Michael Lev: With or without Pac-12 title, Wildcats belong in NCAA Tournament

SCOTTSDALE — Regardless of the outcome of Saturday night’s Pac-12 Tournament championship game, Arizona has proved it belongs in the NCAA field of 64.

That isn’t something one could have said a few weeks ago — or even a few days ago.

But the Wildcats have shown they’re worthy of an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament — the alternative to not winning the Pac-12 title game against Oregon, slated for 7 p.m. Saturday at Scottsdale Stadium.

They’ve shown it by beating multiple NCAA-bound teams, starting with a Sunday afternoon game at Stanford that had to be seen to be believed. (More on that in a bit.)

Then came a win at UC Irvine, which is projected to make the NCAA Tournament by both D1Baseball.com and Baseball America. Then a series win over USC, another tournament team. Then here, at the Pac-12 Tournament, wins over Arizona State (likely to make it ... but maybe not?), Oregon State (a lock) and Stanford (a host).

With their résumé suddenly stocked with Quad 1 victories, the Wildcats’ RPI rose into the 40s. They entered the bubble conversation. Now they’re the talk of college baseball — the hottest team on the West Coast.

“Don’t let the Cats get hot,” Chase Davis warned after Friday’s 14-4 run-rule win over the top-seeded Cardinal in which he launched a grand slam deep into the desert night.

It’s too late for that. They’re sizzling like a skillet of fajitas at Guadalajara Grill.

The experts at D1 and BA — who know more about this stuff than I do — have been nudging Arizona up their bubble boards. On Saturday morning, D1 had the Wildcats as the first team out — No. 65. BA had them as the second team out — No. 66.

But ask yourself this: Win or lose Saturday night, is there any viable argument that Arizona isn’t one of the best 64 teams in the country?

I know, I know; that’s not how this works. The field of 64 includes automatic qualifiers from “mid-major” conferences — which is a good thing for the sport. Think about March Madness: It wouldn’t be the same without George Mason, Florida Atlantic or Princeton. (Too soon, guys? Sorry.)

The selection committee is supposed to consider the totality of a team’s season. Arizona endured a wicked slump that stretched from mid-March to early April. The Wildcats lost 10 straight league games, their longest such skid since 1990 — when Chip Hale was a 25-year-old second-year player for the Minnesota Twins.

Arizona’s overall record at that point, April 6, was 14-13. Any notion then that the Wildcats would be in the NCAA Tournament mix now was far-fetched, bordering on absurd.

Davis insisted Friday night that the Cats never lost faith in themselves.

“You can’t doubt yourself in this game,” he said. “We knew what we needed to do, and we’re doing it.”

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There would be more pain along the way, though. At one point, Arizona suffered four walk-off losses in a stretch of five straight road defeats. The fourth such setback happened in the series opener at Stanford on May 12. The following day, the Wildcats had the look of a team that was cooked; they lost 9-2. It wasn’t unlike the Saturday game at Oregon State (a 10-4 drubbing) that followed a walk-off loss the previous night. The hangover effect is hard to shake.

In the Sunday game at OSU, Arizona appeared to have recovered. The Wildcats led 7-2 through six innings. Even after blowing that lead, they recaptured it on Emilio Corona’s three-run homer with two outs in the ninth inning.

They couldn’t hold it. Chris Barraza struggled. An intentional walk backfired. Arizona lost 11-10.

The Wildcats had 12 regular-season games left, but it felt like it was over. To their credit, they didn’t approach it that way.

Two weeks later, Arizona visited No. 5 Stanford. The first two games felt all too familiar. But the Wildcats refused to fold.

“When we got beat on Saturday in Palo Alto, they got together on Sunday and they sort of banded together,” Hale said. “It’s been a tough year. Obviously, we’ve scored a ton of runs; we’ve given up a ton of runs. And the hitters finally just said, ‘We’re a team. If we need 20-some runs to win a game, we will (do that).’ ”

It’s not clear whether the hitters literally said that, and they had no way of knowing they’d actually need to do it to win that day. Arizona led 18-11 entering the bottom of the eighth inning. Drew Bowser hit a grand slam in the eighth to make it 18-15; Alberto Rios hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth — with two strikes and two outs — to tie it.

Corona’s three-run homer in the 10th put the Wildcats up 21-18. Tommy Troy’s triple — again with two outs and two strikes — made it 21-20.

Finally, Barraza struck out Carter Graham. Game over. Road losing streak over. Whew.

Starting with that ridiculous yet rewarding result, Arizona has won seven of eight games, including three in a row in the Pac-12 Tournament. Think the 2019 Wildcats would’ve liked to have that opportunity?

That team’s arc most resembles this one’s. The ’19 squad scuffled in late March and relapsed in late April. By late May, the Wildcats were a wrecking ball. They won 13 of their last 14 and 10 in a row to close the season. They averaged — kid you not — 13.7 runs in those 14 games.

They were the team nobody wanted to face in the postseason. But they had no postseason. The Pac-12 Tournament didn’t exist. That team didn’t have a chance to compile more Quad 1 wins — or earn an automatic berth by winning a conference tournament.

This year’s team has accomplished the former while giving itself a shot to achieve the latter.

Regardless of the outcome Saturday night, the Wildcats deserve to make the NCAA Tournament. They’ve earned it.