LAS VEGAS – The most well-known NCAA bracketologists (from ESPN and CBS) still had Arizona getting a No. 4 seed as of early Sunday morning, but Rawle Alkins wonders if some special considerations might help the Wildcats’ case.
Like the one that had him out for the first nine games of the season, missing UA’s 0-fer in the Bahamas. Or the one that had Allonzo Trier miss two games in Oregon, including an overtime loss to the Ducks on Feb. 24, because of a PED suspension he later appealed himself out of.
“I see a lot of media talk about (it helping) teams that lost because some players weren’t there, they weren’t playing at their best, so hopefully they put us in that conversation,” Alkins said after UA beat USC 75-61 Saturday to win the Pac-12 Tournament title. “We lost a couple of games because me and Allonzo were out. Hopefully they talk about that kind of stuff but if not we still feel confident.”
It probably wouldn’t have taken much from Trier to push the Wildcats past Oregon in that Feb. 24 overtime game, and maybe Alkins’ presence would have kept UA from losing a six-point game to North Carolina State in the first game of the Battle 4 Atlantis, which would have instead flipped UA to the winner’s bracket where …. who knows what might have happened?
There are a lot of what-ifs with the Wildcats’ season.
“We were so close to winning that first (Atlantis) game and we were so young at the beginning of the season,” Trier said. “We hadn’t been in that situation before and we were really incomplete. All we had was me and Deandre. Now we’re getting everyone involved.”
Must be nice department: Before I approached Parker Jackson-Cartwright in the locker room toward the end of the half-hour media session, I heard him asking “Was that my third in a row?”
PJC was talking about Pac-12 Tournament titles, of course, and he was slightly off. He actually was part of his third win in four seasons, with UA having won the 2015, 2017 and 2018 titles, while falling short only in a semifinal overtime loss to Oregon in the 2016 semifinals.
Couple more Deandre Ayton notes if you haven’t seen them:
His 23rd double-double on Saturday not only broke the UA single-season record set by Al Fleming in 1974-75 but also tied the 23 Kevin Love put up in 2007-08 as the most by a freshman in Pac-12 history.
Ayton’s 74 points in the Pac-12 Tournament tied for the third most in Pac-12 tourney history while his 38 rebounds was second-most ever in the event.
Our full coverage is attached to this post, as well as UA’s latest “team sheet” that the NCAA selection committee references, as well as the USC-UA box score and updated stats. You can also see all the team sheets here.
