Craig Degel

What can you do in 38 seconds?

The United States men's 4x100-meter relay team can run a race. Canada's Donovan Bailey can run the 100 four times. You can get just over halfway through the minute waltz.

What can the Arizona men's basketball team do in 38 seconds?

It can take the hopes on a team bent on an upset and squash them like road kill on the Road to the Final Four. That's exactly what Arizona did in a 82-49 win over Illinois State on Saturday afternoon at ARCO Arena.

Thirty-eight seconds.

The top-seeded Wildcats found themselves tied at 32 with the Redbirds with 18:40 left in the second half. At that point, a basket by UA guard Miles Simon gave the Wildcats a 34-32 lead. Then, the Wildcats called out the dogs. Forward Bennett Davison put in a basket with 18:15 on the clock and UA promptly went into the full-court press. Guard Mike Bibby stole the inbounds pass and fed it to Simon who was streaking toward the basket for a lay-in and the foul at 18:10.

Still at 18:10, the Redbirds failed to inbound the ball within the five seconds allotted and turned it over to Arizona. Eight seconds later, Bibby put in two and all of a sudden the Wildcats were up nine and Illinois State looked like a deer caught in Arizona's headlights.

"You could see nobody wanted to handle the ball," Simon said. "Then they started making shaky passes in the press."

A 9-0 run turned into a 15-0 run by the time the television timeout gave the Redbirds a breather. But Arizona wasn't done. It's defense was just getting started.

That 15-0 run stretched to a 27-2 run, punctuated by back-to-back threes by Jason Terry, that gave the Wildcats a 57-34 lead at 12:01.

In just under seven minutes, the game went from thriller to yawner.

"The more active we are defensively, the better were shoot defensively," Arizona head coach Lute Olson said.

That much is true. Arizona shot just 34 percent during the first half but was up as high as 75 during the run before settling for 60 percent for the second half. Nobody was as happy with the shooting performance as Terry who was an abysmal 0 for 9 against Nicholls State.

He said it was he was forced to play without his trademark knee-high socks with the word "CATS" down the leg.

Thanks to UA equipment manager Walter Teike, the socks were overnighted to Terry who was wearing them Saturday. He finished with 11 points.

"I felt back to my old self," Terry said.

Arizona was led by Simon and Bibby who finished with 19 a piece. Michael Dickerson finished with 14.

With the win, Arizona (29-4) advanced to play Maryland, a 67-61 winner over Illinois Saturday, in the Sweet 16 Thursday night at the Pond in Anaheim. The winner of that game gets the winner of West Virginia-Utah for the right to go to the Final Four on March 28 in San Antonio.

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