Thursday top-seeded Arizona will begin its chance for the Pac-12 Tournament title with a matchup against ninth-seeded Stanford, making it the third meeting this season between the two schools.

The Cardinal started its run by opening the Pac-12 Tournament on Wednesday against Arizona State with an improbable come-from-behind victory, 71-70, which featured a 16-1 run that ended with a game-winning shot from James Keefe.

During two games in the regular season, Arizona (28-3) dominated the Cardinal with a margin of victory of 20 points.

However, in the last game against Arizona, Stanford (16-15) was able to keep things close and led 54-51 at the 12-minute mark of the second half before the Wildcats went on a 16-4 run to put the game away.

In the game against UA, Stanford had two players, in Spencer Jones and Michael O'Connell, combine to go 8-for-12 from the 3-point with the rest of the team going 0-for-5 from deep.

On the season, the Cardinal is one of the worst 3-point shooting teams in the country and rank 212th overall, shooting 33.4% from beyond the arc.

"I'm excited about it," Jones said about Thursday's rematch with Arizona after Stanford's win over ASU. "We felt like the last time we went to their place, we threw it away in the last couple of minutes because we were with them the entire time. We were battling with them the entire time and made them uncomfortable. So, I think we're coming in with extreme confidence based on how we played last time."

Although Stanford is known as a defensive team under coach Jerod Haase, the Wildcats in two games versus the Cardinal shot 53% from the field, and Pac-12 Player of the Year Benn Mathurin is averaging 18.5 points and shooting 54% from the field in those contests.

"It's equal footing at this point," Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said when asked about playing multiple games in a short amount of time." And your opponents have probably done the same thing. Or, if a team comes from Wednesday's games, they're going to have played one extra game. I've been talking to our guys a lot like, hey, yeah, we're in a tough stretch of the schedule, but there are no excuses.

"You should be ready to play today. Because eventually, if you want to win a Pac-12 tournament championship, you're going to play back-to-back-to-back days. So that's why yeah, some days we rolled out, and I made them practice in between those games. They weren't super excited. But I mean, that's what you have to do. You got to be ready physically to play the next day."

The Wildcats will open their 2022 Pac-12 tournament run against Stanford at 1 p.m. (MST) with the game set to be televised by Pac-12 Networks.

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