On top of his marketing work at St. Joseph’s University, serving as color analyst for the Hawks’ radio broadcasts and assuming his now-famous role as an ESPN’s resident bracketologist, Joe Lunardi found himself with a little side hobby during the 2020-21 season.
It was watching the Arizona Wildcats make a hypothetical dance in and around the NCAA Tournament bubble during a season in which they self-imposed a postseason ban.
“Have been tracking Arizona all season,” Lunardi said in an email to the Star, when asked about the Wildcats’ would-be chances, adding “waiting for this question!”
As of earlier this week, Lunardi said the Wildcats would have been No. 44 on his seed list — making them a No. 11 seed. That’s pretty close to the bubble. Still, Lunardi said even if upsets stole a few at-large berths this week, the Wildcats would likely be no worse than one of the last four teams in.
Not everyone believed the Wildcats could breathe quite as easy. Kevin Pauga’s KPI rankings had Arizona as a No. 12 seed, earning the fifth-to-last at-large spot, while Luke Benz’s computerized formula spit out UA as a No. 12 with the second-to-last at-large bid in front of only SMU.
CBS bracketologist Jerry Palm probably would have thrown the Wildcats somewhere in that mix, too.
“Honestly haven’t looked at them in that level of detail but I would describe them as a bubble team,” Palm said in an email to the Star. “I can’t do much more than that. They aren’t really in my system.”
Of course, the Wildcats aren’t in any officially human-monitored system, especially the one run by the NCAA selection committee. The UA administration announced on Dec. 29 it would self-impose a postseason ban; the Wildcats didn’t play in the Pac-12 Tournament and are ineligible for the NCAAs. As a result, they were quickly deleted from most postseason conversations.
“We would not be talking about teams that have self-sanctioned themselves and are taking themselves out of the tournament,” said Kentucky athletic director Mitch Barnhart, this year’s selection committee chair, said when asked if taking Arizona out a month into the season required an adjustment. “We only talk about those teams that have that are eligible for the tournament and have played the appropriate games and all of those foundational pieces that we have to go for. So we would not have a conversation about Arizona from the beginning.”
Arizona coach Sean Miller may have done just enough to get Arizona in as one of the final at-large teams in the NCAA Tournament had the Wildcats not instituted a self-imposed postseason ban.
The timing of Arizona’s Dec. 29 ban was fascinating. By beating Colorado 88-74 a day earlier in what became a Quadrant 1 opportunity, the Wildcats had just begun to look like an NCAA Tournament team for the first time.
Less than two weeks later, the Wildcats were swept by USC and UCLA at home, drastically hurting their would-be tournament chances, and a string of five losses in seven games from late January through Feb. 18 probably would have put UA outside the bubble.
Then the Wildcats upset USC 81-72 in Los Angeles on Feb. 20 to pick up a second Quad 1 win, swept Washington State and Washington at home and lost a season finale at Oregon that at least helped their strength of schedule. They finished 17-9 and alone in fifth place at 11-9 in the Pac-12.
Had they played in the Pac-12 Tournament as a No. 5 seed this week, UA’s recent history suggests it would have beaten No. 12 Cal in a first round game, then lost to UCLA in the quarterfinals — probably a wash in terms of Selection Sunday resume.
So the Wildcats were probably in. But they’ll never know for sure.
