{"id":41015,"date":"2025-07-27T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/41015\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T21:32:08","slug":"national-cbb-writer-names-arizona-longshot-2026-national-title-contender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/41015\/","title":{"rendered":"National CBB writer names Arizona longshot 2026 national title contender"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arizona was picked as a “National championship dark horses, longshot looks” by Isaac Trotter of CBS Sports as part of his article<\/a> “101 Days Out: College basketball stars, new faces, contenders, storylines ahead of 2025-26 season,” published on Friday. <\/p>\n

Arizona is tied for 15th nationally with Alabama, Gonzaga, Iowa State, and UCLA at +3500 in the FanDuel Sportsbook<\/a> to win the 2026 National Championship. Alabama, Iowa State and UCLA are 2025-26 Arizona opponents. <\/p>\n

Alabama was also picked as a longshot by Trotter. Gonzaga as one of Trotter’s “Good teams hidden in plain sight.” Iowa State was named one of the “Best (projected) defenses” by Trotter. UCLA was not mentioned in any of the team categories by Trotter. <\/p>\n

Arizona returns three starters and signed the third-best 2025 class in the 247Sports composite rankings<\/a>. The Wildcats should have a good balance of perimeter play and size on the interior. Arizona will have to improve its three-point shooting after finishing 189th in 2024-25, shooting 33.8 percent.<\/p>\n

“79. Arizona (35-1): Playing Arizona is going to be miserable because it will easily be one of the most physical teams in the country. Jaden Bradley is a bulldog at point guard. The front-line combination of five-star Koa Peat, Tobe Awaka, Motiejus Krivas and Sidi Gueye is ridiculous…Arizona has a plug-and-play difference-maker on the way in five-star freshman Brayden Burries…Arizona is going to bludgeon teams this year and looks every bit the part of a top-15 team in the country.”<\/p>\n

Isaac Trotter, CBS Sports<\/p>\n

Awaka, Bradley and Anthony Dell’Orso return for Arizona as starters. Five-star freshmen Burries and Peat are likely to start with Awaka, Bradley and Krivas. Dell’Orso was the best three-point shooter in the 2024-25 Arizona rotation, making 41.3 percent of his attempts. <\/p>\n

Awaka, Krivas and Peat would give Arizona a huge frontline. Awaka and Peat are 6’8 and Krivas is 7’2. Gueye gives Arizona size at 6’11, but fellow 2025 signee Dwayne Aristode, who can play both forward positions, is far more likely to break into the rotation as a freshman.<\/p>\n

Bradley and Krivas return for their third season with Arizona as the players in the rotation who have been on the Wildcats the longest. Awaka, Bradley, Dell’Orso and Krivas project as the leaders for Arizona, who will have a young rotation otherwise. <\/p>\n

Arizona finished 12th nationally<\/a> with a 55.0 percent rebounding rate in 2024-25. The return of Krivas after he had a season-ending injury after eight games in 2024-25 and the addition of Peat could make Arizona more physical and a better rebounding team than they were in 2024-25.<\/p>\n

The ceiling for Arizona in 2025-26 will be determined by Krivas’ health and how quickly the freshmen develop. Harvard guard Evan Nelson is the only transfer addition Arizona made for 2024-25. At the very least Arizona will be a contender in the Big XII again. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arizona was picked as a “National championship dark horses, longshot looks” by Isaac Trotter of CBS Sports as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-41015","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}