{"id":252032,"date":"2025-09-24T21:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/252032\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T21:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T21:33:09","slug":"arizona-wildcats-mens-basketball-projected-as-no-3-seed-in-espns-way-too-early-ncaa-bracket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/252032\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona Wildcats men\u2019s basketball projected as No. 3 seed in ESPN\u2019s way-too-early NCAA bracket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The first game of the 2025-26 season is still almost six weeks away, but no one ever let a calendar get in the way of a good guesstimate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">ESPN\u2019s <strong>Joe Lunardi<\/strong> has released his latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/espn\/feature\/story\/_\/page\/bracketology\/ncaa-bracketology-2026-march-madness-men-field-predictions\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">super-early projection<\/a> for the 2026 NCAA Tournament, and Arizona will once again be among the top seeds in the field as it has been each of the previous four years under <strong>Tommy Lloyd<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Wildcats are projected to be a No. 3 seed in the South Region, which would earn them an opening weekend in San Diego for first and second round games. The UA was the South No. 1 seed in 2022 and began their tourney in San Diego, beating Wright State and TCU en route to the Sweet 16.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Lunardi has Arizona opening against South Dakota State, which cannot happen since Arizona faces the Jackrabbits during nonconference play. The other projected No. 14 seeds are Arkansas State, Charleston and Furman.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Ohio State, Miami or Texas A&amp;M would be Arizona\u2019s projected second round matchup, and if it made the Sweet 16 for the fourth time in five seasons it would be in Houston potentially against No. 2 seed St. John\u2019s. Also in that part of the bracket, though, is Texas, now coached by former UA coach <strong>Sean Miller<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Lunardi has the Big 12 projected to get eight teams into the 2026 field, with Houston earning a No. 1 seed, BYU getting a No. 2 seed and Iowa State joining Arizona on the No. 3 seed line. Also projected to make the tourney from the Big 12 are Kansas, Cincinnati, Texas Tech and Baylor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Arizona\u2019s loaded nonconference slate features six projected NCAA tourney teams, beginning with defending national champ Florida on Nov. 3 in Las Vegas. The Gators are projected as the No. 1 seed in the South Region.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">UConn is projected as a No. 2 seed, Auburn and UCLA are projected as No. 4 seeds, Alabama is a No. 5 and San Diego State a No. 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first game of the 2025-26 season is still almost six weeks away, but no one ever let&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":252033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[76891,1339,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-252032","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-arizona-basketball","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-basketball","12":"tag-ncaabasketball","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/252033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}