Arizona remains a work in progress

Over the long weekend, the Arizona Wildcats, with national championship aspirations, won the Maui Invitational. Downing Missouri, Kansas State and San Diego State in consecutive days, the run offered curious minds a chance to see if the pre-season talk coming out of Tucson was valid. Unphased by the Tigers, KSU and SDSU provided a formidable challenge for the Wildcats, which had to scrape and claw for wins against two supposed-inferior teams.

While Kentucky posts double-digit victories with an unheard of platoon system, Wisconsin embraces the high expectations placed upon them with a balanced rotation, and Duke plays more efficient than any other team in the country, Arizona just doesn’t seem to possess it -- at least not yet.

Among the four teams many believe are talented enough to cut down the nets in Indianapolis, it’s the Wildcats in the desert who seem like they have the most work in front of them heading into the second month of the season. Throw in Gonzaga and maybe even Kansas and Villanova, and you could make a strong case there are six teams further along in their development than Sean Miller’s club.

“If we’re not working to become better, we’ll find out right away,” said Miller following his team’s victory over San Diego State. “If we rest on our laurels and [don’t] improve the things we need, we won’t continue to have the success we had in this tournament.”

So what’s the problem? On paper, nothing egregious. The data set is only seven games and includes games against Mt. Saint Mary’s and Cal State Northridge, but the Wildcats certainly do not have an offense that suggests they’re elite, but a simple eye-test may be a better way to draw that conclusion.

Defensively, the Wildcats should be fine, and, in fact, might have an even higher ceiling on that end of the floor, but on offense this looks like squad which is really missing Nick Johnson, or some sort of spot-up shooter. Despite having weapons at nearly every position, the two-guard is the least productive, as Elliott Pitts and Gabe York are players who can hurt you from beyond the arc. Neither are there in terms of consistency just yet, but will ultimately need to seize an opportunity or two.

Against San Diego State, Arizona’s win was fueled by getting offense via defense, keyed by 22 points off turnovers, mostly coming from swarming effort by Stanley Johnson and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.

During a key 10-2 run to close the first half against the Aztecs, Johnson and Hollis-Jefferson found the hoop multiple times through brute strength and unflappable athleticism.

Impressive? Absolutely. There isn’t a more imposing duo of wing players in the country. The unteachable skills these two possess is rare in college basketball, and Arizona has a luxury of two players capable of solely getting their team a bucket when asked, but the approach isn’t sustainable.

Tournament MVP Johnson, and RHJ combined to score 32 points, but it took them 27 shots to do so. With them, two high-energy teenagers, it isn’t always graceful.

So how will this team get better? Likely with time and T.J. McConnell. The heady point guard’s role has become much more important than what was asked last year. Instead of having to just keep the lights on and keep coach relatively happy, McConnell must constantly spend the next four months looking to elevate his team’s play on offense and initiate sets that convert in the half court. His assist rate is up 10 percent from a season ago, and he will likely need to increase it a bit more.

As conference play wears on and everyone knows everything, this team will often have to execute rather than just run over their opponents, something the Kentucky Wildcats, Badgers, Blue Devils and Bulldogs just simply do better with a half dozen games having been played so far this year.

Like Miller said at the podium Wednesday night, Arizona will know pretty quickly how far along they are. They host Gonzaga and Michigan in the next two weeks, and travel to UTEP and UNLV before starting conference play.

Phase one of this season showed us what Arizona had coming out of the gate. Phase two will show us if they’re a team that will be able to mature and maintain the status of being a national championship contender.