Motiejus Krivas Scores Career-High 30 as No. 5 Arizona Bounces Back Past Cal Poly 104-84

Three nights after Motiejus Krivas took four shots against UCLA, Arizona decided its 7-foot-2 center was going to be the plan, not an afterthought. Krivas responded with a career-high 30 points on 10-of-13 shooting, and the No. 5 Wildcats bullied Cal Poly inside for a 104-84 win on Thursday night in the home opener at McKale Center.

It was exactly the response Tommy Lloyd needed after Monday's 84-75 loss to UCLA in Las Vegas, a night when Arizona shot 7-of-30 from three and leaned almost entirely on Ivan Kharchenkov. This time the Wildcats barely bothered with the arc. They went 4-of-14 from deep, scored 56 points in the paint to Cal Poly's 26, and still cleared 100. Freshman Caleb Holt added 21, Kharchenkov filled the sheet with 16 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists and four steals, and both teams leave the week at 1-1.

Fouls, Then a Flood

The tone was set before the first TV timeout. Cal Poly was whistled for five fouls in the first 56 seconds, one of them on the offensive end, and Arizona sprinted to an 11-3 lead. The crowd of 13,989 got an early bonus, too: Bryce James, starting for the Wildcats, knocked down a three about three and a half minutes in for his first college basket.

The Mustangs did not fold. Hamad Mousa, the reigning Big West scoring champion, started cooking from distance, and a Jess Esso Essis three trimmed the margin to 16-15 with about 13 minutes left in the half. Cal Poly is one of the more experienced rosters in the country, with 13 returning players, and for a few minutes it looked like that continuity might make this a real game.

Then Arizona leaned on its size. A 9-0 run produced the first double-digit lead of the night. Mousa answered with a three to make it 28-20 with roughly nine and a half minutes left in the half, and the Wildcats responded with the haymaker: 13 straight points in about two and a half minutes, nine of them from Cameron Holmes, for a 41-20 lead. Holmes, who did not play in the second half against UCLA, came off the bench and finished with 13 points on 5-of-9 shooting. If Lloyd was searching for a second-unit scorer after Monday, Holmes made a strong case.

A Half for the Record Book

Arizona went into the locker room up 59-41. The Wildcats shot 20-of-32 in the first half, 62.5 percent, and got to the line 22 times. The 59 points were their most in a first half since the 2023-24 opener against Morgan State, when they put up 61. Four Arizona players were in double figures by halftime.

The ball pressure was just as loud as the scoring. Cal Poly turned it over 14 times before the break, and Arizona's hands were everywhere: the Wildcats finished with 14 steals, their most in three years according to SB Nation's Arizona coverage, and turned 19 Cal Poly turnovers into 25 points. Kharchenkov led the way with four steals, and Dixon, Holt and James each added two.

That combination, easy points in the paint plus live-ball turnovers, is how a team that shot 28.6 percent from three still scored 104. It is also a reminder of what this roster can look like when the shooting is not the whole story. Against UCLA, Arizona settled. Against Cal Poly, it attacked.

Krivas Finally Gets Fed

The numbers on Krivas are worth sitting with. He played only 23 minutes and still finished with 30 points, eight rebounds and two blocks. He made 10 of 13 shots from the field and 10 of 12 at the line, which tells you how often Cal Poly had no answer but to foul. Against UCLA, double teams held him to four field goal attempts. On Thursday, Arizona got him the ball early, deep and often.

The career night came during the decisive second-half stretch. Cal Poly kept firing threes and got the deficit down to 17 with about 11 and a half minutes left. Arizona answered with a 12-0 run, and somewhere in the middle of it Krivas passed his old career high of 25. Later, with Arizona up 25, Kharchenkov dove on the floor for a loose ball, called timeout and soaked in the crowd from the hardwood. That is not a stat-sheet moment, but it is the kind of energy a team brings when it is mad about a loss.

Holt was nearly as efficient. The freshman went 8-of-13, made 5 of 6 free throws and grabbed eight rebounds, five of them on the offensive glass. Arizona outrebounded Cal Poly 44-30 and turned that edge into 23 second-chance points.

Mousa Keeps Firing

Credit to Cal Poly for refusing to go quietly. Mousa scored a game-high 30 on 10-of-14 shooting, including 8-of-10 from three, in 31 minutes. It was his fifth career 30-point game, and he is now averaging 24 points per game through two nights. If there was a knock on his night, it was six turnovers against Arizona's waves of length.

The surprise was Jason Scott. The reserve guard scored a career-high 17 points off the bench on 6-of-8 shooting, including 5-of-6 from three. Scott scored 19 total points across eight appearances last season, so he nearly matched an entire year's output in 17 minutes. Esso Essis added 10, and the Cal Poly bench actually outscored Arizona's 30-23.

As a team, the Mustangs shot a respectable 43.9 percent and made 16 of 37 threes. The problem was everything else. They went 10-of-21 at the line, gave the ball away 19 times, and could not keep Arizona off the offensive glass. Their own athletics site noted that Cal Poly led for only 72 seconds all night. Arizona was the highest-ranked opponent the Mustangs had faced since a season-opening loss at a then-No. 5 Arizona back in November 2013.

What It Means for Both Sides

For Arizona, this was the version of the team the preseason ranking imagined. The Wildcats shot 54.5 percent, handed out 22 assists on 36 field goals and committed 13 turnovers, a fine number considering the pace. McKale remains a fortress in November, with Arizona now 52-1 in November home games there since the 2012-13 season, according to SB Nation's count. The rotation is still settling: Dixon scored just nine on 4-of-8 shooting with five assists, JJ Mandaquit went scoreless from the field, and Lloyd is still working without RJ Godfrey, who was ruled ineligible. But a team that can win with Kharchenkov carrying the scoring one night and Krivas and Holt doing it inside the next is a much harder team to plan for.

The bigger test is coming. Arizona hosts Northern Arizona on Tuesday before the schedule turns toward Auburn on Nov. 13, the kind of road trip where the shooting from Monday cannot repeat if the Wildcats want to reclaim their top-five footing.

For Cal Poly, there is no shame in a 20-point loss in Tucson when your best player hits eight threes and a reserve nearly doubles his career scoring total. The Mustangs are 1-1 and on the road again at Grand Canyon on Wednesday, Nov. 11.

Box scores and recaps: Cal Poly Athletics box score (opens in a new tab) and Cal Poly recap (opens in a new tab).

Sources: Cal Poly Athletics, Associated Press, SB Nation, CBS Sports, ESPN. More men's college basketball coverage on Undrafted.

Monday asked whether Arizona had more than one way to win. Thursday answered it with a 7-footer, a physical freshman and a pile of steals. Cal Poly's shooters made the box score fun, but the paint told the real story, and that story is the one the Wildcats need to keep telling when the opponents get bigger.

Photo: Catherine Regan/Cal Poly Athletics.