After raising expectations early, Arizona Wildcats finished where they were initially expected to

LOS ANGELES — While bouncing between courts at a club-ball recruiting event in Mesa late last April, Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd had just seven players lined up for this season, inducing panic among fans who were already livid over a first-round NCAA Tournament loss to Princeton.

“I think we’re in great shape,” Lloyd said then. “People will be really happy.”

Three months later, his roster had added considerable young international talent and domestic experience, most notably transfers Jaden Bradley (Alabama), Keshad Johnson (San Diego State) and Caleb Love (North Carolina).

Then Lloyd mixed them all together during an August exhibition trip to Israel and the United Arab Emirates and, about a month after returning home, the Wildcats were voted the No. 12 team in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll and atop the Pac-12’s official preseason poll.

They wound up finishing pretty much in exactly those places. But the way the Wildcats stormed out to start the regular season — winning at No. 2 Duke in the second game of the regular season, rising to the top spot in the AP poll and crushing a ranked Wisconsin team in early December — ratcheted up expectations

Especially with the Final Four being held in Glendale, it wasn’t hard to envision Arizona winning its first national title in 27 years.

But the Wildcats didn’t even make it to Glendale. They went home after losing 77-72 to Clemson in the Sweet 16, not one but two wins short of the Final Four and four wins short of a national title.

They know, on one level, that’s not good enough.

“Arizona has a higher standard,” center Oumar Ballo said. “If you don’t make it to the Final Four, if you don’t win the ‘chip,’ it’s not a successful year. Some programs will say that (it is) with a Sweet 16 but we have a higher standard.

“This was not a failure by any means. But it was not a success either.”

So what was it?

Maybe the Arizona Wildcats’ season is best described as just another example of modern-day mandatory spring roster rebuilding, with a quick takeoff, a leveling-off period and a March Madness-style descent into what Ballo calls a “great teaching lesson for our coaching staff and players.”

A journey that can be described in five parts:

1. Assembly required

Even without a single returning starter around him at the end of April, Ballo said he wasn’t worried Lloyd would find talent to help him out.

“We trusted Tommy,” Ballo said. “We knew he was gonna put us in the best way to succeed and I had no doubt that he was gonna fill out a roster and get the best guys to work with. We had like four guys on the team but I knew in the next couple of weeks we’re gonna have like 10 guys.”

Sure enough, a little over a month after that April club ball event, Lloyd had added Bradley, Love, and Johnson plus Lithuanians Paulius Murauskas and Motiejus Krivas and Spanish point guard Conrad Martinez.

Lloyd had recruited Bradley out of high school, so had a relationship with him after he left Alabama following his freshman season in 2022-23. Love appeared back in the portal after academic credits became an issue in his intended transfer to Michigan, while Johnson became an especially marketable free agent after graduating from San Diego State with an NCAA title-game appearance last season.

They all brought vastly different skill sets to what was probably Lloyd’s most versatile and deepest roster yet at Arizona.

“I don’t think we’ve got a lot of guys with jagged edges,” Lloyd said in June. “I think we have a team that’s going to have the ability to play incredibly hard. We’re gonna strive to play incredibly unselfish and very aggressive.”

2. Middle East mixer

College teams are allowed to take foreign exhibition tours every four years, but Arizona hadn’t taken one since August 2017, when it cut its Spanish trip short after a terrorist drove a van down Barcelona’s famed Ramblas and killed 13 people.

The timing and location to try again proved ideal. The Wildcats took advantage of the 10 pre-trip practices in July and August to begin meshing together on the court and then took off for Israel and the United Arab Emirates for 10 days in August.

They played only three games, using most of their time to tour places such as Jerusalem’s Old City, Bethlehem, and Abu Dhabi’s out-of-this-world Grand Mosque while riding camels and spending one afternoon bobbing in the Dead Sea. (Actually, that day it was so hot outside and in the water, that the Wildcats trudged out of the Dead Sea after about 30 minutes, then spent the rest of the afternoon lounging in a nearby resort pool).

In between basketball and sightseeing, the Wildcats held meetings in which Lloyd spoke not only about local culture and history but also Arizona basketball history and culture.

Meanwhile, they spent meals together passing around unfamiliar dishes, enjoying a Shabbat dinner at a Jerusalem hotel, visiting a Palestinian Christian family for a home-cooked meal and meandering through the food stalls of Tel Aviv’s Carmel Market, all while learning about each other at the same time.

