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Before Arizona clinched the first conference championship he was a part of, before the Wildcats doused coach Tommy Lloyd with water and sang “Bad Boys For Life� with Richard Jefferson in their cramped Pauley Pavilion locker room, Bradley had 13 points in 18 minutes against UCLA.

Arizona wound up winning 88-65 on that early March 2024 evening in Los Angeles, clinching the second Pac-12 title over Lloyd’s first three seasons. They wore “Pac-12 champions� hats, spoke of what forward Keshad Johnson called a “Pac-12 championship mindset� and posted celebratory graphics to Instagram.

“Quite honestly, I don't remember that one,� Bradley said. “I don’t.�

It was a different world then, for sure.

Playing in a conference that no longer exists in its traditional form, the Wildcats had just three players on that team who remain on the roster today: Bradley, center Motiejus Krivas and then-redshirting walk-on Jackson Cook.

Bradley averaged 20.2 minutes as a backup guard, playing behind Kylan Boswell and Caleb Love, while Krivas spelled center Oumar Ballo for an average of 12.1 minutes a game.

Those Wildcats were ranked 11th in offensive efficiency, 10th in defensive efficiency and shot 3s pretty well (36.6%).

These Wildcats rank eighth offensively, third defensively, and it doesn’t usually matter much what they do from the 3-point line, considering their ability to beat teams in any number of other ways, especially by mowing them down inside. 

Iowa State coach T.J. Otzelberger said the Wildcats were the best team he’s ever faced during his five-year career at Iowa State, and spoke of how playing in the rugged Big 12 forces teams to "get better or fold."

But when Lloyd was asked if winning the highly rated Big 12 meant more than doing so in the Pac-12, a conference UA won in Lloyd's first season of 2021-22 and again in 2023-24, Lloyd grinned in a way that almost turned into a grimace.

“That’s like being asked to choose your favorite kid,� Lloyd said.

The answer to that, of course, was that he loved them all.

“Those Pac-12 ones were special, because we just got it started here,� Lloyd said. “What it did was create a foundation of what we could do as a program. It created belief, and those things matter.

"We have deep belief that we can be one of the best basketball programs in the country consistently, but we know we're going to have to fight for that.�

They know that because each of those first two conference championship teams was ultimately judged on their losses in the Sweet 16 to lesser-seeded teams: The No. 1-seeded Wildcats lost to No. 5 Houston in 2022, and the No. 2-seeded Wildcats fell to No. 6 Clemson in 2024.

Here’s a look at how those UA teams were built, and how the current one compares:

2021-22

The record: 33-4 overall, 18-2 Pac-12

The backdrop: Lloyd inherited his entire starting lineup from former UA coach Sean Miller before his first season as Arizona’s head coach, but he also had to overcome the dark clouds that hung over the program from years of FBI and NCAA investigations toward the end of Miller’s reign.

The construction: Lloyd re-recruited three eventual NBA Draft picks — guards Bennedict Mathurin and Dalen Terry, plus center Christian Koloko — and also redeployed Miller recruits Kerr Kriisa (at point guard) and Azoulas Tubelis (at power forward) to make up his usual starting five. Then he added a long-term center prospect from Gonzaga in Oumar Ballo, a senior transfer in Justin Kier and a sophomore transfer in wing Pelle Larsson to play roles off the bench.

The journey: The Wildcats quickly wiped away the dark clouds by starting out 11-0, beating Michigan in Las Vegas and winning at Illinois. They then went 18-2 in the Pac-12, winning the league by three games, and also beat Stanford, Colorado and UCLA to win the Pac-12 Tournament.

Seeded No. 1 in the West Region, the Wildcats beat Wright State 87-70 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, then survived an overtime battle with TCU in the second round. But they were pushed around in a 72-60 loss to Houston in the Sweet 16 that prompted Lloyd to seek more toughness in his program.

The stat: 65.2 – Percentage of field goals that came as a result of assists, the second-highest percentage in Division I.

The quote: "I mean, we cut off nets. That's the most important thing. We cut nets. That's what we do." — Koloko, after the 2022 Pac-12 Tournament

2023-24

The record: 27-9 overall, 15-5 Pac-12

The backdrop: Getting a chance to bond and practice together during an August 2023 exhibition trip to Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the Wildcats mixed in high-level transfers Caleb Love (North Carolina), Keshad Johnson (San Diego State) and Bradley (Alabama) to a team that returned only Ballo from its late-season starting lineup.

