Pac-12 Media Day: With most conference titles already, voters tap Arizona with one for road

LAS VEGAS – One part of Pac-12 history has already been written, and you probably know it well: Since Arizona joined the conference 45 years ago, nobody has won more men’s basketball titles than the Wildcats.

It’s not even close. Twelve outright or regular-season basketball titles over 33 seasons in the Pac-10 years and another five during the Pac-12 era, the last in 2021-22.

So… one more? That’s what media who regularly cover the league predict, putting the Wildcats atop the Pac-12’s preseason media poll for what is the final season of the conference’s current (and possibly last ever) construction.

“We are?” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said, speaking first at the Pac-12 media day podium and breakout interviews, apparently unaware that the Wildcats were picked to win it.

If the poll were taken as late as May 1, there’s no reason to believe they would have been picked to win it, either.

At that point, some six weeks after losing to Princeton in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the Wildcats only had seven guys lined up for their 2023-24 roster.

But Lloyd said Thursday he saw the roots of a strong team ahead, returners such as all-conference center Oumar Ballo, the two players who accompanied him to Wednesday’s media day.

“I felt like we had good pieces,” Lloyd said. “I liked the guys who had coming back. Obviously, I knew we needed to add to it, and I knew some of the younger guys in the program had to take the next step, and the veterans had to take the next step.”

Then Lloyd went out and signed up six guys in the course of a month, filling out the Wildcats’ roster with high-major transfers such as Caleb Love (North Carolina), Jaden Bradley (Alabama) and Keshad Johnson (San Diego State) while dipping back into Lithuania to pick up freshmen. Motiejus Krivas and Paulius Murauskas, then adding Spanish freshman guard Conrad Martinez.

A recruiting whirlwind, sure, but not by the standards of the transfer portal era, and not, Lloyd said, when there’s a plan behind the scenes. He was already deep into recruiting the European players in May while he also had just missed out on Bradley out of high school, tapping into that relationship again to win the sophomore guard quickly the second time around.

Watch: Arizona's Tommy Lloyd, Oumar Ballo, Pelle Larsson on 2023-24 season at Pac-12 Media Day

Watch: Quick-hit clips of what Arizona men's basketball coach Tommy Lloyd and players Oumar Ballo and Pelle Larsson had to say at Pac-12 Media…

“I know offseason recruiting, I guess it’s always crazy if you want to look at it that way,” Lloyd said. “But you have a plan on how you’re doing things. It’s not just knee-jerk reactions. I knew we had great pieces coming back. I knew that we could be selective, and then try to find the right pieces to add to our core coming back, and I feel like we did a good job of that.”

The payoff started playing out over the summer, when the Wildcats came together as a whole and then won three exhibition games during a Middle East exhibition tour, and now during practices leading up to their Nov. 6 regular-season opener.

Wearing thin with a seven-man during the second half of last season, the Wildcats have a roster with a dozen or so guys who could argue for playing time, and the sort of versatility they didn’t have in Lloyd’s first two seasons of coaching the Wildcats.

“It’s definitely the best roster, and I think our practices are more competitive than ever,” Larsson said. “We can make two, sometimes three, really good teams within our team (during practices), and they can compete against each other. It’s really exciting.”

But the Wildcats don’t have so much that they are expected to run away with the conference, either, at least not in comparison to the rest of the Pac-12’s upper echelon. Also receiving first-place votes in the league’s preseason poll were both UCLA, which won last season’s conference race by four games but lost four starters, and USC, which tied for second place with the Wildcats last season.

The Bruins are attempting to offset the losses of mainstays Jaime Jaquez, Tyger Campbell and Jaylen Clark with a talented international frontcourt of Adem Bona, Berke Buyuktuncel and Aday Mara while USC added well-hyped freshmen guards Isaiah Collier and Bronny James to a veteran core led by all-conference guard Boogie Ellis.

Then there are deep, veteran teams at Oregon (picked to finish fourth) and Colorado (fifth). The Buffs not only return preseason first team all-Pac 12 picks KJ Simpson and Tristan da Silva but added five-star wing Cody Williams from Gilbert Perry High School and former TCU big man Eddie Lampkin.

“If we’re the fifth best team in the Pac-12, the Pac-12 is pretty good this year,” Colorado coach Tad Boyle said. “I like our team. I like the combination of the returning players and veterans, and the new young talent is about right.”

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Then there’s enigmatic but always hard-playing ASU (sixth), slowly rising Utah (seventh) and Stanford at eighth, despite a deep and veteran roster that kept all-league forward Spencer Jones out of the NBA Draft pool and transfer portal.

“I definitely think we should be higher, for sure,” Jones said. “But I don’t really worry too much about it. I don’t know, maybe it takes a little pressure off guys, being ranked this low and having these expectations. Maybe it will even build a fire in some of them.”

But Jones said he didn’t worry too much about it, and the same went even for Lloyd, though he was looking at the poll from a different perspective.

“It’s a sign of respect,” he said. “But I know this they don’t give awards out for preseason speculation or midseason. Now we’re gonna have to go put in the work. We’re in the midst of figuring out who we are just like everyone else.”

But while they do so the Wildcats also have a goal to shoot for, a goal they may never be able to shoot for again: Winning Pac-12 title No. 18.

All that history is one reason why Lloyd, when asked whether he looked forward to the stiff competition ahead in the Big 12 or felt it was sad to see the Pac-12 break up, answered yes to both.

“This year is going to be about doing the best job we can for the Pac-12, and honoring being a member of the Pac-12,” Lloyd said. “I know Arizona has done a lot for the Pac-12, and I know the Pac-12 has done a lot for Arizona. So we want to go out and have an amazing experience.

“I’m sure there’s going to be a bunch of moments to be sentimental about throughout the course of the season, so I just want to enjoy this experience and really value it.”