Arizona the king of Pac-12 tourney jackpots, but winning big in Vegas no guarantee for NCAA bracket riches

Especially since the Pac-12 Tournament moved to Las Vegas in 2013, the Arizona Wildcats have owned it.

Not just on the court, where the Wildcats have won half of the fully contested conference tournaments held in Las Vegas and overall have won more Pac-10/12 Tournament games than any other team in history (though UA has vacated 11 total wins along with the 2017 and 2018 titles).

But also all around the court, and off it. Every season, Arizona red-and-navy colored gear and frequent “U of A” chants” flow through the stands, and up and down the rows of bars, restaurants and entertainment spots between T-Mobile Arena and The Strip.

“McKale North,” it’s called informally. Good fun, for the Wildcats and their fans, for sure.

But whether the Pac-12 Tournament has actually helped the Wildcats in the NCAA Tournament over the years is another question.

Maybe not.

After their six neutral-site Pac-12 Tournament championships, the Wildcats have only once carried momentum into an NCAA Tournament run that surpassed expectations: In 2002, when a young group overcame what was then an unusually high number of early NBA departures to win the Pac-12 Tournament and reach the Sweet 16.

The Pac-12 Tournament has also left the Wildcats with a sometimes harmful degree of wear and tear, especially in the past two events.

In 2022, guard Kerr Kriisa suffered a severely sprained ankle, missed the Wildcats’ closer-than-expected first-round NCAA Tournament game, and was limited in a second-round overtime scare against TCU and their Sweet 16 loss to Houston.

In last season’s Pac-12 event, Kriisa suffered a separated shoulder while center Oumar Ballo broke his hand — and both were limited when the Wildcats were bounced by 15th-seeded Princeton in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

“Anytime you play, there’s an opportunity for something unfortunate to happen,” Lloyd said. “But conference tournaments are a big tradition. They’ve been great to promote a conference and there’s been a lot of financial benefit to the conferences.”

Lloyd says he didn’t blame the injuries to Kriisa and Ballo for the Princeton loss — “that would be being bitter about something I can’t control,” he said — but he isn’t wild about the timing.

Winning the Pac-12 Tournament last season meant the Wildcats didn’t get home until the early morning hours, starting their week off with a grind before what was a game on Thursday against Princeton.

“The last couple years have been a great celebration of Arizona basketball, and I think that’s meaningful for our fans,” Lloyd said. “There is that other side to it. I don’t think people realize that when you play a game and you win the championship, there’s a celebration on the court, there’s media, then the guys shower, and hang out with their families a little bit. Then we jump on the plane, and you’re not back until two or three in the morning.

“The next thing you know, you’ve got to wake up and Selection Sunday is about to happen and you’re trying to get your team rested and recovered. You’re hoping you get in a Friday pod (for a first-round NCAA Tournament game) and you end up in a Thursday pod… So it’s definitely a complicated time for basketball coaches.”

If the Wildcats win the Pac-12 this season, the timing should be a little easier. This season’s championship game has an earlier start time of 6 p.m., and daylight saving time has already kicked in, so there’s not an extra hour difference on the clock between Las Vegas and Tucson.

But regardless, once Selection Sunday hits, fans start filling out brackets, excitement builds ... and expectations rise.

They often aren’t met. Arizona’s Pac-12 Tournament title in 2015, for example, led to the same Elite Eight exit against Wisconsin that the Wildcats had the year before.

And sometimes Arizona teams with low expectations after the Pac-10 or 12 Tournament actually do better in the weeks to come. That was especially the case in 2009, when the fifth-seeded Wildcats lost 68-56 to fourth-seeded ASU in their first game but then, after sweating it out to Selection Sunday and getting possibly the last NCAA at-large bid, made an improbable Sweet 16 appearance.

So maybe Lute Olson was right, after all.

The former UA coach joined a top Pac-10 counterpart, Stanford’s Mike Montgomery, for years in opposing the conference tournament, which was held at campus sites from 1987-90 but then discontinued until it was revived at Los Angeles’ Staples Center in 2002.

When it was brought back, Olson bristled.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

“It’s just asinine that we beat up on each other for 18 games and then turn around and exhaust whatever teams go to the finals,” he said before the 2002 event. “It’s not going to do anybody any good.”

Ironically, that was the one year the event arguably did help the Wildcats. Jason Gardner, the UA program’s current player relations director was a junior standout on that 2002 team; he chuckles now about Olson’s distaste for the event.

“He was not a big fan of it,” Gardner said. The 2002 event “was the beginning of the tournament, so maybe we were excited about it. But I think it’s kind of hard to say. I think it all depends on where you sit at for (your projection in the NCAA) tournament and your philosophy about the end of the season.”

Gardner and Reggie Geary, another Wildcat great who is now a senior development director for the UA, have unique perspectives. While Gardner played his first two seasons at UA without a Pac-10 Tournament, then two others with one, Geary played for the Wildcats in the mid-1990s when there wasn’t a conference tournament.

As a sophomore in 2001, Gardner wound up reaching the Final Four without having to play in the Pac-10 Tournament — but didn’t make it to the 2003 Final Four after playing in a Pac-10 Tournament on a team that was ranked No. 1 most of the season.

Geary, meanwhile, can only consider the what-ifs after playing in a Final Four in 1994 — but also in a first-round upset loss in 1993 to Santa Clara.

“It’s a little case-by-case, depending on the year,” Geary said. In 1992-93, “we were (14-0 in the Pac-12 before losing to Cal) — and then we ended up losing to Santa Clara.

“So maybe if we had a Pac-10 Tournament that year, it would have been beneficial. We would have gotten that good feeling back. And in ’94, we go to the Final Four, and maybe not playing in it saved our legs a little bit. We didn’t have to get beat up for three days in a row.”

They are mental exercises Lloyd can go through, too — especially after spending 20 years as a Gonzaga assistant in a conference, the West Coast Conference, that ends its tournament well before Selection Sunday (this year, Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s played for the WCC title Tuesday night just off the Las Vegas strip).

But for Lloyd, there’s little point in doing so.

The Pac-12 Tournament is here. Next season, the Big 12 Tournament will be here.

Conference tournaments aren’t going anywhere.

So the Wildcats can’t, either.

“As a coach, I’ve never honestly put too much thought into it, because I don’t want to have a negative feeling going into something that we’re required to do,” he said. “And if we’re going to play a game against another team, we’re going to try to win.

“That’s meaningful, and winning these Pac 12 Tournaments the past couple years has been meaningful for our program. It’s important for us to build it the way we want to build it.”