How Arizona’s Pac-12, NCAA tournament seeding looks entering final week of regular season

It was all but assured when Desmond Cambridge Jr.’s 60-foot buzzer beater swished on Saturday afternoon, but Arizona officially was eliminated from repeating as Pac-12 regular-season champions on Sunday when UCLA won at Colorado to wrap up its first league title in a decade.

The Wildcats will have to just settle for a second straight Pac-12 Tournament title, next month in Las Vegas, but their seed for that tourney is still uncertain entering the final weekend of the regular season.

Arizona (24-5, 13-5) can finish anywhere from second to fourth depending on how the four Pac-12 games held in Los Angeles this week play out, with USC (21-8, 13-5) and ASU (20-9, 11-7) the teams that can pass the Wildcats in the final standings.

If the UA splits its games Thursday at USC and Saturday against UCLA it would end up no worse than the No. 3 seed, getting the No. 2 seed if it beats USC or loses to the Trojans and ASU beats them. Get swept in LA and that opens the door for ASU to get the No. 3 seed if it sweeps on the road, since the Sun Devils would win the tiebreaker by going 1-0 against Utah compared to Arizona’s 1-1 mark against the Utes.

Arizona’s NCAA tourney seeding is even muddier, since it’s unknown how the last-second loss to ASU will be viewed by the selection committee. Bracketologists seem to think the Wildcats are still a No. 2 seed, but it’s not a lock.

Per BracketMatrix.com, 24 of 30 projections updated on or through Sunday have the UA as a No. 2. That includes Fox Sports’ Mike DeCourcy, who has the Wildcats as the last No. 2 seed.

Other major sites, like CBS, ESPN and Bleacher Report, are expected to update their brackets later Monday.

Arizona’s betting odds have soured a bit since the ASU loss, with DraftKings Sportsbook listing it at +1600 to win the national title, +350 to reach the Final Four. Both of those are sixth-best among the options, with UCLA (+1200/+300) fifth.