halftime, thanks in part to a run of three-point baskets by Salim Stoudamire--a cousin of Damon--and Will Bynum.

Bynum and center Channing Frye were the two freshmen to start Tuesday, but Stoudamire and center Isaiah Fox also have started at times.

Against Illinois, 37 of Arizona’s points were contributed by the freshman class.

With a schedule that has yet to include an unranked team, it’s almost as if that freshman class has played in an NCAA tournament before playing a conference game.

“To get thrown into this type of schedule is not an easy way to learn what it’s like to be a college basketball player,” said Olson, who OK’d the schedule when he thought he would have Wright, Jefferson and Gilbert Arenas back.

“But the leadership has been such that Jason and Luke in particular, they’re just not going to let them play like freshmen.”

Maybe a little bit against Kansas, when Arizona fell behind by 15 at the half.

“I still believe, even with the loss to Kansas, that it’s a whole lot better than winning by 30 points and not learn anything.”

They can get a lot better. That much is clear.

“We’re happy right now, but we’d like to get back that game against Kansas,” Walton said.

“We’ve got to learn to stay mentally sharp. Sometimes we start letting down and not getting back on defense, like in the second half tonight.”

The freshmen do occasionally look like fumbling freshmen, though rarely for long.

And Arizona shot only 37% against Illinois.

But when the Wildcats win, they act like as if they expected to.

“I think after the wins in New York, we know we can compete against any team in the country when we’re playing our best,” Bynum said.

Fox nodded.

“We’re growing up fast,” he said.