Arizona opens the NCAA Tournament on Friday against Long Island University in San Diego. The game time and television network are to be determined. Long Island is coached by former NBA star point guard Rod Strickland. The Sharks earned their NCAA Tournament bid by winning the Northeast Conference Tournament title.
Long Island finished 24-10 overall and 15-3 in the Northeast Conference to win the regular season title by three games over Central Connecticut State. The Sharks played a relatively challenging schedule with four games against power conference opponents.
Long Island lost 89-67 at Notre Dame in the season opener, 98-58 at Illinois, 87-83 at Mississippi State and 89-74 at Georgia. The Sharks enter the NCAA Tournament 0-2 against teams in the NET quadrant one, 0-2 in quad two, 1-3 in quad three and 23-3 in quad four.
Strickland played 17 seasons in the NBA for nine teams. Before his NBA career, Strickland was a star player at DePaul from 1985 through 1988. Before becoming the head coach at LIU in 2022, Strickland was the director of the professional path program for the NBA G-League.
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Where Arizona ranks overall nationally
Arizona enters the 2026 NCAA Tournament as the second overall seed. Arizona and Michigan flipped in the one and two spots after the Wolverines lost to Purdue in the Big 10 Championship Game on Sunday. The Big XII Title game concluded about 30 minutes before the NCAA Tournament Selection Show.
Arizona and Long Island are playing for the first time on Friday. If Arizona wins as expected, the Wildcats will play the winner of eight seed Villanova and ninth seed Utah State in the second round. The teams that advance out of San Diego will move on to the West Regional in San Jose.
Arizona beat Utah State in the 2005 NCAA Tournament first round in Boise and lost to Villanova in the 2006 second round in Philadelphia. Arizona should have a huge crowd advantage nearly every step of the way in the West Regional. The other top seeds in the West are second seed Purdue, three Gonzaga and four Arkansas.