Arizona learned on Sunday that its opponent for the first round of the NCAA Tournament was West Virginia. The Wildcats also learned that they would be playing on Friday in College Park, Maryland.
It took a little longer — Monday morning — to find out exactly when the game tips.
No. 7-seeded Arizona (21-9) plays WVU (19-11) at 9 a.m. Tucson time (noon in College Park) in the Greenville 1 bracket. The game will air on ESPN. Whoever comes out of this site will play at Greenville, South Carolina, in the Sweet Sixteen — the same destination as No. 1 South Carolina.
If they were to beat No. 10 seed West Virginia Friday, the Wildcats would play the winner of No. 2 Maryland vs. No. 15 Holy Cross on Sunday.
With UA finishing on a three-game losing streak — at Oregon and Oregon State to close out the regular season and vs. UCLA in the Pac-12 Tournament — its placement in the tournament dropped. The Wildcats went from possibly hosting in the second reveal a few weeks ago at No. 15 overall — as a 4-seed — to ending up a seventh seed.
Those loses also affected their spot in the final Associated Press poll that was released Monday. The Wildcats finished at No. 25. Five other Pac-12 teams were in the Top 25: Stanford (5), Utah (8), UCLA (14), Colorado (21) and Washington State (23).
South Carolina joined an exclusive group, going wire to wire as No. 1 in consecutive years.
The defending national champion Gamecocks (32-0) became the third school to be the top team in the poll for the entire season in back-to-back years, equaling UConn and Louisiana Tech.
The Gamecocks, who are the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, have been atop the poll for 38 straight weeks, which is the second-longest run behind UConn’s record 51-week streak (2008-10).
— The Associated Press contributed to this report
The Arizona women's basketball team learned its fate for the upcoming NCAA Tournament Sunday, March 12, 2023 at a viewing party on the UA campus. Arizona, a seven-seed in the "Greenville 1" quadrant of the bracket, will take on 10-seed West Virginia Friday, March 17, in College Park, Maryland. Video by PJ Brown/Arizona Daily Star
