The Arizona Wildcats basketball team is the intercollegiate men's basketball program representing the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, United States. The team competes in the Pacific-12 Conference (Pac-12) of NCAA Division I. They are currently coached by Sean Miller.
Arizona has a long and rich basketball history. The program came to national prominence under the tutelage of former head coach Lute Olson, who since 1983 has established the program as among America's elite in college basketball. One writer referred to UA as "Point Guard U" because the school has produced successful guards like Steve Kerr, Damon Stoudamire, Khalid Reeves, Jason Terry, Gilbert Arenas, Mike Bibby and others.
From 1985 to 2009, the Arizona basketball team reached the NCAA Tournament for 25 consecutive years, two years shy of North Carolina's record of 27. Despite a 1999 appearance later vacated by the NCAA, the media still cites Arizona's streak, and simply note the change. The Wildcats have reached the Final Four of the NCAA Tournament on four occasions (1988, 1994, 1997, and 2001). In 1997, Arizona defeated the University of Kentucky, the defending national champions, to win the NCAA National Championship. In Pac-10 play, former head coach Lute Olson currently holds the record for most wins as a Pac-10 coach at 327. In addition, the team has won 12 Pac-10 regular season titles and 4 Pac-10 tournament titles. Arizona also holds the distinction of recording 5 out of the 7 17–1 Pac-10 seasons (one-loss seasons). No team has gone undefeated since the formation of the Pac-10. Arizona has spent 110 weeks in the top 5 which is 10th all-time, 226 weeks in the top 10 which is 8th all-time and 423 weeks in the top 25 which is 10th all-time. Arizona has intense rivalries with the in-state Arizona State Sun Devils, and the out-of-state UCLA Bruins and Kansas Jayhawks.
Read more about Arizona Wildcats Basketball: Current Team, Game Day Traditions
Famous quotes containing the words arizona and/or basketball:
“The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)