Arizona played its final game at McKale Center on March 4, a Senior Night victory over ASU that ended just before midnight. Three days later the Wildcats flew to Kansas for their regular-season finale, the first of six flights they’ve been on over the past three weeks.
The most recent of those was a 5-hour jaunt Monday from Seattle to Newark, NJ, site of the East Regional where the UA will face Duke on Thursday night in its third Sweet 16 appearance over the last four seasons.
Instead of coming back to Tucson in between the first and second weekends of the NCAA Tournament, as it had in 2022 and 2024, Arizona opted to go straight from one postseason destination to the next. It was a lesson learned from the first Sweet 16 run under Tommy Lloyd, when the Wildcats also had a short turnaround between the second and third rounds.
“This happened to us three years ago,” Lloyd said. “We played in San Diego on a late Sunday, we got out of there and travel was tough that night, so we got back to Tucson really late, like, two or three in the morning, Monday morning. And Monday was a tough day, just everybody trying to get their feet under them. And then Tuesday was a travel day to San Antonio, and then you played Houston on Thursday.”
Arizona’s flight from Seattle left around noon PT Monday, arriving in New Jersey about 8 p.m. ET. Had it flown home after the 87-83 win over Oregon it would have gotten in early Monday morning only to have to turn around again and fly to Newark on Tuesday morning.
“It was a pretty long flight for us, coming straight from Seattle to come to Jersey,” guard Caleb Love said. “But I’d rather be here than Tucson.”
Of the four teams playing in the East Regional, BYU is the only one that locked up a Sweet 16 spot on Saturday and thus gets an extra day to recover from the first weekend and prepare for Alabama. Two of the four teams playing Thursday night in the West Regional in San Francisco also played on Sunday, while of the eight teams playing in Friday’s Sweet 16 games in Atlanta (South Region) and Indianapolis (Midwest Region) six will have had five days off since their last game compared to three for Arizona.
“It’s the old deal, you’re happy to still be involved,” Lloyd said. “For me, there’s no reason about complaining or making a stink about something that I really had no control over. We’ve got to adapt to the situation. Duke’s in the same situation. That (short turnaround), and the in the distance of travel, were the reasons that we really decided to come straight from Seattle to Newark. I feel good about that decision, and hopefully it pays off come Thursday.”