Arizona Basketball predicted to miss the NCAA Tournament

With the Arizona Basketball team gearing up for the 2020-21 season, the latest Pre-season bracket prediction has the Wildcats missing the NCAA Tournament.

Once again it has been a busy off-season for the Arizona Basketball team, especially as the Wildcats have had to replace numerous players from their starting rotation from the year prior.

If you have been paying attention, you would have seen that Sean Miller and the Wildcats have been adding a lot of talent, especially as Arizona replaced their entire starting line-up with seven incoming recruits and two transfers in Jordan Brown and James Akinjo. Luckily for us, both will be eligible to play this year.

Arizona Wildcats

On paper, the Wildcats look like they will have a talented and solid group, however, with so much turnover on the roster, naturally, there are going to be a lot of questions and doubts heading into the season.

Nonetheless, this is Arizona Basketball, and the expectation from fans, coaches, and players is to have a team that is going to be competitive and contend for a Conference Championship and maybe even more.

Unfortunately for us, because of the high turnover we saw this off-season, not everyone is going to see it that way also.

In an early pre-season prediction, the Wildcats are already out of the Top 25 rankings, but to make things even more disappointing is that Arizona isn’t even predicted to make the NCAA Tournament!

Making news via Social Media on Tuesday afternoon was Basketball Analyst Andy Katz releasing his first prediction for the 2021 NCAA Tournament.

In his bracket from the Pac-12 was; ASU (No. 4), UCLA (No. 5), Stanford (No. 6), Oregon (No. 7), and Colorado (No. 11).

Shocking? A bit, but again, when you lose all five starters from the year before, and you bring in a bunch of players who some are under-scouted because of playing outside the United States, naturally there are going to be some doubts from outside viewers.

However, if I’m a betting man, I feel this team is going to exceed expectations because I do think they could be even more talented than they were in 2019-20. Nonetheless, I do get the apprehension and early doubts.

This group will have to prove itself and because of it being such a fresh group, they are going to have to jell quickly.

At Zona Zealots, we’re hopeful the Cats can prove the doubters wrong. As always, Bear Down, Arizona!