Top-seeded Wildcats relish chance to finally step on March Madness stage

SAN DIEGO — Because they’ve won 31 games in so many different ways, blasting through the Pac-12 to become the second overall seed of the NCAA Tournament, there might be only one weakness left to point to with Arizona Wildcats.

And it’s not even their fault.

The Wildcats glaringly lack NCAA Tournament experience in large part because UA opted to self-sanction out of the 2021 postseason, sidelining what was then a promising core of freshmen around sophomore center Christian Koloko, who also missed a would-be appearance in a 2020 NCAA Tournament that was canceled because of COVID concerns.

A year ago, the Wildcats were arguably good enough to get in the NCAA Tournament, at 17-9 in the COVID-19-shortened 2020-21 season, managing to finish fifth in a tough Pac-12 race despite knowing they had nowhere to do.

They had been told in December 2020 that the school would self-sanction, then marched through the Pac-12 season without a goal in front of them, playing their final game on March 1 at Oregon.

Then they sat around as the Pac-12 Tournament and NCAA Tournaments played out. Five Pac-12 teams reached the NCAA Tournament, with three reaching the Elite Eight and UCLA going all the way to the Final Four.

What’s more: One of those Elite Eight teams was Oregon State, a team the Wildcats crushed 98-64 at Corvallis in midseason.

They had credentials but the gate was locked. All the Wildcats could do to keep active was head inside McKale Center or the Richard Jefferson Gym, while they eventually began offseason workouts with then-coach Sean Miller, who would be fired the next month.

“It was hard,” UA sophomore guard Kerr Kriisa said. “You don’t feel good when you’re just sitting on a couch with your teammates, and just watching how USC plays and advances, and then Colorado advances, and then all of a sudden, Oregon State advances. The next thing you know, all of them advance. You always want to be part of it.”

But now, they are. And in nearly the best position possible: At the nearest NCAA Tournament first-weekend site available, San Diego, and against a Wright State team that had to fight off Bryant in a First Four game on Wednesday night and then fly immediately into the wee hours of the morning.

Next up, if Arizona wins Friday, is the winner of an 8-9 seed game between TCU and Seton Hall, then, possibly a trip to San Antonio for South Regional games.

That’s the kind of path you get when you go 31-3, winning power-conference regular season and conference tournament titles.

The Wildcats are better, much better, that freshman core having turned into four starters while Koloko morphed into the Pac-12’s Defensive Player of the Year.

Led by an easygoing new coach in Tommy Lloyd, who meshed them on and off the court into a more uptempo system, the Wildcats played with a spirit and toughness that drew packed crowds to McKale Center toward the end of the regular season.

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“We’ve had a special season so far,” Kriisa said. “So I’m really happy to we can go here and especially with these guys that are around us.”

Sitting at the pre-game interview podium Thursday in a tent outside Viejas Arena, Dalen Terry said he and another member of what is now Arizona’s sophomore core, Bennedict Mathurin, said the Wildcats had been just talking about the difference from March 2021 to March 2022.

“Last year we weren’t even in Tucson anymore while the tournament was being played,” Terry said. “It’s a blessing. I feel like that was a blessing for us to not even be here last year, for us to have a year like this now. It makes us that much more hungrier that we’re here now. And we just thank God and everybody that was here last year who stayed with us now.”

Likewise, Mathurin said he hoped the rough experience translates to more incentive this time.

“It was pretty hard watching it,” Mathurin said. “But we knew what we had to do in order for us to get into the March Madness. It was all about motivation.”

An edginess, wherever it comes from, is exactly what Lloyd appears to be seeking.

All season the Wildcats have played with the edge of being unranked entering the regular season, and picked to finish fourth in the Pac-12.

Those predictions were wrong. But that point was proven again last weekend, when Arizona beat UCLA to add a Pac-12 Tournament title to its regular season title.

Nobody is doubting them anymore.

Except, maybe, the past.

Asked Thursday if the topic of his returning players’ experience last spring ever comes up, UA coach Tommy Lloyd didn’t dip into the past. But he did make it clear that he wants them to look forward, and enjoy the moment that is now, finally, in front of them.

They haven’t been here before but, like everything else so far that season, maybe it becomes even more special as a result.

“Steve Kerr and I were having a conversation a while back and he was telling me how cool it is to go through it the first time,” Lloyd said. “For him when they made that run to the NBA Finals the first year (2014-15 as the Warriors’ head coach), he just told me, there’s a beautiful innocence about it because you haven’t been institutionalized yet.”

“So maybe that goes for me and the team, where we’ve got kind of an ignorance-is-bliss type of approach and we’ll go out and be in attack mode. Because that’s the way we’ve played all year.”