TUCSON – It’s been seven months since red and blue confetti rained down on coach Tommy Lloyd and his Arizona Wildcats. 

The large contingent of Wildcats fans who made the trip to San Jose, California, for Arizona’s 79-64 Elite Eight win over Purdue saw their team proudly hoist its West Regional championship trophy. It indicated the end of a 25-year drought, as the school advanced to its first Final Four since 2001.

Much has changed for Arizona since then. After college basketball’s long-lasting offseason, the moment has morphed into a distant memory for Lloyd. 

“Really long and slow, but it was awesome,” Lloyd said, describing the offseason to reporters after the Wildcats’ 85-54 exhibition win over Eastern Washington. “That seems so long ago that it’s hard for me to even think about it.”

The Wildcats will begin their 2026-27 campaign under the bright lights of Las Vegas, taking on old Pac-12 rival UCLA at T-Mobile Arena on Nov. 2 at 8 p.m. MST. 

After the program’s Final Four run a season ago, Arizona will bear the weight of trying to live up to the achievements of last year’s team. 

And expectations are high.

Big 12 coaches picked Arizona to repeat as league champions in the conference’s preseason poll. Additionally, the Associated Press labeled the Wildcats as the No. 5 team in its AP men’s college basketball preseason poll. 

Even though Lloyd referred to preseason rankings as “fool’s gold,” it doesn’t mean that he wants his team to shy away from the lofty expectations.

“The first thing with expectations is they’re a privilege,” Lloyd said at Big 12 Media Days. “I don’t think you should look at it any other way. I don’t think you need to guard against it.”

Still, the message has remained the same: It’s time to turn the page.

“The sooner you can dissociate from what happened last year and understand this year is its own journey and kind of build from square one, I think, is the important thing,” Lloyd said. “There’s no skipping steps: having a successful season, building a team. You just have to kind of get back to square one and be OK with that.”

The Wildcats won’t be starting completely from scratch. While much of last year’s core departed for the NBA Draft, Arizona retained a few returning starters to bolster a new-look squad. 

Senior center Motiejus Krivas, the preseason Big 12 Player of the Year, headlines the Wildcats’ frontcourt. The 7-foot-2 Lithuanian big man averaged 10.4 points and 8.2 rebounds per game, while anchoring the Arizona defense a season ago. 

Meanwhile, preseason all-conference forward Ivan Kharchenkov slides in on the wing, coming off a season in which he also averaged 10.4 points per game and proved to be a pest on the defensive end. 

The pair of veterans should help bring stability to a team that’s undergone a roster overhaul in the past few months. 

“It’s not easy to rebuild almost a whole new team,” Krivas said. “I feel like with the good job this summer, it’s still an ongoing job.”

Lloyd has collected an impressive trove of talent throughout his tenure in Tucson. But few carried the same pedigree out of high school as the gem of his 2026 recruiting class: freshman guard Caleb Holt. 247Sports tabbed Holt, a Prolific Prep grad, as its No. 2 overall recruit in its composite rankings. 

Krivas, Kharchenkov and Holt form a talented Arizona “Big Three” that poses a threat to defenses at all three levels. Nonetheless, it’s always been a team game to Lloyd. 

“I’m not into ‘Big Three,’” Lloyd said. “I’m into ‘Big Seven or Eight.’”

Last year, Arizona relied on a collective effort to pound the ball into the paint. The Wildcats’ overwhelming and extensive array of height and length allowed them to dominate opponents on the interior. 

The Wildcats don’t boast a talent down low this season like forward Koa Peat, the Phoenix Suns rookie who was selected in the first-round pick in the NBA Draft – especially if fifth-year forward RJ Godfrey remains sidelined. 

His fate lies in the hands of the court system. Godfrey, a 2022 high school graduate, spent three years at Clemson and one season at Georgia. He averaged 12 points per game on just over 61% shooting a year ago. 

While the NCAA is in the midst of instituting a new five-year eligibility model, athletes who graduated in 2026 were deemed ineligible to receive a fifth year. Some athletes, including Godfrey, have attempted to appeal to the courts in hopes of receiving a preliminary injunction to play a fifth year.

“You wish cooler heads to prevail and give these kids the opportunity that they deserve because these kids did nothing wrong,” Lloyd said of Godfrey. “They’re missing out on a life-changing opportunity.

“Getting him back would be a definite boost to our program and to our roster. I would feel pretty good, long-term, if we get him back.”

Godfrey’s absence could lead Arizona to spread the floor and shoot the 3-ball more frequently. It was an Achilles’ heel for the Wildcats last season, with their 5.9 made 3-pointers per game, ranking 334th in Division I.

“I think we have a whole bunch of guys from one through five that can shoot the ball,” Holt said. “It’s a lot for teams to guard us inside and out. I feel like the 3-point (game) makes us even more of a weapon, more than our inside presence.” 

While Arizona’s playstyle might change, the standard and culture remain intact. It’s an area where Lloyd won’t budge, whether in practice or on game day. 

“It’s not just something we talk about. It’s something you have to do,” Lloyd said. “Building a culture is a living organism. It’s not words on paper. We’re very intentional with building our culture, valuing it and understanding what it means to us. It’s a huge part of what we do on a daily basis.”

It’s within this culture that Arizona has found consistency. The Wildcats have made the NCAA Tournament in every season since Lloyd arrived in Tucson in 2021, advancing to the Sweet 16 or further in all but one year. 

For Lloyd, who has always taken a big-picture approach to the season, the secret sauce for making another deep run in the Big Dance isn’t complex: Stack good days and learn from adversity. 

“It could happen again,” Lloyd said of his team’s chance to make another deep postseason run. “But you have to do the work. The work’s going to be painful. There’s going to be some tough moments. There are growing pains.

“Tough moments and adversity create opportunity and learning. We have to take advantage of every one of those.”

This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.