Arizona continued its perfect start to the season after a 97-68 win over Auburn in a packed McKale Center. The Wildcats are now 8-0 and await a tough road matchup against Alabama next week.Here is what head coach Tommy Lloyd, Ivan Kharchenkov, Jaden Bradley, and Koa Peat had to say following the win over the Tigers:Lloyd’s thoughts on the defensive performance from his team: “Great overall team effort defensively. We want to hang our hat on being a great defensive team, being a great rebounding team. Those are staples you can call on every night. Our guys, I thought, did a good job. Murph had a great scout. Our guys did a great job coming out and executing it with some effort, some energy. We weren’t perfect, but that wasn’t the expectation. Overall, really happy. I thought Ivan was great. I thought our ball pressure was really good all night. I thought the passing lanes were kind of disrupting their rhythm. We did a great job contesting shots in the paint. The glass was pretty even all day. I mean, I don’t love them getting 16 offensive rebounds, but they’re a great offensive rebounding team, so that’s going to happen sometimes.”On Brayden Burries’ performance: “I thought it was the best rhythm. Brayden’s had in one of these games. We’ve been talking about rhythm and pace a lot with Braden, and he’s a really good player, but he’s learning and I’ve really been challenging him. It’s kind of getting out of his comfort zone, increasing his pace. I think once he gets more comfortable playing at a faster pace, he has great instincts, and they’ll take over. We got to get, you know, up the RPMs a little bit, and I thought he did that on both ends of the floor tonight, so really happy.”On Peat’s performance: “Koa’s a dynamic player. He was 8-11 today, you know, I wish he would have rebounded a little bit more. I talked to him about that. We got to get him up. I think eventually he can rebound the ball like Tobe. That would be my expectation, but to have five assists and no turnovers, he just feels really comfortable with the balls in his hands. It’s something that we hope to take advantage of over the course of the season.”On responding to the 8-0 Auburn run before the half: “I didn’t love it. You work yourself to a 27 point lead in the first half. You’d like to go at a half up like that, but that’s not how the game goes. I collected myself, and I said, ‘Well, you know, we’re up 12. That’s better than being down 12. So let’s build on the positive things, and let’s see if we come out and land the first punch in the second half.’ No great strategy at halftime. There were no crazy adjustments, I thought we just kind of needed to stick with what got us the lead and kind of just find our rhythm within the game again. We came out at the start of the second half. I don’t know what the run was, but it was a knockout punch. On Arizona’s scoring runs: “It’s a big deal for us, I think the game of basketball is so special because offense connects to defense so consistently and defense to offense and offense to defense. Rebounding, defensive rebounding to offensive transition, like all these little connection points in the game make it really fun to coach, and it’s pretty fascinating just when you really get the flow of the game. So I love that. Then in order to go on runs, you got to stack a lot of good things together in all those areas of the game. That’s something we talk about a lot with our guys. We don’t take these runs for granted. You don’t get these runs being reckless. You get the runs, usually, being really disciplined, and I thought our guys, they’re starting to gain an understanding of what makes those runs happen.”On if possibly being ranked number one means anything: “Obviously it’s nothing you shy away from. You know, you’re at Arizona, the big stage. It’s part of being at a program like this, but we have bigger things on our mind. We know we have a really tough game next week against Alabama, who’s obviously going to be battle tested, I don’t know if there’s the big gap he’s saying. I mean, Michigan’s looked unbelievable, the little bit I’ve seen of them. That UCONN team we played is right there. They’re really good. Even UCLA, let’s not sleep on them. They’re really good, and they win in a different style. Then Florida is going to be right there. Duke looks really good. I was texting with John today. I thought he did a great job managing that game. Michigan State is forbidable. So, there’s a lot of really, really good teams. Look at what Gonzaga did you know last night against Kentucky. He’s played both of us. He’s entitled to his opinion, but we’re just going to stay focused on one, and that’s us, and in trying to go play really well next Saturday in a tough atmosphere in Birmingham.”On feeling if this was a complete team win: “I thought in stretches today we played as well as we played all year, yeah, for sure. We wanted to come back home after those initial experiences. Being away from home a little bit, we wanted to kind of recalibrate and see if we can galvanize a little bit. Today, for long stretches it looked like we’ve done that, but again, it’s something you don’t ever take for granted.”On Jaden Bradley: “He’s consistent. One of the greatest compliments you can give a high level basketball player is just being consistent, and he’s consistent in his approach for the game. He’s consistent in the way that he handles me coaching him, and I feel great with him out there. I love having him out there. He guarded a kid that was really good today in Pettiford, and Pettiford got it going a little bit, but JB also had some great stretches defensively. Especially the start of that second half on Pettiford where we got him to shoot some tougher shots. He missed them, and it kind of helped us get on that extended run to start the second half.”On defending under the rim without fouling: “It’s something we work on a lot. There’s ways to be physical without fouling. We always want to be as physical as we could be. We talked about playing clean basketball and contesting the shots within the rules, and that’s what we really focus on. They also did a good job of, when you get down, sometimes in those games, you need to make the game a little uglier. Put your head down and drive and you get to the bonus and make the game a little choppy. They did a good job of that. So I wasn’t ever sitting there thinking, you know, this thing’s done. 12 minutes to go, 10 minutes to go. I feel like they were just marching in the free throw, and so I told our guys, we got to play better defense without fouling. I mean, it’s as simple as that. For stretches we did, but I’m sure there’ll be some fouls we’ll look at and wish we could clean up.”On using