Arizona fans' lament: 'I can't believe it's been 20 years'

As a senior at Thousand Oaks High School in Ventura County, California, 20 years ago, the then-Erika Hanson thought she was walking into a dynasty.

Two, really.

Not only was she joining an Arizona softball team that had won five of the previous seven Women’s College World Series titles, but the Wildcats’ men’s basketball team was fresh off its first championship. She thought she was entering the Wildcats’ golden years.

After a series of near-misses, the now-Mrs. Barnes — she would go on to marry former Arizona golfer Andy Barnes — would finally win her only Women’s College World Series in 2001 as a senior.

The same year, coincidentally, in which the Wildcats last made the Final Four.

Barnes expected it to be a yearly occurrence. Like every other Arizona basketball fan, she can’t believe it’s been 20 – and 16 – years.

“That’s what I thought the plan was,” she said on Friday night in front of T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, as a mob of Wildcats fans mobbed their interim athletic director.

“Being from Southern California, all you heard about was Arizona basketball and Arizona softball, national champs, that’s the plan. That’s what you did when you went to Arizona.”

The buzz for Wildcats basketball that next year, Barnes said, was unreal, and it trickled throughout McKale Center, like “If Arizona basketball could do it, all of our programs had that opportunity.”

Twenty years later, McKale is ready for a new buzz, one that only the men’s basketball team can — and might — provide with a March Madness run.

In a town where the summer sun beams a bit dimmer after an early exit, Tucson’s sports fans are thirsty for another championship.

Consider: Arizona is the last Pac-12 — heck, the last western — school to win a national championship.

“It’s amazing that it’s been that long since a champion has come from the West,” said Benjamin Ciranowicz, a 2010 Arizona graduate who attended the Pac-12 Tournament. “It speaks to the nature of college basketball, the parity we see. If it’s gonna happen, now’s as good a year as any.”

With three Pac-12 teams with top-three seeds — two-seeds Oregon and Arizona and No. 3-seeded UCLA — there is a real chance, and with the Wildcats playing mostly close to home and with a comparatively kind path ahead, Arizona fans are cautiously optimistic.

“At the beginning of the year I was very optimistic, then the injuries, (guard Allonzo) Trier’s suspension — you had to kind of reset where the bar was,” Ciranowicz said. “I was pleasantly surprised, and I think (coach Sean) Miller has done an amazing job to get this team a share of the Pac-12 title. If there’s a run in March, it just depends on what matchups we get, health and if we get Lauri Markkanen’s shot back.”

For long-suffering Arizona fans, the championship drought has been even more difficult to swallow with so many close calls. Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker will haunt them for a lifetime after keeping the Wildcats from a Final Four in both 2014 and 2015.

“I’d say we’re overdue for a championship, for a Final Four,” UA fan Noe Fraijo said. “I can’t believe how long it’s been. I hope the team comes together, Markkanen comes back to what he was like. We’re on the verge of peaking. Hopefully that happens.”

The common sentiment among most UA fans is simple: How has it been two decades?

“I can’t believe it’s been 20 years,” Barnes said. “It’s gone by incredibly fast. But I think Sean Miller has picked up what we did in ’97, and there’s the same magic and chemistry that there was back then.”