Playing a sport that is almost entirely defined by its do-or-die postseason, in one sense, the 2021-22 Arizona Wildcats ended up as just another footnote.
A day before Arizona definitively lost its Sweet 16 matchup to Houston on Thursday, basketball analytics guru Ken Pomeroy noted that no team unranked in the preseason that went on to become a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed had ever reached the Final Four.
“The results for these teams is shockingly poor,” Pomeroy wrote on KSL.com.
Since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, there have been 133 No. 1 seeds who were ranked in the preseason AP Top 25, with that group reaching the Final Four 44.4% of the time. The other 11 No. 1 seeds not in the preseason AP poll stopped playing during the first or second weekend.
With a 72-60 loss to Houston, Arizona kept the Final Four percentage of those teams at zero.
Pomeroy asserted in his story that the AP Top 25 preseason poll — in which 61 media members from around the country carefully analyze what teams have — has more predictive power than the weekly AP polls, in which teams bob up and down based on what they did the previous week.
So, were the 2021-22 Wildcats underrated or overrated?
Both, or neither?
Did they race into national relevancy thanks largely to a weak nonconference schedule (Pomeroy’s site, Kenpom.com, ranked it 182nd nationally) and a weaker-than-usual Pac-12, which produced only three NCAA Tournament teams, none of which reached the Elite Eight?
(Wrote Pac-12 Hotline columnist Jon Wilner, “The Wildcats were the one-eyed team in the conference of the blind, which made for a gaudy résumé.")
Were the Wildcats top-seeded good but simply unable to adjust to a more physical game allowed in the postseason? (Noting that similarly styled No. 1 seed Gonzaga lost on the same day, USA Today’s Dan Wolken wrote that “whatever concept you have of ‘best team wins’ has never been more irrelevant. In this tournament, the toughest, most physical team wins.”)
Dalen Terry and his teammates brought a fun, free-flowing style to the floor in Tommy Lloyd’s first year as coach.
Or did the Wildcats just have a rough couple of games, barely escaping ninth-seeded TCU in overtime during the second round and then getting pushed around by Houston when point guard Kerr Kriisa was still playing through a significant ankle sprain and power forward Azuolas Tubelis struggled uncharacteristically?
Would the presence of solidly built 6-foot-7-inch veteran Kim Aiken, who disappeared in early December, have helped in those matchups? And did the social media buzz over Bennedict Mathurin’s possible contact with a TCU cheerleader cause any distraction before his 4-for-14 shooting effort against the Cougars?
“There's a lot of things we could have done better to win the game,” Mathurin said. “I don't have a lot to say.”
Pomeroy told the Star that unranked teams who became No. 1 seeds “probably played a bit over their heads during the season,” but added that he wasn’t sure how much that applied to Arizona.
"They had a very tough draw," Pomeroy said, his site having predicted Houston would beat Arizona 74-73.
But whatever the case, maybe none of that is what really matters.
Regardless of how Arizona finished, the fact is that the Wildcats brought a fan-friendly, uptempo and team-oriented style back to McKale Center under first-year coach Tommy Lloyd, breathing life into a building that has been rocked since the FBI announced its investigation into college basketball in September 2017.
That case resulted in an ensuing and still-pending NCAA infractions case for Arizona, one that is not expected to be completed until at least late this summer. It also eventually played a role in the April 2021 firing of former coach Sean Miller, who returned to his old job at Xavier last week while still facing a Level I lack of head coach responsibility charge for alleged academic and recruiting misconduct by former assistants Mark Phelps and Book Richardson.
Arizona center Christian Koloko finishes off a fast break against Wright State during the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
While the Wildcats still averaged the lowest attendance in the post-2017 investigation era, just 13,414 tickets distributed per game, at least part of that might be attributed to COVID-19 concerns and McKale Center masking issues earlier this season.
It also might reflect a disinterest in Arizona’s weak home nonconference schedule, or a lack of enthusiasm over an unproven team with an unproven coach that was not ranked in the preseason.
But all that changed eventually.
After rolling over three low-major opponents at home by an average of 45 points per game to start the season, the Wildcats started opening eyes locally and nationally when they escaped Wichita State in overtime and then went on to shock then-fourth-ranked Michigan in the Main Event mini-tournament in Las Vegas.
It was a coming-out party for the Wildcats and, individually, for center Christian Koloko, who vastly outplayed Michigan preseason all-American Hunter Dickinson while averaging 17.5 points, 9.0 rebounds and 4.0 blocks in the Wildcats’ two wins to earn the Main Event MVP award.
With the Wildcats about to be ranked (at No. 17) the following day for the first time since Feb. 17, 2020, Lloyd was asked if their secret was out.
“I don’t know,” Lloyd said. “Here’s the deal: You guys know I've been pretty low-key since I got this job and I've been trying to build this family from the inside out. I wasn't going to beg fans to come to games. I wasn't going to make proclamations that we're going to do this or that.
“But in my heart, I know what success looks like. I know what good teams look like and I knew we could be good. We just had to hang with it and deal with a little bit of adversity.”
Over the next two months, the Wildcats' momentum remained slower to build in the stands than on the court. The Wildcats returned home for a 105-59 laugher over Sacramento State on Nov. 27, though the UA football team was also playing ASU on that day, and only about 10,000 fans showed up (the announced crowd was 11,733).
But those who did catch the game live or TV, saw the Wildcats again playing a visually appealing brand of basketball that had five players score in double figures and 31 assists for their 38 made field goals, the first time Arizona had 30 assists in a game in over two decades.