The construction: While Ballo was technically the only returning starter, wing Pelle Larsson had started the 2022-23 season in the starting lineup before yielding in midseason to Campbell transfer Cedric Henderson, who was more comfortable as a starter. Lloyd then worked those two in a new lineup with Kylan Boswell at point guard, Love at shooting guard and Johnson at power forward.

The journey: The Wildcats won at Duke, beat Michigan State in Palm Springs, Calif., and Wisconsin at McKale Center to ascend to the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press Top 25 poll during an 8-0 start.

They melted down in a 100-82 loss at Stanford during the opening weekend of Pac-12 play, with Lloyd telling the Star that the Cardinal “kicked our ass� (or a variant of such) no fewer than 10 times afterward, but recovered well enough to win the Pac-12 by a game over Washington State — which had swept the season series against Arizona.

The Wildcats beat USC in the Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinals but lost to Oregon in the semifinals. That gave them an extra day of rest before they beat Long Beach State and Dayton in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament at Salt Lake City before losing to Clemson in a Sweet 16 game at Los Angeles.

The stat: 19 – Games in which Arizona had five players score in double figures, leading the nation at the end of their season.

The quote: “We had the ability to get to the Final Four and we didn't. That happens. It's nothing to look down upon.� — Lloyd, after Arizona’s Sweet 16 loss to Clemson

2025-26

The record (so far): 28-2 overall, 15-2 Big 12

The backdrop: Lloyd never regularly started a freshman during his first four seasons at Arizona, not even eventual first-round NBA Draft pick Carter Bryant last season. But the arrival of five-star freshman Koa Peat and Brayden Burries, plus another freshman who already played top-level pro ball in Germany, Ivan Kharchenkov, changed that equation.

The construction: Bryant went to the San Antonio Spurs as the No. 14 pick, and the transfer portal washed away key backups in guard KJ Lewis (Georgetown) and center Henri Veesaar (North Carolina). That left Lloyd with four veterans — Bradley, Tobe Awaka, Krivas and Anthony Dell’Orso — meaning he had to start at least one freshman.

He wound up starting three, moving Awaka and Dell’Orso to key reserve roles while sandwiching Peat, Burries and Kharchenkov between Krivas at center and Bradley at point guard.

Dell’Orso, Awaka and freshman forward Dwayne Aristode have played key reserve roles and, except for a two-week stretch last month when Aristode (illness) and Peat (lower leg injury) went missing, the Wildcats have ridden a consistent and tight rotation of those eight players.

The journey: Ranked 13th in the Associated Press Top 25 poll to begin the season, Arizona shot quickly onto the national radar with early wins over Florida, UCLA and UConn. They took over the No. 1 spot in the AP poll after beating Auburn at home on Dec. 6, and stayed atop the poll for nine iterations (a period of 10 weeks, since the poll was not conducted on Dec. 29 due to the lack of games).

During their ride at No. 1, Arizona extended its season-opening unbeaten streak to a conference-record 23 games before losing at Kansas on Feb. 9. The Wildcats lost five days later at McKale Center to Texas Tech, when Aristode missed his first game and when Peat left in the first half with an injury he appeared to first suffer a week earlier.

Since then, the Widlcats have won five straight games and clinched the Big 12 on Monday with a 73-57 win over No. 6 Iowa State.

The Wildcats have one regular-season game remaining, at Colorado on Saturday. They have earned the No. 1 Big 12 Tournament seed and project as the No. 1 West Region seed in the NCAA Tournament — where their path would likely include first-weekend games in San Diego and a possible second weekend in San Jose.

If they can win two games over each of those weekends, the Wildcats will return for the first time in a quarter-century to the Final Four, which will be held coincidentally at the site of UA's 1997 national championship, Indianapolis.

The stat: 38.7. – Percent of its missed shots that Arizona rebounds, the fourth-best offensive rebounding percentage in Division I.

The quote: The best teams I've ever been a part of continue to get better week by week in March. They don't rest on what they've done. We are always going to be more excited about what lies ahead, then protect what we've already accomplished.� – Lloyd, after Arizona clinched the Big 12 title on Monday