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Christopher Boan is the lead writer at BetArizona.com after covering sports and sports betting in Arizona for more than seven years, including stops at ArizonaSports.com, the Tucson Weekly and the Green Valley News.
March Madness: How Arizona Wildcats Have Fared in Sweet 16 Since Last Final Four Berth
Since the Wildcats’ last trip to the Final Four in 2001, Arizona has qualified for the third round of the Big Dance 12 times now, with the Wildcats going 5-6 in their Sweet 16 contests between 2002 and 2024. That got the team at BetArizona.com thinking about where Arizona’s Sweet 16 trips rank nationally, plus what basketball fans in the Old Pueblo can expect from Tommy Lloyd’s bunch once they play top seeded Duke in The Meadowlands on Thursday night.
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Most Sweet 16 Appearances Since Last Final Four Berth
T1. Arizona: 2002, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2022, 2024, 2025 (12 appearances)
T1. Kansas State: 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1981, 1982, 1988, 2010, 2018, 2023 (12 appearances)
3. Tennessee: 1967, 1981, 2000, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2019, 2023, 2024, 2025 (11 appearances)
4. San Francisco: 1958, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1978, 1979 (9 appearances)
5. Xavier: 1990, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2023 (9 appearances)
How Arizona’s Fared in Sweet 16 Since 2001
2002: Lost to Oklahoma (88-67)
2003: Beat Notre Dame (88-71)
2005: Beat Oklahoma State (79-78)
2009: Lost to Louisville (103-64)
2011: Beat Duke (93-77)
2013: Lost to Ohio State (73-70)
2014: Beat San Diego State (70-64)
2015: Beat Xavier (68-60)
2017: Lost to Xavier (73-71)
2022: Lost to Houston (72-60)
2024: Lost to Clemson (77-72)
2025: TBD (vs. Duke)
Record: 5-6 in Sweet 16 games since 2001
Arizona Looks to Flip Script Against Duke
Since that 2001 season that ended fittingly enough with a national championship game loss to the Blue Devils, Arizona’s wandered through the men’s basketball desert, making 11 trips to the second weekend of the tournament but failing to make it past the national semifinal during that span.
On Thursday night, Arizona enters the Sweet 16 against Duke as a 9.5-point underdog, per DraftKings AZ Sportsbook, illustrating how little faith oddsmakers have in Lloyd and company to snap the school’s current three-game losing streak in the tournament’s third round.
That losing streak includes a 77-72 loss to Clemson in 2024, to go with a 72-60 defeat at the hands of Kelvin Sampson and the Houston Cougars in 2022 and the Xavier Musketeers (by a 72-60 final score) way back in 2017.
Arizona’s lass Sweet 16 victory was in 2015, when then-head coach Sean Miller led the Wildcats to a 73-71 victory over Xavier before falling in the Elite Eight two days later.
This year, it’s up to Caleb Love and company to put a halt to Duke’s red-hot season, with Arizona going toe-to-toe with the Blue Devils inside the Prudential Center on Thursday evening, with a potential Elite Eight clash against either Alabama or BYU awaiting them in the national semifinal.
Speaking of BYU, the Cougars are right up there with Arizona when it comes to the most Sweet 16 trips made since reaching the national semifinal, with the Wildcats making the trip for the 12th time since that 2001 season (ranking in a two-way tie with the Kansas State Wildcats nationally), while the Cougars rank ninth, having reached six Sweet 16s without a single Final Four berth in school history.
While Arizona cannot snap that Final Four drought against Duke, the Wildcats can vanquish a major foe of theirs in previous March Madness trip-ups on Thursday night, potentially paving the way for that long awaited trip to the national semifinal over the weekend in the shadows of New York City.
USA Today photo by Steven Bisig.
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