|
 Johnson scored his team's final seven points, including a
go-ahead 3-pointer with 49 seconds to go, as the Wildcats overcame a
seven-point, second-half deficit to beat Stanford 60-57 on Wednesday
at Maples Pavilion.
"I kept on looking over at the coach and he gave me the freedom to
call my play a few times in a row," Johnson said. "I just tried to
make plays for my team. It was really not our offense that was
struggling, it was our defense at first. But down the stretch, we
really capitalized on defense."
Johnson finished with a modest scoring total of 16 points, but his
importance to the Wildcats (21-0, 8-0 in the Pac-12) was not lost on
Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins.
"I watched film on him and he's done that all year," Dawkins said.
"He produced in the clutch and was the difference in the game in a
variety of ways."
The other hero for Arizona was center Kaleb Tarczewski for one
specific play. He had just five points and four rebounds, but his
offensive board with less than a minute left led to Johnson's
wide-open 3-pointer that gave Arizona the lead for good.
"It comes down to that one play," said Stanford forward Josh
Huestis, who finished with 13 points.
Stanford (13-7, 4-4) was one of those teams that figured to have a
shot at knocking off the Wildcats. Spurred on by their first home
sellout crowd of the season, the Cardinal was in position for the
upset.
"For 38 minutes, I thought we were right there," Dawkins said.
But the Wildcats used some tough defense along with Johnson's clutch
play to pull out the victory.
Stanford guard Chasson Randle, the team's leading scorer at 19.1
points per game, wound up with 12 points, but was just 3-for-15 from
the field.
Stanford as a team made just one field goal in the final 10 minutes,
as the Wildcats rallied from a 51-44 deficit with 12:34 to go.
"Defense was why we won," Arizona coach Sean Miller said. "If you
look at the game within the game, our ability to defend at a very
high level, to get defensive stop after defensive stop when the
other team really needed a score, that's what we've done from Day 1.
Tonight if you say, 'Why did we win?' Well, that was it."
The Wildcats eventually tied the game 53-53 on forward Brandon
Ashley's jumper with 6:30 remaining.
Neither team did much offensively from there until Johnson hit an
eight-foot floater in the lane to put Arizona ahead 55-53 with 2:36
left.
Stanford forward Dwight Powell, who had 13 points, tied it with a
reverse layup with 1:20 left, but the pivotal sequence followed.
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After Ashley missed a jumper with 55 seconds left, Tarczewski
grabbed the offensive rebound in traffic, and fired it out to
Johnson, who was awaiting at the top of the key.
Johnson made the open 3-point shot, giving the Wildcats a 58-55 lead
with 49 seconds left.
"We were all converging for the rebound," said Dawkins. "That's one
of the toughest plays to cover."
Arizona's missed free throws kept Stanford alive.
Johnson missed the front end of a one-and-one situation with 33.7
seconds, but Huestis missed a 3-point attempt with 13 seconds left.
Arizona forward Aaron Gordon missed the front end of a one-and-one
with 11.6 seconds left, and Randle hit a pair of free throws with
7.0 seconds left to make it a 58-57 game.
However, Johnson then hit both his free throws with 5.8 seconds
left, and Randle missed a long 3-point attempt with two seconds
remaining.
"We were right there for 38 minutes," Dawkins said.
Stanford held a 31-30 lead at halftime as Cardinal guard Anthony
Brown hit a five-foot shot in traffic with three seconds left.
Stanford took an early 9-2 lead as Arizona missed eight of its first
nine shots from the field. Arizona then scored eight straight points
to take an 11-10 lead, and the game remained close from there.
Arizona point guard T.J. McConnell had nine of his 11 points in the
first half, and he also had eight rebounds and four assists.
Gordon, a Bay Area native from nearby San Jose, finished with just
five points on 2-for-10 shooting from the field and 1-for-3 shooting
from the foul line.
NOTES: Arizona's 21-game winning streak is the longest in school
history. ... The Wildcats are ranked No. 1 for the eighth
consecutive week. ... Arizona started the week ranked fourth in the
nation in both field-goal percentage defense (37.2 percent) and
scoring defense (56.7 points). ... The last time Stanford hosted a
No. 1 team was March 1, 2003, when the Cardinal lost to top-ranked
Arizona 72-69. The Cardinal's most recent game against a No. 1 team
was Dec. 6, 2003, when Stanford upset No. 1 Kansas 64-58 in Anaheim.
... Stanford has started the same five players for all 20 games this
season.
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