If the Arizona men’s basketball team doesn’t like being ranked No. 12 in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason poll that dropped Monday, the Wildcats will have plenty of chances to fix it.
Quickly, too.
In what appears to be their strongest overall nonconference schedule in years, the Wildcats will face four teams ranked in the AP Top 10 over the first seven weeks of the season — and another two among the top 26 teams receiving votes.
While Kansas was ranked No. 1 overall in the AP preseason poll, the Wildcats will face No. 2 Duke in just their second game of the season, on Nov. 10 at Durham, North Carolina. They’ll also face No. 4 Michigan State on Thanksgiving (Nov. 23), No. 3 Purdue on Dec. 16 and No. 10 Florida Atlantic on Dec. 23.
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On top of that, there’s a Dec. 16 game at McKale Center against Wisconsin, the top vote-getter outside of the Top 25, and a Dec. 20 game against No. 24 Alabama in Phoenix.
The Wildcats will have to crisscross the country to face most of those ranked teams, but it’s all part of coach Tommy Lloyd’s plan to essentially create his own “multi-team event” without a strong one to play in this season.
Arizona’s game with Michigan State is technically the second and final game of their official MTE this season, which they will open at McKale Center on Nov. 19 against Texas-Arlington, but outside of that, they’ll travel to the Palm Springs area to face MSU, to Indianapolis to play Purdue and to Las Vegas to face FAU.
Counting the Alabama game, that’s four games on neutral courts plus the true road game at Duke for a total of five teams ranked in the AP preseason Top 25 in the nonconference portion of the Wildcats’ 2023-24 schedule.
“Last year we played three in Maui, and it went quick,” Lloyd said last week at Pac-12 media day, referring to high-major games against Cincinnati, San Diego State and Creighton in the three-day Maui Invitational. “We didn’t know we were going to play San Diego State or Creighton. So this looks a little different but it doesn’t feel that different.”
Among Arizona’s Pac-12 opponents, only 21st-ranked USC made the preseason Top 25, while Colorado received the 27th-most points and UCLA the 28th-most. That means 12 of the Wildcats’ 31 regular-season games will be against teams who were among the 28 teams receiving the most points in preseason voting.
And if the Wildcats don’t want to wait at all to break into the Top 10, they can always turn to Kenpom.com’s preseason ratings — which had the Wildcats ranked No. 6 overall, behind No. 1 Purdue, No. 2 Kansas, No. 3 Houston, No. 4 UConn and No. 5 Gonzaga.
The Athletic, saying it incorporated insights from teams’ foreign exhibition tours into its rankings, also had UA in the Top 10 at No. 8. The Wildcats went 3-0 on a Middle East exhibition tour in August, winning games against mostly local players in Israel and the United Arab Emirates while also beating the Lebanon national team in Abu Dhabi.
Most of the major preseason publications and websites place the Wildcats in the 11-15 range. The Wildcats are ranked No. 11 by USA Today, No. 12 by ESPN, No. 13 by College Basketball Almanac and No. 15 by both Lindy’s College Basketball and Blue Ribbon Yearbook.
(For what it’s worth, I had Arizona at No. 14 and Purdue at No. 2 behind Kansas on my ballot.)
VIDEO: Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd speaks at Pac-12 Media Day on Wednesday, Oct. 11, on the team’s early nonoconference schedule and what he might need to see out of his team heading into those matchups. (Video courtesy Pac-12 Networks).
Contact sports reporter Bruce Pascoe at bpascoe@tucson.com. On X(Twitter): @brucepascoe
Bruce Pascoe
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