For decades, Arizona men’s basketball has dealt with criticism that the program is untested for March Madness by virtue of the Wildcats’ conference alignment and geographic placement.
Media members and opposing fan bases are quick to say west coast teams don’t have what it takes to go deep in the NCAA Tournament. They point out that no team from the west has won the tournament since Arizona’s 1997 title, and that barring a few exceptions, west coast programs can’t get over the hump of reaching the Final Four.
Some even go so far as to say Arizona is too soft to go head-to-head against more physically-minded opponents.
“We’ve never been soft. People that want to use that perception, they’re just being lazy,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said Sunday. “We’re here for the fight. We’re here for the battles.”
Until this year, most criticism lofted at Arizona was tied up with the program’s status as the linchpin of a conference that was in a steady demise since the early 2000s.
The Pac-12 regularly rated near the bottom of power conferences, and a prevailing sentiment around the sport was that the conference hurt programs like Arizona, UCLA and Oregon by giving those powers few opportunities to be tested in league play. By the time the NCAA Tournament came around, those programs had gone months without facing consistent, tough competition.
Arizona’s transition to the Big 12 Conference meant the Wildcats would get to face quality opponents throughout league play. Most fans accepted there would be a trade-off between fewer conference win but being better prepared for the Big Dance.
The hypothesis that competing in a tough conference will translate to the NCAA Tournament is about to be put to the test for the first time.
“Obviously we’ve been battle tested,” Lloyd said, alluding to Arizona having nation’s fourth-hardest schedule. “We’ve been tested from November through December, through January, February, March. We didn’t really have an easy stretch. This team has been tested, and it knows that in order for us to win, we know we have to play at our best.”
Lloyd isn’t afraid to acknowledge there were some bruises incurred across the course of the Big 12 season. In games that Arizona lost, including the Big 12 title match versus Houston, opponents effectively targeted individual matchups, Lloyd said.
“The Big 12 is a target league, more than any conference I’ve played in. Teams attack matchups,” Lloyd said. “In college you just don’t see it that often. And (against Houston), it worked out. I was a little bit disappointed, because I think individually defensively, we can win those matchups. That’s the challenge for our guys.”
Lloyd didn’t call out any players by name, but any observer of Arizona this season knows that Trey Townsend and Anthony Dell’Orso have struggled at times to stay on top of matchups. Henri Veesaar has also been picked on, like in Arizona’s loss at Kansas when Hunter Dickinson went off for 33 points.
Lloyd said that when guys are being isolated in one-on-one situations, they need to “own it and step up and make it our advantage.”
Arizona has shown its grit in key scenarios, too, whether beating BYU in Provo in a back-and-forth affair, or responding against Kansas with a win in the Big 12 Tournament quarterfinals.
“I think we’re a team that continues to get better,” Lloyd said. “We had a really tough end of the season schedule, and we had some bumps in the road. Maybe a few things didn’t go away, but our guys stuck with it.”