Road trip start of Big 12 battle for Arizona Wildcats

“I don’t recommend that young coaches play in the best league in the country every year of their career,” Dixon said. “I succeeded, and the numbers show it clearly.”

While Dixon acknowledged after UA’s 90-81 win over TCU on Monday that the SEC has outperformed the Big 12 so far this season, he said the conference’s realignment continues to improve the competition wherever he is goes.

Perhaps this time, Dixon said, the Big 12 could use its performance in the NCAA Tournament to make up ground on the SEC, where it could have at least eight participants.

“It is what it is: the best teams in the country,” Dixon said. “Of course realignments happen because of football, and the teams that were left behind were generally better at basketball. That’s what happened to us.”

The Arizona men’s basketball program fell short this time. The Wildcats jumped into the Big 12 this season along with ASU, Colorado and Utah because the Pac-12 imploded in August 2023 due to a chain reaction that began when USC and UCLA decided in June 2022 to stop playing football last fall to begin the Big Ten.

The Wildcats, the 2023-24 Pac-12 regular season champions, are now making the Big 12 better. But they also have to find a way to survive it.

They are no longer a power or two at the top of the league like they were in the Pac-12. At least not when there are teams like Kansas, Iowa State, Baylor and Houston.

“The Big 12 is going to be great,” UA coach Tommy Lloyd said Monday, praising his players for staying as poised against TCU as they will need for the rest of the season.

“We’ve talked a lot about the fact that there won’t be 20-0 runs. You won’t be up 30 points at the half. Those days are over. That’s why we have to get used to playing close games and defending ourselves.”

What’s notable is that these comments came after a home game against a team picked to finish 10th in the Big 12.

Hosting TCU was one thing. A new one begins this weekend.

The Wildcats are immediately thrust into their longest Big 12 trip of the season, all the way to the Eastern Time Zone. They will leave on Thursday to fly to Cincinnati, practice and prepare there on Friday, then face the No. 16 Bearcats on Saturday afternoon.

Then on Sunday they travel to Morgantown, W.Va., where they prepare for a Tuesday night game against the Mountaineers … who they already beat on a neutral site in the Bahamas.

It’s the kind of march where the Wildcats need to carry as much momentum as possible from their win over TCU.

“You have to maintain the same intensity, the same edge, the same aggressiveness on the road and be able to take a hit because home advantage is real in this league,” UA guard KJ Lewis said. “We have to be able to stick together and stay as poised in these crucial moments as we did (Monday).”

Plus there are the peripheral things. The Wildcats are expected to face hostile crowds in both arenas, unlike venues in the Pac-12 like Stanford or Cal, where their fans sometimes made up nearly half the crowd.

And the weather is expected to be in the 20s and 30s, with isolated snow showers and maybe even an ice storm. It could be like driving to Pullman to play Washington State on a Pac-12 trip, only without the reward of spending half the time in more temperate Seattle to play a game against Washington.

“We’re excited,” Lloyd said. “We have a great road trip ahead of us. I mean, come on, you’re going all the way back to the East Coast. You play Cincinnati, you play West Virginia. I expect both fan bases will be thrilled to have Arizona coming to their home studio.

“What a great opportunity for us to go out and continue to prove ourselves in the Big 12.”