When Arizona celebrated the 25th anniversary of its most recent Final Four team at halftime of a home game last month, Richard Jefferson addressed the crowd with a videotaped message that aired on the McKale Center jumbotron.
Jefferson apologized for not being able to attend the ceremony in person, spoke glowingly of the bond his 2001 Arizona team had and then addressed the program's inability to get back to the Final Four for the past quarter century.
"I believe for the first time that we have a team that will return,"Jefferson said.
Surely, thishasto be the Arizona team that ends that drought. Surely, thishasto be the Arizona team that halts the program's tortured 25-year run of near misses and wasted opportunities. Anything else would be a colossal disappointment for the Wildcats after beating 12 ranked opponents before Selection Sunday, sweeping the Big 12 regular season and tournament titles and laying waste to their first threeNCAA tournamentopponents by an average margin of more than 22 points.
A109-88 demolition of fourth-seeded Arkansas in the NCAA tournament's Sweet 16on Thursday night further exemplified Arizona's dominance. The Wildcats exposed a Razorbacks team that had previously been able to pile up enough points to make up for its defensive shortcomings.
Arizona shot 63.8% from the field against Arkansas, the highest by any team in the second week of the NCAA tournament since 2005,per former ESPN researcher Jared Berson. Six Wildcats scored 14 or more points, the first time that's ever happened in an NCAA tournament game,according to Berson.
That display of efficiency and depth sent Arizona to the Elite Eight for the first time in 11 years. The No. 1 seed in the West region needs only to defeat second-seeded Purdue on Saturday evening to secure the Final Four appearance that has eluded the program for so long.
Twelve times since 2001, Arizona has advanced to the NCAA tournament's second weekend. Five times, the Wildcats made the Elite Eight. Each trip ended in heartbreak, from a near miss against Kansas in 2003, to Illinois' stunning 15-point comeback in 2005, to Jamelle Horne's game-winning 3-pointer rimming out against UConn in 2011, to back-to-back narrow losses to Frank Kaminsky and Wisconsin in 2014 and 2015.
Arizona declined during the latter years of Sean Miller's tenure when fallout from the FBI scandal made it difficult for him to recruit at his previous level, but the Wildcats have regained their place as the West's top program under Tommy Lloyd. The former Mark Few lieutenant at Gonzaga has earned top-two NCAA tournament seeds in four of his first five seasons in Tucson while showing an ability to recruit top transfers, elite American high school prospects and top-tier international talent.
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The only thing missing from Lloyd's résumé entering this season was a deep NCAA tournament run.
Almost immediately, this year's Wildcats showed the potential to fix that.
They have a point guard in Jaden Bradley who is an elite playmaker and point-of-attack defender and who seems to raise his level down the stretch in tight games. They have a pair of freshman wings in Brayden Burries and Ivan Kharchenkov with exceptional positional size, shot-making ability and poise beyond their years. They have a frontcourt that features future first-round draft pick Koa Peat at power forward and a defensive standout Motiejus Krivas at center. And in Tobe Awaka and Anthony Dell'Orso, they have two reserves who are unselfish enough to come off the bench yet impactful enough to start almost anywhere else.
The greatest strength of this Arizona team is that it isn't reliant on the 3-point arc. The Wildcats attempt threes at a lower rate than all but two teams in college basketball this season. They piled up 109 points against Arkansas on Thursday despite shooting just 5-for-8 from behind the arc.
Even the best teams can go cold from the perimeter in the single-elimination NCAA tournament. Arizona is actually built to withstand those nights.
Will that be enough to help Arizona get past its second-weekend NCAA tournament barrier? Will that be enough to help the Wildcats survive an Elite Eight matchup with a skilled, experienced Purdue team with the nation's highest-rated offense?
It should be.
Ithasto be.
For Arizona, it's now or who knows when.
