Brad Cesmat
It’s the perfect setup for Arizona Wildcat head coach Sean Miller. His team didn’t win the Pac-12 regular season title. They didn’t make it to the Conference title game in Las Vegas. They were picked as a 6th seed in this years version of March Madness.
Time for Sean Miller to use the famous motivation game of “No One Respects Us”. Coaches pull this one out of the box in March. They go to great lengths to pound it into their team that “no one thinks your going to win”. Media will hear the 19, 20-year-old say “no one is giving us a chance”.(insert eye roll here)…
Dig deeper in this years March Madness layout and you’ll see that there is quite a bit of “Star Power” in the South Region. Miami, Villanova, Cal, Kansas and Maryland were all seeded higher than Sean Millers team. Having seen all these teams play, I wouldn’t say that Arizona can’t match up and move on against ANY of them. When the Wildcats play “their” game, they can move through each one of those clubs. No one is expecting them to do it, which is the perfect set-up for the coaching staff.
Ryan Anderson and Gabe York didn’t shoot well against Oregon in the Pac-12 semis loss. The interior defense of Arizona hasn’t been good. Alonzo Trier can’t get into foul trouble. All of that is true. All of it is correctable. I expect the ‘Cats to go on a long run over the next couple of weeks. Last time I checked I didn’t see Wisconsin anywhere in the same bracket which is a nice place to start.
There is no excuse for a team that has as much talent as Arizona to be anything less than an elite eight squad. Play the “no respect” card and let’s see what happens over the next couple of weeks. For some reason kids do respond to such measures…
