What Tommy Lloyd, Courtney Ramey and Oumar Ballo said after Arizona’s loss at Utah

Dec 2, 2022 - 4:36 AM

Defending conference regular-season and tournament champion Arizona got this season’s slate of Pac-12 games off to a rough start, losing 81-66 at Utah on Thursday night.

Our full recap can be found here. Below is what coach Tommy Lloyd, guard Courtney Ramey and center Oumar Ballo said afterward:

Lloyd on the poor performance: “I don’t have a secret formula that means that everything I touch wins. We got to go out and we’ve got to earn victories. We came out today and we didn’t have a great approach. Whether it’s the guys being a little bit intoxicated off their success, or the things people are saying to them, I don’t know, but we’re definitely gonna have to address it and we’re gonna have to play better than we did tonight.”

On Utah dictating the pace and flow: “Every game is going to be hard, and when you have Arizona on your chest, you expect the other team’s best shot. And obviously, their shot was a lot better than ours tonight. We didn’t match it, especially early in the game. We’re a program that like likes to set the tone, with effort and energy. We’re not easily perfect at the start of those games, but we’re usually playing our butts off. And today, we were running in quicksand to start and he just couldn’t get out.”

On the 11 first-half turnovers: “I wouldn’t say uncharacteristic, we’ve been turning the ball over at a high clip all year. We gotta fix it, we’re like one of the leading turnover teams in the country. And you talk about it and you know it’s gonna rear its ugly head someday. I thought the second half we just played with a little bit more force and toughened up and then we did turn the ball over less. And that’s probably where we got to start, is just toughen it up.”

Ramey on Arizona shooting 4 of 28 from 3: “We got a lot of great looks. Me, Kerr, Pelle, we got a lot of great looks. You shoot a lot of threes they go in some nights and some nights they don’t.”

On falling behind early: “I think we just got to do a better job of just responding early. I think we showed in the second half the type of team that we are, but being down 17 on the road with a team like that is kind of hard to bounce back.”

On learning from the loss: “It was a wake up call for us. I think it was good that it happened early. Coming from Maui I think we were all on top of the world. It just shows that anybody can beat anybody. It kind of humbled us.”

Ballo on Utah’s intensity: “It’s hard because if you’re ranked, any team you play, they will play their best game of the season.”

On learning from the loss: “It’s a long season. This is just one game, we’ve still got (25)-plus to go. We’ve just got to focus on the next one.”