Thirteen players, from a total of seven different countries, all meshing together.

“It was my first time leaving the United States and with some people I wasn’t familiar with,” Johnson said. “We had a lot of foreign players on this team and I learned a lot from them. And I gained brothers for the rest of my life.”

3. Rocket ride

Maybe because of their head start and team bonding in the late summer, or maybe because Lloyd’s teams have always been strong out of the gate, Arizona blitzed to an 8-0 start through early December. The Wildcats scored more than 90 points in five of those eight wins while displaying the sort of free-flowing, fast-paced, ball-sharing offense that kept everyone happy.

And, because one of those wins happened to be a 78-73 victory at Duke on Nov. 10, the Wildcats took over the top spot in the Associated Press Top 25 poll on Dec. 4. Then they affirmed it with a 98-73 thumping of No. 23 Wisconsin on Dec. 9 at McKale Center.

After that game, the Wildcats acknowledged having learned about all the pain the Badgers had years ago inflicted, including how Wisconsin kept then-coach Sean Miller’s best teams out of the Final Four with back-to-back Elite Eight wins in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

“We play for the city and the school every night but this one was for sure special because of the history,” wing Pelle Larsson said after the game. “Having teammates and friends from Tucson explaining what happened maybe gave us a little extra juice.”

4. Last Pac-12 go-round

Lloyd backloaded the Wildcats’ nonconference schedule with the intent of preparing them for the Pac-12 and NCAA Tournament challenges ahead, and they predictably struggled at times.

UA lost 92-84 to Purdue on Dec. 16 before a raucous semi-away crowd in Indianapolis — though the Wildcats had plenty of Midwestern-based fans also in attendance — then lost 96-95 in double-overtime to FAU in Las Vegas a week later.

Neither of those results were a huge surprise — the Owls returned all their starters from a Final Four team last season — but the Wildcats then lost three of their first eight Pac-12 games in a troubling manner.

They shot just 34.7% in a 73-70 loss at Washington State on Jan. 13, with Love missing a potential game-tying 3-pointer with six seconds left. That loss later looked excusable when the Cougars wound up the Pac-12’s second-place finisher, but Arizona’s 100-82 blowout loss at Stanford on Dec. 31 and their 83-80 loss at last-place Oregon State on Jan. 25 were not.

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They were the sort of losses that suggested Arizona might still win the league but wasn’t likely to make a four-game NCAA Tournament run to the Final Four.

Against Stanford, the Wildcats shot only 26.9% from 3-point range while allowing the Cardinal to shoot 58.1% overall and make 16 of 25 3-pointers, with big wing Spencer Jones making 5 of 6, center Maxime Raynaud stretching out to hit 2 of 3 while freshman guard Kanaan Carlyle broke out by hitting 6 of 8.

After that game, Lloyd said the Cardinal “kicked our ass” in every way but was particularly appalled to see the perimeter defense slip. UA had entered the game with the nation’s second-most efficient defense, according to Kenpom.

“That’s an absolute lie,” Lloyd said. “I mean, our guards have been getting their asses kicked in these games defensively. They need to figure it out. And our staff needs to help them.”

Pretty much the same thing happened less than four weeks later when the Wildcats lost a closer game to a lesser team: Oregon State shot 56.3% overall and hit 12 of 20 3-pointers, with stretch-bigs Tyler Bilodeau (3 of 4) and Michael Rataj (2 of 3) stepping back to hit 3s — and guard Jordan Pope sinking 5 of 8 from beyond the arc, including a buzzer-beating game-winner.

“Our bigs are literally acting like they’ve never seen another big make a 3,” Lloyd said after that game. “We’ve probably got to scout it better, and we got to respect people a little bit more. But that’s on the coaching staff and on our bigs. We’ve gotta be better there. It’s a recurring theme against us.”

Oregon State won only three more games the rest of the season.

But Arizona also had plenty of success while picking up its final Pac-12 regular-season conference title with a 15-5 record, finishing one game ahead of WSU.

The Wildcats embarrassed a well-regarded Colorado team 97-50 in early January at home, ended a six-game losing streak at Oregon when Love tied the Matthew Knight Arena scoring record with 36 points, swept the Mountain trip with a triple-overtime win at Utah and a 20-point blowout at Colorado, while putting on plenty of big Saturday shows at McKale.

