SPOKANE, Wash. — After yet another round of COVID-19 testing early Tuesday morning, the Arizona Wildcats filed into their film room for an 8 a.m. session they will probably never forget.
The meeting wasn’t about their play or the play of an upcoming opponent. It was about the games they wouldn’t get to play, the ones that matter far more than anything in college basketball.
As Arizona coach Sean Miller said Thursday, after the Wildcats beat Washington 80-53 in Seattle, “the two words ‘March Madness’ are very important. So when that’s not a possibility, it’s certainly disheartening.”
Now it’s not a possibility.
Arizona opted to self-impose a postseason ban this season over its pending NCAA infractions case, and Miller had to tell his players about it.
Having recruited the majority of his current roster while his program was under FBI and NCAA investigation between September 2017 and October 2020, Miller said he was confident his players would handle the message well.
Already, he has expressed multiple times how much he likes the attitude and cohesion of his current Wildcats, how much they like to be coached, and how much they like to work together.
But he never had to tell them something like this.
“Until you go through it, you never really know,” Miller said. “It’s not something that I recommend or wish that any coach has to do. It’s not an easy day. But like a lot of things here, we’re doing what we’re supposed to do, we’re doing the best that we can. And we’re attempting to move forward.”
Arizona coach Sean Miller said the Wildcats “have a choice of how they respond” after the school announced it won’t play in the postseason.
Miller told them the school had decided that it would sit out this postseason, meaning their season will end no matter what on March 6, in a home game against Arizona State.
Maybe that’ll be enough to settle the school’s infractions case, or maybe not. It won’t likely be known for many more months whether Arizona’s self-imposed penalty will be accepted or added to by the NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Process.
The school’s goal may be to effectively trade sitting out this postseason for being allowed to take a potentially better team to the 2021-22 tournament. But if the 8-1 Wildcats go on to prove worthy of an NCAA Tournament berth, the short-term loss will sting.
“It was very difficult,” UA associate head coach Jack Murphy said of Miller’s speech. “I know it weighed on Coach heavily. Not just the staff and players but all of us have worked long hours to make this work.”
But, Murphy and Miller have both said, the Wildcats still have a goal of a Pac-12 regular-season championship remaining. Miller noted that individual careers can still improve this season, maybe even with all-conference awards or other recognition thrown in along the way.
Besides, for many elite prospects today, the NCAA Tournament is a bonus — but not necessarily the goal. That’s getting into the NBA.
Arizona had the perfect guy on their staff to explain what really might matter most.
Assistant coach Jason Terry went on an unexpected ride to a national championship as a sophomore guard for the Wildcats in 1997, lost in an Elite Eight shocker to Utah a year later — and was knocked out of the first round of the 1999 tournament as a senior.
Then Terry went home, became an NBA lottery pick and wound up making $108 million in the league.
“JT told the guys that during his senior year there was no Pac-10 Tournament, and they lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament,” Murphy said. “He played his entire senior year and it wasn’t defined by one game. Damon Stoudamire went through the same thing — they lost in the first round of his senior year.
“Your senior year, your junior year, your sophomore year, your freshman year, you define it every year, (this season) over the course of 20 Pac-12 games and seven nonconference games. That’s really where you can leave your mark.”
So that was the message: This is lousy, terrible, frustrating … but there’s still a lot left to play for.
Did the Wildcats buy it? It’s not entirely clear. Only one of them has been made available for comment since UA announced its decision Tuesday.
In a postgame appearance Thursday evening in Seattle, sophomore forward Jordan Brown largely echoed Miller.
“It hurt,” Brown said. “We were just competing to hopefully get to that point but it’s not going to stop us. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. If anything, this gives us more of a job to do.”
Arizona’s Jordan Brown (21) shoots a free throw as Washington’s Quade Green watches during the second half of an NCAA college basketball game Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
But if a few words from a postgame Zoom conference may not completely speak for the Wildcats, there is some body language to consider.
During their romp over Washington in Seattle on Thursday, the Wildcats led from start to finish and never — except for the limitations of some early second-half shooting woes — let up.
They did not look unmotivated. Not for a minute, really.
Afterward, they boarded a plane bound for Spokane before New Year’s hit. On Friday, they practiced in Spokane and on Saturday are scheduled to make the bus ride through the typically cold, foggy and rainy Palouse to face Washington State.
It all felt normal, Miller said. The practices, the travel and Thursday’s game.
Maybe Saturday’s game will, too. And the 16 that will remain afterward.
If so, it may become clear how the Wildcats really feel about their school’s decision.
Maybe they’ll be fine.
“If there’s ever a test of a young person’s character, it’s when they get hit with some tough news,” Miller said. “Now they have a choice of how they respond. I think you saw that with (Thursday’s) performance. I saw it immediately in practice.
“We’ve got a good group of leadership. We have a great group of kids, supported by some families who really trust us as coaches. Now it’s up to us now to really put together the most exciting and best nine weeks that we can.”
