Barring something unforeseen, the Arizona men’s basketball team will be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament — maybe even the No. 1 seed.
Therefore, one might contend, the Wildcats have no incentive to try to win the Big 12 Tournament. They have nothing to gain, that argument goes, but would have something to lose — namely, a key player to injury.
Michael Lev is a senior writer/columnist for the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson.com and The Wildcaster.
I don’t buy that argument. Neither, critically, does the man who makes the ultimate decisions about who plays and how much.
“I don't overthink it,” head coach Tommy Lloyd said. “If you put us in a tournament, I guess I'm a sucker for it — I'm going to try to win it, and I'm going to try to win it one game at a time. It's not going to be much more complicated than that.
“We're not going to go to Kansas City and kick it so we can come back home a couple of days early. If we lose, we'll come back and we'll regroup and we’ll be ready for the NCAA Tournament.”
Arizona fans might have a different view. They’ve been scarred by recent postseason results.
Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd screams out to his players in the second half during a game against Iowa State at McKale Center on March 2, 2026. Arizona won 73-57.
In three of Lloyd’s first four seasons, the Wildcats either won a conference tournament or reached the final. They didn’t make it past the Sweet 16 in any of those seasons. In 2023, five days after winning the Pac-12 Tournament in a grinder of a game vs. UCLA, Arizona lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to Princeton.
The one year they didn’t make it to a conference-tournament final, 2024, the Wildcats ... lost in the Sweet 16.
We just might have a correlation-is-not-causation situation here, folks.
I looked at the Final Four participants from the past five seasons to try to determine if there’s any connection between deep conference-tournament runs and deep NCAA Tournament runs — or if one actually makes the other more difficult.
Eleven of the 20 Final Four teams from 2021-25 won their conference tournaments. One other, Duke in 2022, reached the final of the ACC Tournament.
Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger yells out to his team in the first half during a game at McKale Center on Jan. 27, 2025.
Three of the past five national champions won their conference tournaments: Florida (2025), UConn (2024) and Kansas (2022). Both of last year’s finalists, Florida and Houston, were conference-tournament champs.
Going all out in a league tourney does not make it any harder to reach the Final Four.
Competitive edge
Elite athletes — well, most of them anyway — are wired a certain way. When they step onto the court, the field or the ice, they’re in it to win it. The idea of “load management” runs contrary to their core beliefs.
“Anyone who has that mindset isn't as competitive as what the programs and players and coaches are in this league,” Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger said after the Cyclones lost to the Wildcats on March 2 at McKale Center — clinching the Big 12 regular-season crown for Arizona.
“Anytime you have an opportunity, you want to win. You want all your focus on winning whatever that is in front of you. So whether that's a single game, a conference tournament, whatever it may be, I think the best way to improve and get better is to compete harder and win more.
“I know our mindset’s going to be to win every game that's in front of us. Play as many games as you can.”
Iowa State isn’t in the same spot as Arizona. The Cyclones are guaranteed to make the NCAA Tournament, but their seeding could still change. That loss to the Wildcats was ISU’s third in four games heading into the regular-season finale vs. ASU. Could a one-and-done in Kansas City drop Iowa State — at one point a lock for a 2-seed — all the way down to the 4-line?
That isn’t a place you want to be. Just ask the 2025 Wildcats, a Final Four-caliber team that had the misfortune of facing No. 1 seed Duke in the Sweet 16.
Although that team was seeded lower in the NCAA Tournament than the '24 squad, it entered March Madness with better vibes. The '24 team was the one Lloyd-coached club that didn’t make a conference-tournament final; it lost in the Pac-12 semis to Oregon.
That team eased its foot off the gas at the end of the regular season and might not have ever fully regained its competitive edge.
The celebrating crowd and Clemson players surround Arizona guard Caleb Love after the Wildcats gave up a basket and a foul late in the second half of their Sweet 16 game in the NCAA Tournament in Los Angeles on March 28, 2024.
Arizona clinched the 2024 Pac-12 regular-season title at UCLA. Two days later, the Wildcats got thumped at USC — a game that supposedly “didn’t matter.”
They returned the favor against the Trojans in the quarterfinals before falling to the Ducks. Arizona notched routine wins over Long Beach State and Dayton in the NCAA Tournament and was set up to at least make the Elite Eight with a matchup against No. 6 seed Clemson in Los Angeles.
The Tigers took them out. Maybe that UA team didn’t have the right stuff regardless of how it fared down the stretch. Maybe something got lost when the Wildcats no-showed at Galen Center.
The injury concern
Losing your competitive edge by blowing off a conference tournament isn’t the worst thing that can happen in the run-up to the NCAA Tournament; losing a player to injury is a far worse outcome.
BYU forward Brody Kozlowski (4) knocks heads with Arizona guard Evan Nelson (21), who strips him of possession in the first half of their Big 12 game, Feb. 18, 2026, at McKale Center.
But you can’t control that. And you can’t think about it. Countless coaches and athletes have told me over the years that if the thought of getting hurt is lurking somewhere in your mind, it’s more likely to happen than if you just ball out. You have to play with commitment and conviction.
That said, there are some caveats. If a player falls into the “questionable” category on the availability report because of a sore ankle or knee, the right play is to sit him or her out — assuming your spot in the NCAA Tournament is already assured. (It’s obviously a different calculus if your only path to the NCAA Tournament is to win your conference tourney.)
Maybe, if you’re in Lloyd’s position, you manage the minutes a little differently. Jaden Bradley and Brayden Burries averaged nearly 32 minutes in Big 12 games entering the regular-season finale at Colorado. Maybe you shave a couple of minutes off for each and give Evan Nelson a bit more run.
To me, that’s a win-win — slightly more rest for your primary playmakers and more reps for a backup who could be needed should injuries or fouls strike in San Diego or San Jose (the presumptive destinations for Arizona in the West Regional).
Arizona center Oumar Ballo, with his broken hand bandaged, answers questions in the Wildcat locker room before the start of the NCAA Tournament on March 15, 2023.
If a key UA player were to get hurt in Kansas City, some fans will lose their minds. Why are you trying to win this thing when it doesn’t mean anything?
It’s easy to say that in hindsight. Players can get hurt at any time. They can’t be bubble-wrapped.
Sometimes it’s just bad luck — the breaks of the game, as David Halberstam so perfectly phrased it.
In 2022, Kerr Kriisa suffered a sprained ankle in the Pac-12 quarterfinals against Stanford. He sat out the next three games and wasn’t the same when he returned.
In 2023, Oumar Ballo broke his left hand in the Pac-12 semifinals. Was he limited after that? Perhaps. He still averaged 13 and 10 — on par with his season marks — against UCLA and Princeton.
Something like that could happen to the '26 Wildcats in K.C., but I just don’t see what the alternative is here.
You can’t tank. You gotta play your guys. You gotta play to win.