“It’s just the way we play and the chemistry that we have,” said reserve guard Pelle Larsson, who had a season-high 17 points against the Hornets. “We just like playing with each other. We like passing it to each other and if a guy has an open shot, we don't mind giving up a good one to get a great one.”
McKale picked up a bit when the Wildcats soundly beat their toughest home nonconference opponent, Wyoming, in a matchup of then-unbeaten teams on Dec. 8. More than 12,000 appeared to be in attendance, with UA announced a crowd of 13,077.
“We felt it,” Tubelis said of the crowd. “Now we just need to fill up those seats on top, those red seats, and it will be amazing to play.”
At the same time, the Wildcats kept moving up in the AP poll and the computer rankings, surprising voters, fans, and in some respects, even Lloyd himself.
Their win over Wyoming was another visible step: Without Aiken for the first time for what UA termed personal reasons, and with guards Kriisa and Larsson having suffered minor ankle injuries, the Wildcats still shot 52.8% from the field and outrebounded the Cowboys, 42-27.
“Well, I didn't expect that," Lloyd said to start off his postgame press conference after that game.
Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd won the Pac-12 regular-season and tournament titles, earned a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed and advanced to the Sweet 16 in his first season in Tucson.
As the Wildcats’ season rolled on, the surprises became more of an expectation, and more fans jumped aboard.
After Arizona went on the road to beat Illinois on Dec. 11 — overcoming a four-hour delay when high winds forced their charter flight to land in Indiana — those red seats started filling up. UA announced a crowd of 14,263 for a late Saturday afternoon game with Cal Baptist on Dec. 18 and announced its first sellout of 14,644 on Jan. 29 against ASU.
Successive sellouts of 14,644 against UCLA (Feb. 3), USC (Feb. 5) and Oregon (Feb. 19) brought McKale Center decibels levels back to its previously intimidating self, especially during the Wildcats’ tense 84-81 win over the Ducks.
The Wildcats' win over Oregon was part of a nine-game winning streak that all but assured them of a Pac-12 championship. Thanks to a 79-63 loss at high-altitude Colorado on Feb. 26, when the Wildcats wore down in the second half, they couldn’t clinch it until they played at USC three days later.
But then they did so in resounding style, holding the Trojans to just 39.7% shooting while Mathurin scored 19 points and Kriisa added 18 in the 91-71 win, then celebrating behind closed doors at the Galen Center.
"This is the standard for this program," Lloyd told the Wildcats in a rowdy locker-room celebration afterward, as seen on an Instagram live video shared by center Oumar Ballo. "This is what we do."
It was 17th won or shared Pac-12 regular season title and first since 2017-18, giving Lloyd a championship in his first season at the Wildcats' coach.
The Wildcats didn’t officially celebrate the win until they beat Cal 89-61 on March 5 in their regular-season finale, in front of their fifth and final sellout crowd of the season, celebrating afterward with a net-cutting ceremony while Lloyd grabbed the mic and told fans to "BTFD."
Then in the interview room, Lloyd repeated a familiar theme.
"From where we started to where we are now, I didn’t expect that," Lloyd said. 'This is what I came down here to try to do. I didn't have a timeline on it but, I guess, why not now?"
They weren’t done yet. Not quite. The Wildcats pulled off another big accomplishment the next week when they beat Stanford, Colorado and UCLA to win the Pac-12 Tournament — despite having probably already locked up a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed and losing Kriisa to a badly sprained ankle in its quarterfinal game against the Cardinal.
When that one was all over, with red and white confetti raining to the floor and a rowdy “McKale North” crowd sticking around to celebrate at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Center, Lloyd took the mic again.
"It’s surreal and, to be honest, I didn't quite expect it," Lloyd said. "But when I got together with this group of misfits, I knew we had something special."
Named the Pac-12’s Player of the Year earlier in the week, Mathurin became the tournament’s MVP while Koloko, named the Pac-12’s Defensive Player of the Year, joined him on the all-tournament team.
Asked at a postgame press conference which Pac-12 title was the most fun to celebrate, Koloko and Mathurin smiled.
"I mean, we cut off nets," Koloko said. "That's the most important thing. We cut nets. Yeah. That's what we do."
The Wildcats didn’t get to celebrate again, not in the South Region or in the NCAA championship game.
But, back in October, they weren’t supposed to be cutting off any nets or dumping water bottles all over Lloyd in the locker room.
Not in the Main Event. Not after the Pac-12 regular-season title. And not after the Pac-12 Tournament title.
But they did.
In the immediate aftermath of UA's loss to Houston, Koloko found some perspective. Arizona’s most veteran player, Koloko was a freshman reserve when the Wildcats dropped out of the polls for over a year in February 2020 and a leader on the one that returned to a much higher level this season.
"We started the season, and nobody believed in us. We made them believe in us," Koloko said. "We knew we could have done better. That's why our team is sad right now. We knew how good of a team we were, but right now we can't do anything. So we've just got to learn from it."
Lloyd said he thanked his players for helping him get Arizona basketball off to a good start in his tenure, noting that they helped provide some “foundational pieces” to build on in the future, even as he may lose not only Mathurin but possibly also Koloko and guard Dalen Terry to the pros.
"Overall, it was great," Lloyd said. "I thanked these guys after the game. They're an amazing group of guys. They helped me get Arizona basketball off to a good start in my tenure, and I'll always be thankful for them.”