the coach’s challenge: “Things happen so fast in the game, I think everyone’s trying to figure out how to utilize it. For me, there has to be certainty, and it has to be probably a certain part of the game. I’m probably not going to do it early in the game. Ttimeouts are too valuable. It’s like a good formula, you can’t do it every game, but if you can have a couple timeouts in your back pocket under the four minute media. That’s usually, to me, kind of the sweet spot. If you could save that third time out long enough, then you feel pretty good. It was the perfect time to challenge. I didn’t even kind of see the play. I was kind of blocked a little bit, but the guys behind the bench were adamant that we should do it. It was like five minutes to go in the game. So I felt like it’s a perfect time to give your team an extra rest. You call the time out no matter what happens, you get a full time out, you rest, and then you have another time out after the media rest. So to me that’s kind of the sweet spot. So yeah, it worked out in our favor tonight.”On not using the challenge more often: “The number one thing I focus on is just winning the game. To win the game, sometimes you got to lose a possession. I’m not afraid to do that early in the game, because I think there’s enough game to make up for it. So, it’s judicious and smart to probably keep that challenge in your back pocket down the stretch of the game, because even under two minutes, you still have to challenge an out of bounds call. You don’t have to challenge a goaltending or a block charge with the charge circle. We’re all learning the intricacies of it, but it worked today.”On having a swiss army knife type of player every year: “It’s huge, because it just gives you a lot of options. When you have somebody who you can put on another team’s leading scorer, who you know can give you multiple looks on defense. He could give you a ball screen coverage. He can switch. He can get through screens, can guard a post. Those are really valuable things. Then offensively, if those guys just have some playmaking ability, which Ivan has and is really starting to show, it just really connects your offense. It makes it so much easier, takes so much pressure off your point guards hands. Guys we’ve had in the past do that here, you know, it’s been a Pelle Larson, a Dalen Terry, kind of played that role. So, you know, that’s just a really valuable role for us, and Ivan is really growing into it. I thought tonight was Dwayne’s best game, he’s played for us. He started to finish on the break a little bit, and Dwayne is really just scratching the surface, so I’m excited to see how he continues to develop.”On Mo Krivas’ growth offensively: “Mo is a really good player. His size really impacted the game at the start. I feel like at each half. Sometimes maybe our guys aren’t doing as good of a job as they can of finding him, but he kind of really established himself offensively. They came out and did a kind of a cross matching thing that we weren’t quite expecting. Our guys figured it out on the court, and they had number six on Mo. Our guys kind of settled in, played some old school high low basketball, and Mo got us going a little bit. So yeah, Mo’s a really good player. He’s a difference maker out there. As is Tobe. I mean the combination of those two guys together, it’s a heavy load for teams.”Kharchenkov on how he felt after the injury in the last game: “I twisted my ankle a little bit, was banged up a little bit, but J-rock took really good care of me. Wasn’t that bad. We were just a little bit day to day. Took care of my foot, did a lot of exercise and yeah, just got me ready for the game. I had two full practices, and I felt pretty good.”On scouting and guarding Keyshawn Hall: “Nothing special. I’ll guard him and try to make his life difficult on the court. No freedom and no easy layups, that’s pretty much it.”On being a glue guy for the team like Pelle Larsson or Dalen Terry: “When I got here I was kind of finding my role a little bit. He told me to look at these guys, especially Larsson, and just guide my game up with them a little bit and find my spots where they found it a couple years ago. Makes it pretty easy when you know what you’re doing.”Bradley on playing effortlessly as a team: “Just trusting in each other, playing together and just trusting each other. The outcome will be what we wanted to be. Playing through our bigs, our guards doing what they do, and just keep building chemistry and play.”On Burries’ improvement: “Just Brayden being Brayden. As the season goes on, he’ll get more comfortable playing. He’s one of the best freshman guards in the country. I’m happy for him to do what he did tonight, and excited to see his growth. He’s just playing more confidently. It would be a tough schedule for any freshman, coming into the big games. Even though he didn’t score a lot, he made a big impact defensively and so now he’s just getting the hang of it on offense. He’s only going to get better from here.”On defending Tahaad Pettiford: “I was going to need tough coverage, especially when he is shooting from three, he gets downhill fast, he’s shifty, so I just needed to make him shoot tough shots. He hit a lot of tough shots tonight, but I feel like we did a decent job of trying to contain them overall, get them out of transition and mix it up with different ball screen coverages.”On facing his former team again in Alabama: “We got to be great on the road. That’s where championships and conferences and March Madness, that’s where championships are won, away from home. So we got to put our hard hats on and go win this game.”Peat on dominating the inside throughout the season: “I don’t think it’s just the frontcourt. I think it’s everybody. Honestly, Coach preaches paint points, and that’s one of our values as a team. So we try to get out there and get in the paint. If we don’t have anything in there, kick out to the three. That’s the best type of thing we can get as a team. So just playing off drives and stuff like that, high lows, simple stuff, just making sure we’re finishing. It’s been a good formula for us.”On if the team feels like they are the number one team: “I think we just are going out there trying to win games, trying to get better each and every day in practice. That’s what we’re gonna do this week. Get ready for Alabama and keep trying to get better as a team and to see what we could do in the long run. I think we just come with the same mindset to every game. Preparing ourselves to go out and play. Auburn is a really good team, so we worked hard every day in practice and got prepared for Auburn and went out there and did our best, and we came out victorious.”