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If the season ended today, the Arizona Wildcats would be the No. 8 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament. That is what the selection committee revealed Monday when it released its first look at the current top 16 seeds in the country.
That means Arizona would be a No. 2 seed in its respective region. In that projected region are three blueblood programs—No. 1 seed UConn, No. 3 seed Baylor and No. 4 seed Tennessee.
UConn, Tennessee and Baylor would be quite the region for @ArizonaWBB. Three bluebloods. pic.twitter.com/SaVx1K304S
— Ryan Kelapire (@RKelapire) February 16, 2021
That is a slightly higher ranking than expected for the Wildcats given that they are 10th in the AP poll and 11th in NET. They do have an impressive resume though, with wins over UCLA, Oregon State, Arizona State and Oregon (x2). Their only losses were at home vs. Stanford and an overtime defeat on the road against Washington State, a borderline tournament team.
Stanford, UCLA and Oregon are the No. 3, No. 9 and No. 11 overall seeds, respectively.
Another top 16 will be unveiled on March 1. These rankings have no bearing on the actual NCAA Tournament field that will be announced on March 15, but do give the public a real glimpse at where things stand now.
Arizona has three more regular-season games on its schedule—road contests vs. No. 6 Stanford, Cal and Arizona State—before the Pac-12 Tournament begins on March 4.
At this point last season the Wildcats were the No. 12 overall seed.