Among them was a 77-71 win over UCLA they pulled out despite being dragged into the Bruins’ slower style and facing a 19-point deficit, a 105-60 win over ASU that avenged the Wildcats’ home loss to the Sun Devils last season and a perfectly scripted 103-83 win over Oregon in their regular-season home finale.

In that Senior Day game, three Wildcat seniors — Larsson, Johnson and Love — scored more than 20 points, while Ballo posted his ninth straight double-double with 11 points and 12 rebounds and walk-on senior Grant Weitman had two steals while starting in place of sophomore Kylan Boswell.

Then the Wildcats hit the road and wrapped up the Pac-12 title at Pauley Pavilion, of all places, learning toward the end of their 88-65 win over UCLA that WSU had lost to Washington earlier that night, meaning they clinched the title.

A locker room water celebration quickly followed.

“It was ecstatic,” Johnson said. “Showers, that kind of stuff. It was ecstatic. It was ecstatic. We are Pac-12 Champions.”

5. Descent into madness

In what appeared to be a classic letdown game, the Wildcats lost at USC 78-65 two days after clinching the title, all but eliminating themselves for consideration of a final No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed.

They gained a valuable extra day of rest by losing to Oregon in the semifinals of the Pac-12 Tournament, but the USC and Oregon losses combined both foreshadowed trouble ahead: The Wildcats shot only 38.7% (28.6% from 3) at USC and almost exactly repeated things six days later in Las Vegas against Oregon, shooting 38.3% overall and 28.3% from 3.

Picking up the West Region’s No. 2 seed, Arizona didn’t shoot much better (41.7%) in its NCAA Tournament opener against Long Beach State, but held the considerably less-talented Beach to juist 33.3%. Then the Wildcats broke free for a 78-68 second-round win over Dayton thanks in part to the press-breaking efforts of guard Jaden Bradley off the bench.

But another spirited effort from Bradley five days later in Salt Lake City wasn’t enough to save the Wildcats from a 77-72 upset loss to sixth-seeded Clemson. Not in a game when the Wildcats shot just 37.3% overall and a season-low 17.9% (5 of 28) from 3-point range, with Love missing all nine 3-pointers he took.

“We weren’t surprised,” Clemson guard Chase Hunter said of UA’s 3-point shooting. “We knew they like to get up shots. A few players are volume scorers. When you don’t see it going in, your confidence gets down.”

Arizona fell behind by 13 points early, by eight at halftime and, despite taking a brief one-point lead in the second half, trailed for 37 minutes.

Their season was over at 27-9.

Postscript

While Lloyd spoke at the Crypto.com Arena interview podium after the Clemson game about wanting to analyze what happened, to continue to build competitive teams and to learn from it all, a cascade of criticism was flowing over social media.

It was the third time in Lloyd’s three seasons that he had led the Wildcats to a high NCAA Tournament seed but also the third time in three seasons that they had lost to a lower-seeded team.

They had again failed to reach a Final Four, this time one that would be held in their own state.

They were being judged not on their regular season, not on that win at Duke, not on what was arguably their finest moment against Wisconsin nor on their Pac-12 regular-season title.

Just on those last three games, in the NCAA Tournament, where college basketball seasons are defined more than anything.

In an interview with the Star before the tournament began, Lloyd acknowledged that’s the way it is.

March is really all that matters: Arizona’s 1996-97 team is not known as the fifth-place Pac-10 team it was but as the national champions; conversely, Arizona’s 2023-24 team probably won’t be known as much for winning the (possibly) last Pac-12 title but as another UA team that underachieved in March.

“It is unfair,” Lloyd said in that interview before the tournament began. “But there’s no reason to spend any time, effort or energy thinking about it because it’s not going to help me coach better. It’s not going to help us play better. And the narrative’s always going to be there because it’s an easy, lazy narrative.

“We don’t let others outside our program define what college basketball means to us or what’s important. ... I’m not in this business to prove people wrong or right that are outside our program. Because I’ll never win that.

“The only way you win is you coach a long, long time. You win at a really high level, and then it’s funny how people forget all the struggles you had along the way. But I’m new in this as a head coach. I’m starting my journey.”

Photos: (2) Arizona Wildcats dispatch (15) Long Beach State 85-65, NCAA West Region

Photos: Arizona edges Dayton 78-68, NCAA Men's Tournament 2nd Round, Salt Lake City

Photos: Arizona goes down 77-72 to Clemson, NCAA Tournament West Region Sweet 16