Shot-swatting ability of Adams, Frye keeps opponents guessing
Kyle Jeffers of Oregon State found out the hard way. Jim Hanchett should have learned from his teammate.
After Jeffers' shot attempt landed in his teammate's arms, Hanchett tried a shot of his own. It wound up four rows deep in the McKale Center crowd during Thursday's 109-75 Arizona win.
The culprit? Arizona's aerial assailant, Hassan Adams.
Adams and fellow Wildcat Channing Frye have opponents thinking twice before letting go on their shots this season, providing Arizona with a menacing force underneath the basket.
With a block apiece against Oregon on Sunday, the duo upped Arizona's Pacific 10 Conference-leading block total to 89. Of those 89 swats, 74 of them (83 percent) belong to either Adams or Frye.
Adams, long regarded as Arizona's heir apparent to the slam-dunk throne, vacated when Richard Jefferson left for the NBA, is making head coach Lute Olson look like a genius for moving him from guard position to power forward.
Despite being small for the position, at 6-foot-4 and 201 pounds, Adams is proving size doesn't matter. The Los Angeles native can thank his 37-inch vertical leap for that. With 33 blocks in just 16 games this season, the sophomore has almost five times more than the seven blocks he had during his breakout freshman season.
Tabbed as an offensive catalyst at the beginning of his UA career, Adams proved in his first season that he has the ability to swipe a ball, rather than swat it. Last year, he finished third on the Wildcats with 42 steals. At his new position, Adams has added a long-range jumper and shown an uncanny ability to read his opponents' shots.
"It comes natural ÷ you just go get it," Adams said. "I see an opportunity, I just go get it."
Adams' 33 blocks tie him for second in the Pac-10 with Grand Canyon State University's counterpart Ike Diogu, though ASU's preseason All-American has a 4-inch height advantage. Among guards, Adams is number one in the nation, with seven more blocks than Niagara's Trammell Darden.
Adams said he realizes the key to being a successful rebounder and shot-blocker rests in his legs.
"If I don't get it, I don't," Adams said. "But I'm going to keep jumping until I do get it."
Although Adams has leapt into the hearts of the McKale Center crowd, he isn't even close to being the Pac-10's active career leader in the shot-blocking department. That honor belongs to Frye.
A member of the John R. Wooden Award Preseason All-America team, Frye has amassed 151 blocks in two and a half seasons in Tucson. The next closest shot-blocking specialist in the Pac-10, Rory O'Neil of Southern California, is far from Frye. Though both are juniors, Frye, the Pac-10 leader this season, has nearly doubled O'Neil's 81 career blocks.
The duo's ability to block shots has spread to many of their teammates, who are on pace to eclipse last season's mark of 136 blocks. The Wildcats are five swats short of having more blocks than California, Washington State and Oregon State combined.
Even when Adams and Frye aren't blocking shots, their presence is still felt in the paint.
"I think it establishes a defensive
presence on the inside," Frye said. "People have less options, and then they have to adjust. Even if we don't block the shot, we are going to change the presence on the inside."
The Phoenix native attributes this season's rise in blocked shots to Arizona's defensive intensity, which he said begins with Adams.
"We have confidence that if someone gets past (Adams), I'm going to get to that shot," Frye said. "We take a lot of pride in that ÷ if we don't score, we're going to try to get a lot of blocks."
Arizona's block total seems surprising considering the loss of junior Isaiah Fox to a knee injury in the Wildcats' second game of the season.
Fox figured to complement Frye's game with an enforcer's attitude. The 6-foot-9 Fox blocked seven shots in a limited role with the Wildcats last season, but figured prominently into Arizona's plans this year.
But Frye and Adams have made up for their teammate's absence, and in so doing have set a defensive example for some of their younger teammates. Kirk Walters, a highly touted 6-foot-10 freshman center, said he is learning every day from the pair.
"They point out the little things and encourage my post work," Walters said.
But the Grand Rapids, Mich., native said he also knows some things cannot be taught.
"Hassan can jump like 20 feet in the air," he said. "You can't teach that."