Jaden Bradley recorded 19 points and six rebounds to help fourth-seeded Arizona roll to a 93-65 victory over 13th-seeded Akron on Friday in East Region first-round play at Seattle.
Trey Townsend added 16 points on 7-of-8 shooting and collected eight rebounds, and Carter Bryant had 12 points and three blocked shots for the Wildcats (23-12), who will play either Oregon or Liberty in Saturday’s second round.
Caleb Love registered 10 points and seven rebounds and KJ Lewis also scored 10 points for the Wildcats, who never trailed and held a dominating 53-22 rebounding edge.
“It was a great offensive game,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said. “I want to see what else is out there. I’m not going to put any limitations on us. I challenged our guys before the game asking ‘can we outrebound these guys by 15?’ I think the answer turned out being yes. We ended up outrebounding them by 31.
“You give yourself a lot of margin for error if you can control the glass like that. … Just a great moment-by-moment effort by our guys.”
Tavari Johnson scored all 13 of his points in the first half for Akron (28-7), which lost in the first round of the NCAA tourney for the third time in four seasons. The Zips are winless in seven all-time attempts.
“We’re disappointed we didn’t play as well as we would’ve liked,” said Akron coach John Groce. “Give Arizona credit for that.”
Nate Johnson also scored 13 points for the Zips, but he was just 1 of 9 from the field. Shammah Scott added 11 points for Akron, which saw a seven-game winning streak come to an end.
The Wildcats shot 56.5 percent from the field and made 12 of 25 from 3-point range. Arizona had a 48-20 advantage in points in the paint.
The Zips connected on 33.3 percent of their shots, including 7 of 25 from behind the arc.
“Some of the shots we had were looks we would take and they weren’t falling,” Johnson said. “That’s it.”
Arizona led by 10 at halftime and doubled the lead before the second half was five minutes old.
Bradley drained a 3-pointer to cap a 9-2 salvo and give the Wildcats a 50-33 advantage with 17:31 left in the game.
A short time later, Love hit a jumper and Lewis drilled a 3-pointer to make it 57-37 with 15:17 to go.
Akron was within 16 before Lewis scored on a layup, Bryant drained a 3-pointer and Bradley hit a jumper to push the lead to 73-50 with 8:36 left.
The lead topped out at 93-59 on Grant Weitman’s 3-pointer with 1:35 remaining.
Townsend had 11 points as the Wildcats held a 41-31 lead at the break.
Bradley, Townsend and Love opened the game with 3-pointers as Arizona sprinted out of the gates.
“You always want to start and make every single shot during every game but we knew they would fight and come back,” said Townsend. “It’s March Madness — everyone is playing with their season on the line so we didn’t let that inflate our egos too much because we knew they were going to battle.”
The Wildcats led by just three past the midway point of the half. But Townsend scored on a putback to start a stretch in which Arizona scored 14 of 20 points. Love culminated it with a jumper to make it 33-22 with 3:59 left in the half.
–Field Level Media
