PHOENIX – After running through the Big 12 Tournament as impressively as they navigated the conference regular season, the Arizona Wildcats got their just reward on Selection Sunday: the West Region’s No. 1 seed in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
The Wildcats will face off against 16-seed Long Island on Friday in San Diego.
The selection committee made the Wildcats the second overall seed, behind only Duke, which won the ACC Tournament. Expectations are high for a team that rolled through the nation’s second-hardest schedule with a 32-2 record, but coach Tommy Lloyd said it’s business as usual as the program chases its first Final Four since 2001, and its first national championship since 1997.
“Everything’s the same,” Lloyd said in a news conference after the selection show. “We’re not doing anything different this week. We’re not going to practice any different this week.”
Arizona will start its NCAA Tournament in a familiar place. In his first season and tournament appearance as Arizona’s head coach in 2021-22, Lloyd led the Wildcats to a 2-0 start in San Diego, knocking off No. 16 seed Wright State and winning in overtime against No. 9 seed TCU before an upset loss in the Sweet 16 to No. 5 seed Houston.
Arizona’s accolades this season speak for themselves: Big 12 regular season and tournament champions, Jaden Bradley’s Big 12 Player of the Year award, Tommy Lloyd’s Big 12 Coach of the Year award, Tobe Awaka’s Big 12 Sixth Man Award and multiple first-team All-Big 12 players. But, as the college basketball calendar switches into NCAA Tournament mode, all of the awards are moot.
No matter how well the Wildcats play in the regular season, they seem to struggle in postseason play. They haven’t advanced past the Sweet 16 since 2015, losing to multiple teams seeded multiple seed lines below them and squandering many No. 1 and 2 seed seasons.
Arizona’s path to end all doubt and reach its first Final Four in a quarter century begins on Friday against Long Island. As winners of the Northeast Conference, this is the Sharks’ eighth NCAA Tournament appearance and their first since 2018.
Coach Rod Strickland, who had storied NBA and college careers, has revamped LIU since he took over in 2022. After going 3-26 in his first season at the helm, Strickland has improved each season, this time getting over the hump and winning the NEC’s regular season and tournament titles.
“They’ve got a good coach, and he was a heck of a basketball player,” Lloyd said. “I’m going to be honest, I don’t know a lot about Long Island at this point, but over the course of the week, I’ll definitely learn a lot more.”
LIU, which boasts a 24-10 (15-3 NEC) record, is a guard-heavy team led by seniors Jamal Fuller and Malachi Davis. Fuller, now in his second year with the program, has taken jumps across the board this season. He’s averaging 16.4 points and 5.5 rebounds per game. He lives behind the arc, shooting a staggering 43.8% from deep.
Davis, who played for Arizona State two seasons ago, has carved out a much larger role with the Sharks, scoring 14.4 points per game. Senior guard Greg Gordon, UAB transfer and LIU’s third leading scorer, is another force to deal with, as he won NEC Defensive Player of the Year and NEC Tournament MVP.
The Sharks pride themselves on their defense, only allowing 71.1 points per game and forcing 12.9 turnovers per game.
However, an overreliance on guards could prove detrimental against Arizona’s strong frontcourt. Freshman forward Koa Peat and junior center Motiejus Krivas have been a force in the Big 12. Matching up against LIU, which only has one rotation player over 6-foot-8, could prove to be the decider.
The rest of the West Region of the bracket is filled with tough outs for the Wildcats. No. 2 seed Purdue and No. 4 seed Arkansas are coming off conference championship runs, No. 5 seed Wisconsin pushed Michigan to the limit in the Big Ten semifinals and No. 3 seed Gonzaga can always pose a threat.
Purdue carries last year’s Big Ten Player of the Year in Braden Smith, who is just two assists from breaking Bobby Hurley’s all-time NCAA assist record (1,076), while Arkansas boasts maybe the hottest player in the country in SEC Player of the Year Darius Acuff Jr.
Freshman forward Ivan Kharchenkov, who played overseas for Bayern Munich, is still getting used to the tournament format.
“The bracket is a little bit overwhelming,” Kharchenkov said. “I just look at the game that we’re going to play next.”
Taking each game one game at a time is a sentiment that Lloyd has instilled in the team, and if they want to push the boundary of early tournament exits, it’s a sentiment they’ll have to continue to follow.
“We’re going to figure out who’s in our crosshairs,” Lloyd said after the Big 12 Championship. “(We’ll) try to advance as far as we can in that tournament one game at a time.”
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
