SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The All-American honors, the Pac-12 Tournament MOP award, leading the conference in scoring and rebounding, those were all just byproducts of the goal.
When Arizona forward Azuolas Tubelis spent nearly all of last summer in Tucson working out twice or sometimes three times a day, it was about developing into one of college basketball’s best players — and about what is happening now.
It was about being able to lead the Wildcats through the NCAA Tournament.
That didn’t happen last year. Last season’s NCAA Tournament planted a furious bug inside the Wildcats’ mild-mannered but hyper-skilled big man from Lithuania. He had just five points and four rebounds against TCU in a second-round overtime game the Wildcats barely escaped. Then two points, four turnovers and 0-for-8 shooting against Houston in a Sweet 16 game that sent the Wildcats home.
“He wasn’t too happy with the way the season ended,” said UA walk-on guard Grant Weitman, who has become one of Tubelis’ best friends. “You can tell that he was really locked in on having a great season this year.”
So, not long afterward, Tubelis began an offseason like no other. In April, he began focusing on rebounding, defense and finishing. The blue blocking bag he had to plow through might as well have been TCU’s hefty big man, Eddie Lampkin. Or Houston’s buzz saw of physical players, all whom wore him down.
Players always work on their games in the offseason, but this was something else. It was efficient. It was focused. It was almost … angry.
“He had a different mentality,” said UA assistant coach Riccardo Fois, who oversaw Tubelis’ offseason development program. “He went through a struggle last year at the end of the year, and when you go through that, it teaches you something.
“When you fail, you have two ways: You can quit-slash-blame someone, or you can (say), `You know what? I’m gonna get better.’ We want guys who are going to fail and be like `OK, now I get it. Now I know why you told me all those things. You’re trying to help me.’ “
Asked during the Pac-12 Tournament last week if he felt the long summertime workouts were paying off now, Tubelis answered in brief fashion.
“It went fast, really fast,” he said. “And I’m happy where we are. We’re playing good, solid basketball.”
Man of few words
With Tubelis, words, at least the ones in English, are always measured and to the point. That’s long been the case.
Weitman figured that out right away when he met Tubelis and his brother, Tautvilas, late in the summer of 2020, when they showed up from Lithuania, isolated by COVID restrictions, culture shock and language barriers all at the same time.
“They were super shy at first, especially Zu,” Weitman said. “They didn’t really hang out with anybody.”
Living in the same Likens dorm as freshmen with the Tubelis brothers, Weitman spent time getting to know them. A local who played a standout role on Salpointe’s 2020 4A state champions, Weitman drove them around Tucson to get them familiar with their new home (5,800 miles away) from home.
Eventually, Weitman found the brothers smart and funny, “Tote” in more of an outgoing way, and “Zu” with the occasional crafty one-liner.
Even Fois, in the heat of the practice court, could see that.
“Zu is always very serious, right? But then every now and then he will just crack a joke,” Fois said. “He’s very sarcastic. Very smart. So he’ll crack a joke and everybody is like, hah, Zu!”
Often, Zu needs only a word or two to get his point, or his joke, across, if you really listen. For example, he complained in the preseason that he “didn’t rebound” as a sophomore in 2021-22, which was his way of saying he didn’t rebound as well as he wanted, certainly against TCU and Houston. He was actually Arizona’s second-leading rebounder (6.2 per game) behind only NBA-bound center Christian Koloko.
At Pac-12 preseason media day, Tubelis also humbly diverted when asked about the physical improvements and “bounciness” he displayed during the Red-Blue Game.
“I think my defense improved the most, and my shooting from the 3-point line,” Tubelis said. “That’s basically it. I didn’t work on my bounce, so I don’t know.”
Five months later, here he is. UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez beat Tubelis out for Pac-12 Player of the Year, but five days after that award was announced, Tubelis was named Pac-12 Tournament Most Outstanding Player. He led Arizona over UCLA in the championship game, collecting 19 points and 14 rebounds while dishing the ball to Courtney Ramey for a go-ahead 3-pointer with 16.7 seconds left.
“Man, Zu is a great player,” fellow big man Oumar Ballo said after the nets were snipped that night. “He’s a true Pac-12 player of the year. He’s our best player, and for him to step up with 19 and 14? You kidding me? He’s as good as he can be.”
That was what it was all about, wasn’t it? Be as good as he can be, and lead the Wildcats to championships.
“In his mind is just winning, winning, winning,” Tautvilas Tubelis said. “He never looks on personal achievements or whatever. He just wants to win. He works on himself to help the team. And you see the results.”
Staying stateside
Fois saw it coming well before the Pac-12 Tournament, and even the beginning of the season. He set up Tubelis with a plan in April, then worked with him through the spring and early summer. Tubelis took a break to go home, while Fois spent the latter part of the summer coaching with the Italian national team.
The two reunited during September workouts, when Fois saw Tubelis was still going all out.
“There are a lot of players that work a lot, but they don’t work very hard and they don’t get everything they can get out of it,” Fois said. “When you work out all the time and you have a work ethic, it’s easy for a player or a coach to just go through the motions. You have to keep it fresh and consistent.
“You also have to, if you want to be a great player, show up and be like, `All right, I’m gonna get better.’ I think that is where Zu is.”
