SEATTLE—Arizona beat five ranked teams in its first nine games this season, the first team in the Associated Press poll era to do so. It became the first school to win 12 games over ranked opponents before the NCAA Tournament, with six of those against Top 10 schools and five from the Top 5.
That, along with Big 12 regular season and conference tournament titles, have propelled the Wildcats to their eighth No. 1 seed in school history. They’re one of the betting favorites to win the national title.
None of that matters as much as the next game ahead, one that could be the last of the season.
“It’s do or die,” senior Anthony Dell’Orso said. “We don’t take anyone lightly. It’s a business trip and we’ve got to give every team the utmost respect.”
Top-seeded Arizona (32-2) faces No. 16 Long Island (24-10) at 10:35 a.m. PT Friday in the first round of the 2026 NCAA Tournament. The UA is a massive favorite, with KenPom.com giving it a 99.6 percent chance to win.
But 16 seeds have won twice before, most recently in 2023 when Purdue lost to Fairleigh Dickinson (a day after Arizona fell to Princeton, the program’s second loss to a No. 15 seed). And though the crowd at Viejas Arena will be very pro-Wildcat, fans love an underdog and and could find themselves backing the Sharks.
“Tobin Anderson, he was my coach at Iona,” said LIU senior Greg Gordon, referring to the coach at Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023. “So I hope that he left a little bit of magic, so I can use it.”
This will be the 26th NCAA Tournament for Tommy Lloyd, who since joining the staff at Gonzaga in 1999 has never not gone dancing. With the Bulldogs his teams only lost in the first round three times, the last in 2008 before the Princeton debacle.
Since winning the Big 12 tourney he has preached that Arizona shouldn’t change anything now that it’s in a win-or-go-home scenario. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
“I want us to be ourselves, 100 percent normal,” Lloyd said. “If we are at the point now where we have to start doing stuff we haven’t done before, I probably haven’t done my job.”
Arizona’s previous first round games as the No. 1 seed have been all been comfortable wins. The closest was in 2014, when Weber State cut a 21-point deficit to nine at the end, while Lloyd’s first NCAA game as a head coach was an 87-70 win over Wright State four years ago in San Diego.
Long Island has never won an NCAA game, the last two losses coming in the First Four in 2016 and 2018.