Before a second run through the Big 12 next season, the Arizona Wildcats will test themselves against the Southeastern Conference's best.
The Wildcats announced Thursday they will host Auburn at McKale Center on Dec. 6 as part of a two-game contract with the Tigers, UA has also agreed to play Alabama in Birmingham a week later.
Currently, Auburn (26-2) is ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll and atop the SEC at 14-1, while Alabama (23-5) is ranked No. 6 and in second place in the SEC with a 12-3 record.
Auburn guard Miles Kelly lays in basket against Mississippi during the second half Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, in Auburn, Ala.
The Wildcats will play a return game at Auburn on a date that has not yet been determined but will probably be sometime during the 2026-27 season. Their game against Alabama is a return obligation after the Crimson Tide faced Arizona in Phoenix last season.
Arizona has lost the only two games it has played against the Tigers, including a 73-57 game in the 2018-19 Maui Invitational and Auburn's 73-63 win in the first round of the 1986 NCAA Tournament.
The rest of Arizona's 2025-26 nonconference schedule remains to be determined or announced.
The Wildcats may not participate in a conventional "multi-team event" next season, but are expected to play several neutral-site games. They may also have two extra games to fill if the Big 12 moves as expected from a 20-game conference schedule to 18 next season.
Lloyd contacts fired coach
Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd got choked up talking about the recent firing of Utah head coach Craig Smith Wednesday.
In the hours leading up to something of a must-win game for Arizona on Wednesday, considering that the No. 22-ranked Wildcats had lost three of four to threaten their hold on preferred seeds for the Big 12 and NCAA Tournaments ahead, coach Tommy Lloyd pushed the pause button.
He picked up the phone and called Craig Smith to see how he was doing.
Life, in this moment, was more important than any game, the way Lloyd described it. Especially the game that Arizona won 83-66 on Wednesday against Utah, which had fired Smith just two days earlier despite the Utes putting together a season that had so far surpassed their low expectations.
Lloyd said he and Smith came to know each other while entering the Pac-12 at the same time, the 2021-22 season, while they faced each other six times: Arizona won five times but lost at Utah in 2022-23 and went to triple-overtime there last season.
“Do Craig and I talk on the phone a lot? No,” Lloyd said. “But do we completely understand what everybody goes through all the time? Yes. You develop a brotherhood, because there's not too many people who know what your life's really like and the stress you feel and the pressure that's on you in trying to figure out your team and everything comes with it.
“It was just one guy calling another guy because he respects him, and I just wanted him to know — hey, he's a great dude — sorry that that happened, and I hope he and his family are OK.”
Coincidentally, Jerod Haase was working Wednesday’s Arizona-Utah game for ESPN+, giving Lloyd a chance to catch up with the former Stanford coach during the pregame shootaround. Haase was fired immediately after Stanford lost its Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinal game to Washington State last season.
After the Wildcats received 23 points that included six 3-pointers from Caleb Love to beat Utah on Wednesday, Lloyd opened his post-game press conference speaking not about Love and not even about Smith, but about Smith’s kids.
Two of them made the trip to McKale without their suddenly unemployed father: Landon Smith is Utah’s director of operations, while Brady Smith is a 6-1 walk-on guard.
“I know this is a business, and it's a hard business, and I get all those things, but we all have families,” Lloyd said. “We all have kids, and for his kids to show up today … with their teammates says something.
“This stuff's hard, what we go through. Even when it's going good, it's hard. ... This is just society in general, and us guys that decided to coach. There's a lot of really cool things that come with it, but there's a lot of tough stuff."
Lloyd choked up slightly as he kept talking.
“There's a lot of tough days, and you know what?” he said. “There's a lot of times your family gets neglected because what we're doing to try to prove our worth as a coach, to prove our value, to prove that we belong at this level. So I‘ve got a lot of respect for those two young men.”
Ute curveballs
Utah interim head coach Josh Eilert pleads his case to one of the game officials in the second half of their Big 12 game against Arizona on Feb. 26, 2025, at McKale Center.
When asked before Wednesday’s game if he had to scout Utah differently because they are now led by interim head coach Josh Eilert, who held a similar role at West Virginia last season following Bob Huggins' messy departure, Lloyd said it was “business as usual” and doubted the Utes would put in an entirely new defense and offense.
But Eilert did throw out what Lloyd referred to as some “curveballs.” One was a triangle-and-two defense that forced the Wildcats to go deep into the shot clock on occasion. Utah cut Arizona’s lead from 24 down to just 11 points with 1:26 left.
“Sometimes when you're in that role, you could come in and throw pitches that maybe aren't your repertoire, and he did that,” Lloyd said. “So that kind of made the game feel a little bit disjointed. But I'm proud of the way our guys handled it. …
“I'm fine that we struggled a little bit and we got the win. We dealt with a little bit of adversity. Maybe now next time, if somebody tries to triangle-and-two on us, we can address it a little bit and be a little bit more familiar with it.”
Rough 72 hours
Eilert praised the Utes’ resiliency after a three-day stretch that included a close loss at UCF on Sunday, a flight back to Salt Lake City that night, the firing of Smith on Monday and an attempt to prepare for Arizona before traveling south to play Wednesday’s game.
“It's been hard emotionally,” Eilert said. “A two-day prep turned into a one-day prep because on Monday with all the emotions, you’re not gonna get anything out of them. So cooler heads prevailed, and we let them get a good night's sleep. And honestly, rest this time of year is as good as a hard day of practice.
“We went at it (Tuesday) and put a game plan together that we thought we could be successful with, and they responded with an absolutely wonderful job.
Arizona forward Trey Townsend (4) puts up a shot under pressure from Utah forward Ezra Ausar (2) in the first half on Feb. 26, 2025.
"Like I tell them each and every day, there's gonna be hard times in life, there's gonna be a lot of adversity in life, and how you handle it and how you respond is going to be a testament to your character.”
