Arizona Is the One to Press the Issue

Forty Minutes of Hell?

More like 40 minutes until the Sweet 16.

Facing Alabama Birmingham’s vaunted full-court pressure defense -- the Blazers pride themselves on playing defense in only that fashion for a full game -- Arizona welcomed the challenge, Salim Stoudamire’s saying it essentially played to the athletic Wildcats’ strengths.

The senior guard and the nation’s leading three-point shooter had compared the Blazers’ style to “chickens running around with their heads cut off.”

Guess who was the hatchet man on Saturday.

Arizona ran around, through and over the Blazers’ pressure en route to a convincing 85-63 victory over Alabama Birmingham in a Chicago Regional second-round game.

“I knew they couldn’t maintain that intensity the whole game,” said Stoudamire, who had a game-high 28 points on eight-for-16 shooting, five of 11 from beyond the three-point arc.

“I knew we would calm down, I would calm down. I was a little antsy at the beginning [then] I was able to pick and choose my spots and attack better.”

Junior forward Hassan Adams had 16 points and 10 rebounds for the third-seeded Wildcats (29-6), who will play second-seeded Oklahoma State or 10th-seeded Southern Illinois in Chicago on Thursday.

Arizona, the Pacific 10 Conference’s regular-season champion, became the second Pac-10 school to advance to the Sweet 16 in front of a Taco Bell Arena crowd of 11,891, joining Pac-10 tournament champ Washington, which earlier swamped Pacific.

The 11th-seeded Blazers (22-11), an at-large selection out of Conference USA, were led by senior guard Donell Taylor’s 13 points, six rebounds and three steals.

Third-year Coach Mike Anderson, an assistant to Nolan Richardson at Arkansas from 1985 to 2002, when the Razorbacks were harassing teams with their 40 Minutes of Hell full-court press, brought that same frenetic philosophy to Birmingham.

It seemed to startle the Wildcats early, when the Blazers led, 16-11, and though Arizona committed 12 turnovers in the first 20 minutes and the Blazers had nine steals, Arizona shot 51.6% from the field and held a halftime lead of 40-31.

The second half brought more success for the Wildcats, who were simply too seasoned to be rattled by the press any longer and broke it by converting in transition, as seldom-used sophomore Kirk Walters responded well while senior center Channing Frye was saddled with foul trouble.

Birmingham, which doesn’t have a Plan B in case its press is ineffective, didn’t have a steal in the second half, in which Arizona committed four turnovers.