After winning the Big 12 Tournament in its first season in the league, and being presented with a WWE-style belt as tourney MVP, Arizona’s Mason White told an ESPN+ reporter at Globe Life Field it was “kind of a repeat of last year” when the Wildcats took down the final Pac-12 tourney title (and he won MVP).
Arizona is hoping that’s where the postseason similarities end.
Back in the NCAA Tournament for the 5th consecutive year, which the program last accomplished in the 1950s and 60s, Arizona isn’t satisfied with just being in it. And the Wildcats (39-18) certainly don’t want to repeat how the 2024 tourney went, when as a regional host they lost both games and were the first team eliminated.
“After last year with the Pac-12 championships, guys were sky high, and we just obviously didn’t continue that into the regional here in Tucson,” UA coach Chip Hale said Monday. “I felt like the mood at Globe Life was a little different. I felt like, especially the veteran guys were like, okay, this is great. We’re super happy. It was a great game, exciting game, but we have more things to prove.”
The UA begins its NCAA Tournament quest Friday at 1 p.m. PT against Cal Poly in the Eugene Regional, hosted by No. 12 seed and former Pac-12 foe Oregon. The Ducks will face Utah Valley in the second game of the double elimination regional at PK Park.
Arizona is riding a 5-game win streak, the same number of consecutive games it has lost in the NCAA tourney. It also went 0-2 at the Fayetteville Regional in 2023 after losing to eventual College World Series champion Ole Miss in the 2022 Coral Gables Regional final.
After Saturday’s 2-1, 10-inning win over TCU in the Big 12 final, Hale said he felt the Wildcats were playing their best baseball. That’s definitely been the case with the pitching, which has allowed one run in four straight games—a feat not accomplished since 1974—as the starters have been lights out.
“In Houston, I think Kevin Vance and John DeRouin kind of went back to the drawing board and looked at a lot of video, looked at a lot of analytics and numbers and pitch calling and mechanics, whatever it was with the pitchers, and did a deep dive,” Hale said. “And next day, we started to pitch better, and it just sort of has snowballed.”
Arizona will be headed to a venue it is very familiar with, though the results haven’t been great. The UA lost two of three at PK Park last season, dropping a pair of 1-run games before taking the finale in a blowout, and in 2022 the Wildcats were swept in Eugene to end the regular season.
They got their revenge for the sweep by beating the Ducks in the first game of the inaugural Pac-12 tourney, but a year later Oregon beat Arizona 5-4 in the conference title game.
“In my career, I feel like I’ve been there 10 times,” senior Garen Caulfield said. “We’re really familiar with it. It’s turf. The weather is going to be great … and it’s just a fun place to play. It’s going to be an electric environment, we’re going to have to be ready for it.”
Oregon is one of three former Pac-12 schools that earned host bids this year, along with No. 8 Oregon State and No. 15 UCLA, and each regional will have an ex-P12 member as ASU is headed to Los Angeles and USC to Corvallis.
“I thought we would get an all-Pac-12 regional,” Hale said. “We could have probably done it if Stanford or Cal would have made it. We could have done four teams.”
The Big 12 got eight of 14 schools into the field but none are hosting, the first time since the NCAA field was expanded to 64 in 1999 that’s happened. The most likely options, Arizona and TCU, are both headed west with the Horned Frogs going to Oregon State.
“I think everybody’s pretty disappointed,” Hale said. “As a coaching fraternity in the league, I think that was the feeling like, come on, one of these teams needs to get a host. So I think all of us feel like we need to play with a little more edge.”
This is the fourth regional for Caulfield and fellow seniors Eric Orloff and Tommy Splaine, all of whom appeared in games in Coral Gables as freshmen. They’re not the only ones on the team with regional experience, but Splaine is ready to serve as a mentor to teammates who haven’t played in the postseason.
“Honestly, just be ready for anything,” he said. “Whether it’s weather, or anything hotel wise, you’re just gonna be throwing a lot of different things. And I think that’s been a big thing with us this year. We’ve been traveling a lot, a bunch of different locations, so we’ve been able to experience that, which has been helpful.”