Ultimately, it helped that Tubelis bowed out of an invitation to play for his home country in the FIBA U20 European Championships last summer. Lithuania finished second, losing 69-61 to Spain in the championship game, and Tubelis said his country might have won if he had played.
But Tubelis was fighting off a wrist injury over the summer, and both UA and the Lithuanian basketball federation agreed that it would be in everybody’s long-term interests for Tubelis to rehab and continue to develop in Tucson over the summer. After all, Lithuania probably could use a 25- or 30-year old Tubelis in the World Cup or Olympics someday.
Tubelis “is one of those key guys who will hopefully be the core player in the men’s national team for the next 10 years,” said Mindaugas Balčiūnas, secretary general of the Lithuanian basketball federation, in a story about the decision posted to Lithuanian basketball website Krepsinis.
So even though UA associate head coach Jack Murphy joked earlier this season that his face is on “milk cartons in Lithuania,” presumed missing because he might have had something to do with Tubelis not playing for his home country, nobody appeared too worked up over it.
Especially since the U20 European Championships are not as critical or prestigious as the senior team World Cup qualifiers that UA teammates Pelle Larsson (Sweden) and Kerr Kriisa (Estonia) played in last summer.
“The national team, at the end of the day, what they want the most is for the team to be good,” Fois said. “So to have a player get better is gonna make the best chance for the senior team to be good. We have a great relationship with the Lithuanian federation.”
Tubelis agreed, saying “they understand,” signing off on the chance for him to rehab and keep working. Tubelis also went to a camp run by NBA star Damian Lillard, working with, among others, TCU’s Mike Miles.
Then Tubelis came back to Tucson, worked some more and led the Wildcats to a 28-6 record entering their first-round game. He is averaging 19.8 points and 9.3 rebounds this season, with 14 double-doubles
“I knew that if you work out all summer, the result will come,” Tubelis said. “Maybe not in (the) beginning of the season, but the result will show up.”
Late rebound
Actually, it did show up at the beginning of the season. Tubelis threw down 30 points on Cincinnati in the first round of the Thanksgiving-week Maui Invitational, outplayed first-team AP All-American Trayce Jackson-Davis of Indiana with 21 points and seven rebounds against the Hoosiers in December and made his way to the free-throw line 12 times en route to a 29-point game against Washington State on Jan. 7 at McKale Center.
It was down the stretch that he was thrown off briefly.
Just five days after he was named Oscar Robertson Player of the Week after dropping 40 points during UA’s Feb 2 home win over Oregon, Tubelis put up his worst game of the season. Picking up two early fouls on Feb. 11 at Stanford, Tubelis had four points without a single rebound in the Wildcats’ 88-79 loss.
The outing appeared to stick with him for a while too. In his next game, against Utah on Feb. 16 at McKale Center, Tubelis was called for a technical when he kicked the ball into the ZonaZoo student section upon being whistled for a personal foul. He finished with 11 points and nine rebounds in that game, though the Wildcats still won easily, 88-62.
Although it might have appeared that Tubelis was feeling the effects of rising external expectations and publicity, he said he felt “no pressure at all.” Instead, Tubelis said foul trouble simply threw him off.
“I was too aggressive there at Stanford,” Tubelis said. “I got fouls in the first half, and it’s hard to sit on the bench and see my team not playing good.”
When Arizona played Stanford again, nearly three weeks later in the Pac-12 quarterfinals, Tubelis had long fixed the problem. He put up double-doubles at both USC and UCLA in the final games of the regular season, then dropped 20 points on 9-for-12 shooting against the Cardinal in the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals.
“It doesn’t take much for him to get back,” Murphy said.
Tubelis said he has been more careful defensively since the Feb. 11 game at Stanford, moving his feet quicker, lunging for steals less often and knowing not to go over someone’s back for a rebound.
But maybe more than anything, he’s simply found his mojo. After Tubelis posted his first double-double since Feb. 9 at USC on March 2, UA coach Tommy Lloyd said he saw an extra “bounce in his step” at that day’s pregame shootaround.
By Sunday, after the Wildcats received the No. 2 seed in the South Region, Lloyd indicated that wasn’t changing anytime soon.
“He’s had a great year,” Lloyd said. “(With) the look he has in his eye right now, I would assume that he’s gonna stay focused and keep playing at a high level.”
NCAA tournament first round
Princeton Tigers (21-8, 10-4 Ivy League) vs. Arizona Wildcats (28-6, 14-6 Pac-12)
Sacramento, Calif.; Thursday, 1:10 p.m.
TOP PERFORMERS: Azuolas Tubelis is averaging 19.8 points and 9.3 rebounds for the Wildcats. Oumar Ballo is averaging 12.2 points and 7.3 rebounds over the past 10 games for Arizona. … Tosan Evbuomwan is averaging 15 points, 6.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists for the Tigers. Ryan Langborg is averaging 11.6 points over the past 10 games for Princeton.
LAST 10 GAMES: Wildcats: 7-3, averaging 81.2 points, 32.8 rebounds, 18.2 assists, 5.3 steals and 2.0 blocks per game while shooting 51.4% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 73.4 points per game. … Tigers: 7-3, averaging 76.5 points, 34.3 rebounds, 13.0 assists, 4.7 steals and 3.6 blocks per game while shooting 42.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 73.8 points.
—Associated Press