Arizona is ‘scary’ good, it’s true, but can it outrun a history of March Madness flops?
Arizona clinched Big 12 regular-season title by routing Iowa State.
Tommy Lloyd on Arizona: ‘They’ve been on a mission.’
How do you approach your March Madness bracket?
Does history guide your pen? Are you haunted by ghosts of flops from years past?
If so, you’re naturally wary of the Arizona Wildcats. They’re a persistent March fizzler.
Never mind their 28-2 record or their No. 2 national ranking or the fact they just donned championship shirts after winning the nation’s toughest conference, a Big 12 that absorbed the exits of Texas and Oklahoma a few years ago and rebuilt its basketball product into a beast, thanks to the addition of schools like Arizona.
Never mind the Wildcats just suffocated No. 7 Iowa State, 73-57, a fine team in its own right, good for Arizona’s 14th victory against a Quad 1 opponent.
“I’m super proud of these guys,” coach Tommy Lloyd said on ESPN after the win. “They’ve been on a mission all year.”
Mission accomplished so far, but teams are remembered for what they do after all the regular-season hardware gets awarded.
Lute Olson’s 2001 Wildcats remain the last Arizona team to make the Final Four.
The stats and the achievements of these Wildcats are all very impressive, worthy of a No. 1 NCAA Tournament seed no matter what happens in the Big 12 Tournament. You’ll find no team more battle-tested, but you don’t need an elephant’s memory to remember Arizona has ventured down this path before without it ending in a Final Four.
Can Arizona shake March Madness history of past quarter-century?
Eleven times in the previous 24 seasons, Arizona earned a No. 4 seed or better in the NCAA Tournament. None of those teams reached the Final Four.
If flashbacks of those burnouts loom in your mind, you’ll understandably approach these Wildcats cautiously when it’s time to put pen to paper on your bracket in a couple of weeks.
And yet if you shove all that history out of your mind, you’ll see a coach who’s ascending, and a team that plays as tough of defense as anyone this side of Duke and Michigan.
You’ll see a squad more balanced than the Dukies, who’re fueled by the sensational Cameron Boozer but whose scoring punch doesn’t go nearly so deep as Arizona’s. Either Boozer or sidekick Isaiah Evans has led Duke in scoring in each of the past 24 games.
Star power of Boozer’s magnitude is a feature, not a bug, in March Madness. Still, how can you not be drawn to an Arizona team so balanced it got 10 points and 15 rebounds from sixth man Tobe Awaka against Iowa State? You get to Awaka after a starting five that each averages in double-digits scoring.
Arizona ‘going to be scary’ in NCAA Tournament
To hear Arizona’s Jaden Bradley tell it after this destruction of Iowa State, the Wildcats are “going to be scary” at the season’s crescendo.
Yeah, sure, but we all still remember those 2022 Wildcats who earned a No. 1 seed and then bowed out in the Sweet 16.
Well, that team didn’t have a veteran point guard as good as Bradley. Old guards win in March, or did you forget Walter Clayton Jr.?
Bradley kept cooking with 17 points against Iowa State. He’s right, the Wildcats are plenty scary, especially when they defend like they did against the Cyclones.
Iowa State’s season-best scorers Joshua Jefferson and Milan Momcilovic will be ready to face anyone but Arizona in the NCAA Tournament. They combined for 4-of-25 shooting, a byproduct of Arizona’s nasty defense.
As ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla put it afterward, Lloyd “wants to pulverize you.”
Well, he’s got the squad to do just that.
Two days after pulverizing Kansas, the Wildcats punished Iowa State.
These aren’t chump opponents, either. Kansas and Iowa State are the caliber of teams Arizona might face in the Sweet 16, the round where the Wildcats got booted in three of the past four seasons.
Now, here’s Arizona, marching toward another lofty seed, looking like just the type of team you’d confidently mark into the Final Four in your office bracket pool, if you weren’t so haunted by past brackets busted.
“This team,’ Lloyd said, ‘has a chance to do something special.’
Past Arizona teams had that chance, too, and failed to deliver. Those teams weren’t quite so balanced, so proven, so “scary” as this one. So scary, in fact, you might just want to cast history aside and start writing down Arizona when that bracket comes out.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
