In the three previous times the Arizona Wildcats started 9-0 in the Pac-12 (formerly Pac-10), they won the league title with 17-1 records.
The Wildcats extended one of those seasons to the Final Four, when Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott led them to a 35-3 overall record. The other times they lost in the first round to Santa Clara in 1992-93 and advanced to the Elite Eight as the defending national champs in 1997-98.
Arizona is 9-0 for the fourth time after defeating Washington 77-66 on Sunday afternoon at McKale Center.
ARIZONA’S PAC-10/12 9-0 STARTS
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The best start in Pac-10/12 play was the 16-0 record in the 1997-98 season with the streak snapped with a 91-90 overtime loss at USC.
Arizona (20-2 overall) now embarks on a road trip to the Oregon schools this week to start the second half of the conference season. The Wildcats must guard against looking ahead to the visit to Eugene, Ore., to visit No. 10 Oregon next Saturday when they play at Oregon State (4-18 overall, 0-9 Pac-12) on Thursday.
Sean Miller’s team then hosts the Bay area schools, travels to the Washington schools, hosts the Los Angeles schools and ends the regular season with a visit to Tempe to face ASU.
“There’s a lot of things we have to do to get better,” Miller told Brian Jeffries in the IMG Network postgame interview. “We’re going to take everybody’s best shot, and with some teams, they’ll have nothing to lose.
“You can’t play 75 percent and you can’t have only seven players locked in. You need a total team effort.”
PAC-12 STANDINGS
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon.
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