If the Arizona Wildcats still want a first-round bye in the Pac-12 Tournament, they’ll need to grab some popcorn and a comfy place to sit for a while.
They have a lot of hard cheering ahead to do.
The Wildcats are 8-9 in conference play with only a Saturday home game against ASU remaining. They can still wind up anywhere from a No. 10 to a No. 4 seed in the Pac-12 Tournament, which begins next week in Las Vegas.
Getting the No. 4 spot and the final first-round bye — which could be particularly critical for a depth-challenged team such as Arizona — necessitates a certain six-way tie for fourth. The Pac-12 breaks multiple-team ties by comparing records within the group of tied teams, and so the key for Arizona is to have such a tie involve the two teams — Oregon State and Stanford — it has beaten twice, and not the Oregon team it has lost to twice.
One way that such a tie could happen, for starters, would be for Washington to beat Oregon State on Wednesday in Seattle, and for Washington State to get a win over Oregon in Pullman an hour later.
Doable, maybe — especially if Cougars star Robert Franks gets anywhere near as hot as he did at McKale Center, when he was 7 for 9 from 3-point range.
That would get the Wildcats to Thursday. On that night, UA would then need UCLA to lose at Colorado, USC to lose at Utah and Stanford to beat Cal at Maples Pavilion.
None of those results would be a surprise.
Then comes Saturday. The Wildcats would have to do their own part by beating ASU, then have Oregon State lose at Wazzu, USC beat Colorado, UCLA lose at Utah and Washington beat Oregon.
Lee, Devonaire Doutrive and Brandon Randolph, left to right, will focus on beating Arizona State at McKale Center to pick up a fourth win in their last five regular-season games.
All that’s a big ask, of course.
But if it happened, Oregon’s two weekend losses would send the Ducks to 8-10 and to the No. 10 seed, out of the tiebreaker, and six teams would finish at 9-9: Oregon State, UCLA, Colorado, USC, Stanford and Arizona.
Within that group, Arizona would be 5-4. OSU, Stanford and Colorado would be 4-4, and UCLA and USC would be 4-5. The Wildcats would win the tiebreaker by percentage points.
So it could happen. Mathematically speaking, at least.
“I don’t like our odds,” UA coach Sean Miller said.
Instead, Miller views it this way: Just play well to end the regular season and try to enter the Pac-12 Tournament on a roll.
A win over ASU would give the Wildcats four wins in their past five games and allow them to put Saturday’s blowout loss at Oregon behind them. A win over ASU and a win or two next week might also put the Wildcats in the NIT, but that isn’t typically the sort of thing that motivates power conference teams.
“We have an opportunity to play our final home game of the season, that’s always meaningful, and I think there’s a big difference between being 8-10 in our conference season and 9-9,” Miller said. “We know we’re (likely) playing on Wednesday; we don’t know who. That’s why it makes no sense to think about that right now.
“For us, it’s being the best we can be, having a really good week, no school, no travel, one game — use that to our advantage.”
And even if the Wildcats do have to play in the first round, all that rest from this week’s spring break and a possible return to full health by center Chase Jeter and guard Brandon Williams from knee issues could give them enough depth to sustain a four-game set.
Maybe.
“We’ve got a chance to make a deep run in the conference tournament, so we’re gonna do that,” Williams said after Oregon beat UA 73-47 last Saturday. “It starts with next Saturday. We’ve got five days to prepare for that. We need to get healthy as a team as well, and I think we’ll be fine.”
