COUNTDOWN TO GLENDALE
NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT DOWN TO EIGHT TEAMS IN FIGHT FOR FINAL FOUR.
SAN JOSE — They say you live by the 3 and you die by the 3, and judging by the sunken, pale faces in the Arizona locker room in San Jose’s SAP Center, it was clear which team’s season died on Thursday night.
And like a crane falling from above, the Wildcats never saw it coming.
There are goals for the Arizona basketball program, and there are expectations, and there is a difference between the two, a difference so thin that the Wildcats could not see between the two after a 73-71 loss to the Xavier Musketeers in Thursday’s Sweet 16 matchup. The goal was simple: Get Sean Miller to his first Final Four. The expectations were that Xavier would but a blip on that journey. The latest, if anything.
Instead, Dusan Ristic sat in the Arizona locker room shaking his head, staring at a future he could not even fathom.
“I never thought about this before,” he said. “Going into this game, we had so much confidence in our team. We had five days to prepare for Xavier, and we did a good job. They just played better. That’s it. I never thought this could be our last game. It feels really weird right now.”
This was a spring monsoon in Tucson, a flash flood without a warning.
The players didn’t have time to grab umbrellas.
Now they’re left looking up at a Final Four just a bus-ride away, underneath a rain cloud that will take a while to dissipate.
A year after a first-round exit against Wichita State, they go home with unfulfilled dreams. Last year, they knew they were lacking. This year, they thought they had the goods.
“I remember last year was awful, too, and I don’t remember how long the feeling lasts,” Ristic said. “It’s a terrible feeling, one of the worst in basketball.”
Added guard Parker Jackson-Cartwright: “It’s going to take a couple days, maybe a couple weeks. Last year, we had to watch the rest of the whole tournament. You get this far, and you have high expectations. We expected to survive. To come up short is extremely tough.”
And that’s what happened to so many of Arizona’s outside shots on Thursday — they came up short. Arizona shot 7-for-27 from 3-point range, but the players defended their shot selection after the game. Allonzo Trier, whose last-gasp 3point attempt rimmed out, believed he had good looks all night, even if he went 3-for-10 from behind the arc. Rawle Alkins, who managed just four points in 31 minutes, put the blame on everything but Arizona’s preparation.
“Upsets happen all the time,” he said. “We came in prepared. We didn’t come in thinking they were an 11-seed and we can’t lose.”
Ultimately, the perennially underseeded Musketeers proved that under Chris Mack and playing in the Big East, they deserve far better. So did Arizona players on Thursday. “I don’t have a sense for this,” Ristic said. “I can’t imagine our season is done. When you play for a program like Arizona, you have the highest possible expectations and goals. And when you don’t fulfill those goals, there’s a funny feeling. You feel empty.”
One locker room over, the Xavier locker room was filled with joy. Players who believed in themselves all year but couldn’t believe their fortune.
“This is madness,” Xavier center Sean O’Hara said. “Once you’re in this, you never know what’s going to happen.”