UA News

The fourth-seeded Cats face No. 5 seed UCLA in the first quarterfinal game at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The Arizona Wildcats start their post-season drive on Thursday in Los Angeles with a quarterfinal game against UCLA in the first round of the Pac-10 Tournament.

The winner of the tournament gets an automatic bid to the NCAA Division I Tournament. The other eight teams may or may not have other places to go.

Arizona, which has gone to the Big Dance for the last 25 years, needs the tournament championship in order to make it No. 26. Despite a season of growing pains, the Cats are 16-14 overall and 10-8 in the Pac-10, and are on a three-game win streak. That includes a five-point win over the Bruins last week at McKale Center.

And in a roller coaster season where no one dominated and nearly everybody seemed to get a piece of someone else, the only team certain to not move on is USC, now under a self-imposed ban on post-season play for NCAA violations.

The Bruins struggled this year and lost twice to the UA but still have a bite, beating Cal in Berkeley and notching wins against second-place ASU and third-place Washington.  Individually, four of Ben Howland's players average in double figures, led by Michael Roll with 13.5 points per game. Tyler Honeycutt leads the team with a 6.7 rebounds per game average.

This also is the week when post-season awards are passed around. Derrick Williams, the freshman forward who led the UA in scoring and rebounding, and senior guard Nic Wise were named to first team all-Pac-10 honors by the conference head coaches. Wise and Williams also shared the UA's co-MVP award at the team's banquet on Monday night.

In addition, Williams was named to the Sporting News all-freshman team and the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year, the sixth Wildcat to win that award. Williams also is one of only 16 freshmen named to the all-conference team since the league expanded to 10 teams in 1978.

Wise, the UA team leader and only senior, wrapped up his regular season career with a last-second layup to beat USC last Saturday, and scored in double figures 22 times this season, including two 20-point and two 30-point games.

The UA will finish at or above .500 for the season, a remarkable feat for first-year coach Sean Miller and a team with only two upperclassmen, four sophomores and eight freshmen. In addition to their storied record in the NCAA tournament, the Cats have been to the NIT three times. In 1951 under Fred Enke they lost 74-68 to the Dayton Flyers. The Cats also lost their only NCAA Division I Tournament game that year, 71-69 to Kansas State.

Thursday's game will be televised nationally on the Fox Sports Network, starting just after 1 p.m., Tucson time.