Under first-year head coach Tommy Lloyd, Arizona (31-3) went from a team picked to finish tied with Oregon State for fourth place in the Pac-12 to winning the conference outright and locking up a No. 1 seed in the South Region of the NCAA Tournament.
"It's a great honor to be a one seed, and the guys are very deserving," Lloyd said Sunday after the NCAA Selection Show. "They've had an incredible year, and we're excited about going forward."
This marks the seventh time in program history that Arizona has earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and is the first one seed for the Wildcats since the 2013-14 season when the team reached the Elite Eight.
Lloyd is now the third first-year Division I head coach in NCAA history to earn a No. 1 seed in the tournament and the first to do so since Bill Guthridge accomplished the feat during the 1997-98 season at North Carolina.
The first two rounds will take place in San Diego, where the Wildcats will face the winner of a First Four matchup between Wright State and Bryant. Arizona is in the same pod as No. 8 Seton and ninth-seeded TCU, with the games being placed on a Friday-Sunday schedule.
"You handle it the same way you would have handled the Stanford-ASU situation, you kind of prepare for both teams," Lloyd said when ask how the team will prepare for its first matchup without knowing the opponent until Wednesday evening. "You'll even get a day in between, so it won't be anything crazy. We'll divide up the scouts and get to work on them."
The Friday-Sunday schedule will allow point guard Kerr Kriisa time to heal from his sprained ankle, which he suffered late in the second half during the Wildcats' game against Stanford.
"I think it's huge. It allows us to kind of push everything back this week, and today the guys have nothing the rest of the day," Lloyd said about having an extra day of rest before the first game. "Tomorrow, to be honest with you, we probably won't do much and then we'll kind of ramp up a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday prep like you would do in a normal league week."
With Arizona being the top seed in the South Region, the Villanova Wildcats were placed in the region as the No. 2 seed.
The last and only time the two Wildcats matched up in the NCAA tournament was during the 2005-06 season when No. 8 seed Arizona lost an 82-78 game to No. 1 seed Villanova.
The region is filled with teams that Arizona has already played this season, with Illinois as a No. 4 seed, Michigan as the No. 11 seed with Tennessee, one of only three teams to beat the Wildcats this season, grabbing the No. 3 seed.
"It just seems like it always happens. In the tournament, you can't predict how they're going to fall, and I just heard a coach Cal (John Calipari) on ESPN and one of his statements saying that you sometimes spend so much time worrying about your future opponents and then what happens, they lose," Lloyd said when asked about the potential rematches ahead of his team.
"So, you spend all this time worrying about things that never happened. We're going to look at these as a four-team tournament, and obviously, we're a five-team tournament; we got to play in games, and once that settled, it'd be down to four teams. And once we're in San Diego with four teams, we want to try to be the last team standard."
Arizona will open its tournament run Friday with a 4:27 p.m. MST tip time at Viejas Arena on campus at San Diego State as the Wildcats await the winner of the First Four game between Wright State and Bryant. The game will be televised by truTV.
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