Arizona has reached the fourth quarter of its first foray into the Big 12, sitting in second place with a 12-3 record and five games to go. That’s much better than the league’s coaches expected, as the Wildcats were picked to finish in fifth, and definitely didn’t seem likely when they started the season 4-5 and looked in jeopardy of missing the NCAA Tournament.
Now Arizona is back in the AP Top 25, sitting at No. 19 overall, and all but a lock to make the NCAA tourney for the fourth straight year under Tommy Lloyd. Where there is uncertainty is what seed the Wildcats will get, as well as which region they’ll end up in and in which locale they’ll start the tourney.
According to BracketMatrix.com, Arizona is a consensus No. 4 seed based on the latest projections from 103 bracketologists. The UA’s average seed is 3.63, second-best among No. 4s, slightly behind Michigan (3.58) but well ahead of St. John’s (3.99) and Michigan State (4.07).
As a top-4 seed, Arizona is more than likely to stay out west for the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, which means playing in Denver or Seattle. In fact, it’s hard to find a projected bracket that includes locations that doesn’t have it going to either Ball Arena (Denver) or Climate Pledge Arena (Seattle).
Ideally, the UA would like to end up in the West Region, which would have its regional at the Chase Center in San Francisco, but it could just as easily be placed in the East (Newark, N.J.), Midwest (Indianapolis, Ind.) or South (Atlanta).
If Arizona falls below a No. 5 seed all bets are off on where it would end up, but for that to happen it would need to lose at least once (if not twice) from the likes of remaining home games BYU, Utah and ASU in addition to one or both games at No. 8 Iowa State and No. 23 Kansas plus have an early exit from the Big 12 Tournament.
Speaking of that event, which is set for March 11-15 in Kansas City, Arizona is very close to clinching a double bye into the tourney quarterfinals. The top four seeds don’t have to play until Thursday, while seeds 9-16 start on Tuesday and 5-8 begin play Wednesday.
As 12-3, the Wildcats are three games up on fifth-place BYU, who they host on Saturday. Win that game and they’d finish no worse than tied for fourth place and the only team they wouldn’t have the tiebreaker over would be Kansas, which is one of three teams at 8-7.
The UA is two games back of first place Houston, which is 14-1, and would need the Cougars to lose three times in their last five games (ain’t gonna happen) while Arizona remains perfect. The No. 2 seed is most likely the ceiling, and to hang onto that requires either winning out or staying out of a tie with Iowa State and Texas Tech, both 11-4. Tech would have a tiebreaker on Arizona by virtue of a win over Houston, and Iowa State (if it beats Arizona in Ames on March 1) would have a tiebreaker thanks to being 1-0 against Texas Tech compared to 1-1 for the Wildcats.
There’s not much difference between being the No. 2 or 3 seed for Arizona, just which opponent it would face first. Avoiding the No. 4 seed means not having to see Houston again until the conference tourney final.
If the Big 12 Tournament began today, as the No. 2 seed Arizona would play on March 13 at 4 p.m. PT (Daylight Saving Time would have kicked in a few days earlier) and would face either No. 7 Kansas, No. 10 Kansas State or No. 15 ASU.