You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
It’s not just the chorus of Joni Mitchell’s hit song Big Yellow Taxi, it’s also how Sean Miller felt last season when the Arizona Wildcats were routinely torched on defense. They simply did not have the personnel to match the defensive mettle of some of his previous teams.
Fast forward a year and things are much, much different.
Arizona currently ranks sixth in the country in defensive efficiency, holding its opponents to 73.5 points per 100 possessions. Even when you account for UA’s light schedule, it ranks 20th in the country in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric.