Why Tobe Awaka’s shooting development is so impressive to Tommy Lloyd

The Arizona Wildcats continued their strong start to the season following their 97-78 win against Utah on Saturday. The win also gave the No. 1 team in the country a 1-0 record to begin Big 12 Conference play. Alongside a few star freshmen, one of the more impressive players this season for Arizona has been big man Tobe Awaka. Following the win, Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd spoke about what’s impressed him about Awaka’s development, as per Ezra Amacher of Arizona Desert Swarm.

“Tobe’s worked really hard on his shot. And one of the aspects of player development that we really focus on is obviously, the number one objective for me is to win games at Arizona. But secondly, I want these guys to get better and have careers that go way past Arizona,” Tommy Lloyd said. “These guys are working on things for the future. And these guys, they do individual workouts every day with our coaches. And you can only shoot so many jump hooks. It’s hard to work on offensive rebounding 1-0.”

“Tobe has really changed his shot over the last year. And to change your shot is something that takes multiple years to kind of get there. And because you have to fine tune, fine tune, fine tune, then you have to get game confidence, there’s a lot of steps that go into it, so it’s a real long process,” Lloyd continued. “That’s why you don’t see a lot of non-shooters develop into shooters because it’s hard to stick to it. And so I’ll give Tobe a ton of credit.”

During Arizona’s win against Utah, Tobe Awaka shot a perfect 2-of-2 from the 3-point line. He did not take a single 3-point attempt during his first two seasons at Tennessee. But since transferring to Arizona last season, Awaka is a combined 5-of-10 from 3-point range.

This season, Awaka has appeared in 14 games at a little over 20 minutes per game. He’s been averaging a career-best 10.1 points off the bench, to go along with 10.3 rebounds and 1.4 assists while shooting 59.8 percent from the field.

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