Arizona Wildcats preparing for earliest Pac-12 start in over three decades

When the Pac-12 began discussing a move to 20 conference games in 2018, coaches and officials had the tricky problem of figuring where best to put them.

Already, the conference’s traditional 18-game schedule was packed tightly between New Year’s and the beginning of the conference tournament in March. November also was crowded between what many coaches view as necessary warm-up games and multiple-team, neutral-site events that typically fall in and around Thanksgiving.

Messing with Christmas didn’t seem to be popular, either.

“The goal was to put them in a tight window and we used a lot of analysis to go there,” Pac-12 deputy commissioner Jamie Zaninovich said. “I think they felt like `We don’t want it at the very beginning of the season like some other leagues do where it’s probably too early, but we don’t want to crowd our schedule after January 1 either — and we don’t want to get in the way of the real estate where the (multi-team events) play.’ ”

At the same time, the conference also spotted what Zaninovich called a “little promotional vehicle” around the first weekend of December, when its football championship game is typically played.

So for the first time — since COVID-19 wreaked havoc with the 2020-21 schedule in the league’s first attempt at 20 games — most of the Pac-12’s add-on games will be held immediately before or after the Utah-Oregon football championship game on Friday in Las Vegas.

Arizona will do its part by hosting Washington on Thursday and then traveling to play at Oregon State on Sunday.

It’s the earliest the Wildcats have opened Pac-12 play since 1989-90, but that’s fine with UA guard Pelle Larsson, who has said he opted to stay in the conference after transferring from Utah last spring partly because of its style of play.

“I’ve been looking forward to the Pac-12 this whole time, so it’s nice to get kind of a head start on it,” Larsson said. “It’s always fun to play Pac-12. You kind of have a little bit more emotions in those games.”

It’s apparently an intriguing prospect even to super senior guard Justin Kier, who played in the SEC last season at Georgia.

“A lot of these guys here, all they talk about is the Pac-12,” Kier said. “I’m used to the East Coast so I’m excited to see these games and see what they’re talking about.”

During the Pac-12’s preseason media day last month, Zaninovich said there were no plans to change the new 20-game format, which essentially keeps the “traditional” 18-game schedule and adds two games back to be played around the football championship.

In the old format, every team would skip a two-game homestand and a two-game road trip every season in order to play 18 games instead of a full 22-game round robin, but now one home game and one road game is added back into December from the skipped sets.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

This year, therefore, UA will face everybody twice except it will not play at Oregon nor host Washington State at McKale Center.

Wildcats rise to No. 11

Arizona moved up six spots Monday to No. 11 in the Associated Press Top 25, the Wildcats’ highest ranking since they were No. 9 on Jan. 29, 2018.

UA only played one game last week, beating Sacramento State 105-59, but many other teams in the middle of the Top 25 had losses.

The Pac-12 still has three ranked teams, with UCLA dropping from No. 2 to No. 5 after losing to Gonzaga and USC rising from 24th to 20th after winning the Wooden Legacy event.

Duke took over the No. 1 spot after beating Gonzaga, while the Bulldogs dropped to No. 3 behind Purdue.

Pac-12 honors two with UA ties

Former Wildcat guard Terrell Brown was named the Pac-12’s Player of the Week on Monday, just three days before he will return to McKale Center with Washington to face his old team.

Brown averaged 23.0 points, 5.3 rebounds and 4.0 assists during four games Washington split last week to earn what was his first Pac-12 weekly award. He was also named to the all-tournament team of the Crossover Classic in South Dakota.

While starting nine of 26 games for the Wildcats last season, Brown averaged 7.3 points while posting 90 assists to just 23 turnovers.

Meanwhile, Colorado’s K.J. Simpson was named Pac-12 Freshman of the Week, meaning two players with UA ties won weekly awards for other teams.

Simpson, who collected 12 points and two assists against Stanford in an 80-76 win Sunday night, signed a letter-of-intent to play for Arizona in November 2020 before jumping to Colorado last spring after former UA coach Sean Miller was fired.