There’s something different about Arizona this season.
On the surface, it looks like the typical Tommy Lloyd team. The Wildcats started the season with impressive wins, rolling into the new calendar year playing a fast, fun brand of basketball that puts them in the upper echelon of title contenders.
It always seems smart to buy stock in the top-ranked Wildcats. The only issue is it has gone to waste in March. The same vibe has existed during this season, and you may be hesitant to buy-in again given the recent postseason history. Maybe you need to see more — or just avoid it entirely.
But there’s something different about these Wildcats. This team looks like it can be legit and break the Final Four curse; Arizona got through its first major test of 2026 with a road win at Brigham Young — just not in the prettiest of fashion.
For the majority of the night on Monday, Jan. 26, Arizona looked like it was the best team in the country. It went into a hostile Marriott Center — where 13th-ranked BYU hasn’t lost in nearly a year — and silenced more than 18,000 people.
The Wildcats dominated both sides of the ball, and answered everything the Cougars tried. Brayden Burries and Jaden Bradley were slicing and dicing while BYU star AJ Dybantsa struggled to find a rhythm after dropping 43 points just two days before.
It was a 19-point game with just under 11 minutes to go and we were ready to declare Arizona was no longer the team that can’t get it done when the lights are brightest. That was until the Wildcats showed part of that identity isn’t gone yet.
Arizona let BYU hang around and the Cougars made a late push, all while the Wildcats were falling apart. Not defending the perimeter. Collapsing on the boards. A flagrant foul. Turnovers.
BYU made a 12-2 run in the final minute to make it a one-point deficit with 16 seconds left, and the Cougars had a chance to steal the win, only for Burries to save the day with a block from behind.
In what was looking like an emphatic statement to the rest of the country, Arizona instead showed it isn’t invincible. Yes, they deserve to be the unanimous No. 1 team in the country with a 9-0 Quad 1 record, tied for most wins in the category with Duke.
Yet the game in Provo, Utah was eerily similar to how the season goes: fantastic start, but fall apart at the end. Arizona has looked so dominant recently, mostly because it hasn’t been tested in some time.
After beating Connecticut, Alabama and San Diego State all before Christmas, the competition has been easy to start Big 12 action. Five of the first seven games came against the bottom half of the conference, all mostly blowout victories.
We want to see how this Arizona team stacks up against other elite teams before it’s worth investing in. It passed the first test, but plenty more are on the horizon.
BYU was just the start of a 10-game stretch where Arizona will play six ranked teams, all of which are in the top 14 of the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll. Trips to Kansas and Houston? Good luck with that.
This will be the time for Arizona to prove its legitimacy. It certainly is capable of doing so. What’s scary about the Wildcats is they are lethal in numerous ways. Opponents walk into the arena and don’t know who will be the deadly assassin, mostly because it’s a team full of them.
One night it’s the guards in Burries, Bradley or Koa Peat, the next it’s the veteran big man Motiejus Krivas, and so on. Like against BYU, it can be multiple of them, which shouldn’t give teams much of a chance.
This Arizona team has all the makings of being the one that gets back to the Final Four for the first time since 2001. It has the tools and recipe to be cutting the nets by then.
But then we remember how the end always goes, where this mighty looking ship gets taken out by an iceberg that should have been avoidable. This upcoming stretch will show if Arizona is done sinking, and ready to finish the voyage.
