'Incredible year' leads to top seed, favorable draw for Pac-12 champion Wildcats

With an NCAA Tournament path ahead full of potential reunions, plus a distaste for hypotheticals, Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd was ready.

“No. No. Nooo,” Lloyd said before the word “Gonzaga” was mentioned during his Selection Sunday press conference.

But the question was actually about how much distance Arizona created from Gonzaga by becoming the NCAA Tournaments’ No. 2 overall seed. The Wildcats (31-3) were placed as a No. 1 seed in the South Region, and therefore won’t conceivably have to face Lloyd’s former program until the NCAA title game.

UA will open on Friday in San Diego against either Wright State or Bryant, then face either TCU or Seton Hall if it wins the first game.

Gonzaga is way down the road, a matchup that would take five wins for each team — a ton of presumption that Lloyd wasn’t about to make. So Lloyd talked about the fact that Arizona will open Friday.

“Obviously it’s a great honor to be a 1-seed and the guys were very deserving,” Lloyd said of the Wildcats, who won both the Pac-12 regular-season and tournament titles. “They’ve had an incredible year and, and we’re excited going forward. I’m familiar a little bit with (potential opponents), but obviously have a lot to learn.”

But at the same time, Lloyd appeared OK with the buzz surrounding him and the Wildcats. The talk about Lloyd picking up a No. 1 seed in his first season as a head coach, and falling below only his former boss on the top seed line.

It’s such a compelling storyline that Lloyd and Gonzaga’s Mark Few even discussed it themselves, in a measured sort of way.

“It’s awesome,” Lloyd said. “He and I talked for a long time this morning and we’re not sitting there celebrating or reminiscing. We were just talking normal basketball stuff. And, yeah, it’s pretty cool to think that we’ve done it because he’s really influenced me and I probably influenced him some. Maybe there’s something in the water there or something.”

Not long after they spoke Sunday morning, the Wildcats were placed in a South Region bracket that also features potential rematches against Illinois and Tennessee if the teams all make it to San Antonio for second weekend games.

If Arizona wins Friday, the Wildcats would play the winner of an first-round game between No. 8 Seton Hall (21-10) and No. 9 TCU (20-12) on Sunday. If the Wildcats win two games in San Diego, they would advance to San Antonio, where they could face rematches with Tennessee (No. 3) and Illinois (No. 4).

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Arizona played close games at both Illinois and Tennessee in December, beating the Illini 83-79 on Dec. 11 but losing 77-73 to the Volunteers on Dec. 22. The Wildcats could face No. 4 seed Illinois in the Sweet 16 and either Tennessee or No. 2 seed Villanova in the Elite Eight.

Arizona is 31-3 and won both the Pac-12 regular-season and tournament titles, beating UCLA 86-76 in the conference tournament championship game on Saturday in Las Vegas.

Bryant crushed Wagner 70-43 to win the Northeast Conference Tournament title while Wright State (21-13) edged Northern Kentucky 72-71 to win the Horizon League Tournament.

Seton Hall finished in fifth place in the Big East with a conference record of 11-8 and lost to UConn on Thursday in the Big East Tournament. TCU tied with Oklahoma State for fifth place in the Big 12 at 8-10 in conference play, then lost to Kansas 75-62 in the Big 12 Tournament.

The Pac-12 put only three teams in the NCAA Tournament field, with UCLA gaining a No. 4 seed in the East while USC was handed a No. 7 seed. The Bruins’ loss to Arizona may have dropped it to Portland instead of being able to open in San Diego.

Another benefit for the Wildcats’ placement was that San Diego is a Friday-Sunday schedule, meaning guard Kerr Kriisa will receive another day to rest his sprained ankle.

Lloyd said chances of guard Kerr Kriisa playing this weekend were “hopeful,” and that the ankle sprain he suffered Thursday against Stanford did not appear as severe as the one that limited Azuolas Tubelis for two weeks after he injured an ankle on Jan. 20 at Stanford.

While Gonzaga was named the No. 1 seed in the West Region, Kansas was named No. 1 in the Midwest and Baylor No. 1 in the East.

As it turned out, Few might have to face an earlier reunion with another former assistant because Leon Rice’s Boise State team was placed in an 8-9 game that will feed into a potential second-round game with the Zags in Portland.

While getting together with Few, Rice and Long Beach State coach Dan Monson, the former Gonzaga head coach whose team won the Big West regular-season title but not the conference tournament, Lloyd found himself piping into the hypotheticals, too.

“Wer’e sitting there and Leon is much better living in hypotheticals than I am but he was just like, ‘Oh, I hope we don’t end up with one of you two,’” Lloyd said. “I was like, `Leon, come on, it’d be a good thing for all of us, because we wouldn’t be playing in the first round. It would mean that you guys won a game and we want a game. So if we’re meeting each other in the tournament, it’s a good thing. I mean, you can’t you can’t script it.

“And if we ended up playing Gonzaga, that would be an amazing thing for both programs because it wouldn’t be until much later in the dance and I’m sure we’d all take that right now.”