When Houston and Arizona met nearly three years ago in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, the top-seeded Wildcats were sent home with a 72-60 defeat.The two schools now are both members of the Big 12 and will meet for the first time since that 2022 March Madness matchup on Saturday when the No. 6 Cougars visit No. 13 Arizona at Tucson, Ariz.Houston (20-4, 12-1) leads the Big 12 by one game ahead of the Wildcats (17-7, 11-2).The clubs could have been tied, but Arizona lost 73-70 at Kansas State on Tuesday when it was 2-of-22 from 3-point range and committed 17 turnovers. The setback ended the Wildcats’ six-game winning streak.One night earlier, Houston knocked off visiting Baylor 76-65 to win its third straight contest.Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson quickly turned his club’s focus on to Arizona, which is 105-27 in Tommy Lloyd’s four seasons as coach.”In the coaching profession, you know who the real ones are, and Tommy’s a real one,” Sampson said. “He’s got a great staff. And having that structure and having that culture, but the most important thing is talent. Tommy’s always been a great recruiter, especially international kids, so all his teams will have a good balance of kids from different places, but he knows how to coach.”The Wildcats started slowly with a 4-5 record before getting hot and winning 13 of their next 14 games.But poor shooting derailed them against Kansas State as inconsistent star Caleb Love had just six points on 3-of-15 shooting, including misses on all seven 3-point attempts.”He didn’t play great. We’ll have to go back and look why,” Lloyd said of Love. “I thought he had some good opportunities. I thought he had a few of those threes, kind of towards the end of that game, the second half, I thought looked really good. We’re going to hang with it just like we always do and hope for a better outcome next time.”Love has shot under 40 percent from the field in nine of the past 12 games. He is shooting 37.8 percent overall and 30.9 percent from 3-point range while averaging a team-leading 15.8 points per game.Jaden Bradley (11.9) and KJ Lewis (10.5) also average in double digits for Arizona. Lewis had a team-leading 15 points against Kansas State.The Cougars led by as many as 25 in the wire-to-wire 11-point victory over Baylor.