The Arizona Wildcats have their bracket for the Diamond Head Classic in Honolulu in December, opening against East Tennessee State on Dec. 22.
This will be the first meeting between the schools since that painful 1992 first-round game in the NCAA Tournament, when the 14th-seeded Buccaneers stunned the third-seeded Cats 87-80.
More than 20 years later, Sean Miller’s Wildcats will try to beat ETSU to advance in the eight-team tournament to play the Miami-Hawaii winner.
The first-round matchups in the other half of the bracket are Mississippi-Indiana State and San Diego State-San Francisco.
The semifinals will be held Dec. 23. The title game is set for Christmas on ESPN2, with the time to be announced. Each game of the tournament will be televised somewhere on the ESPN family of networks.
Each of a quartet of ESPN.com writers, including Andy Katz, picks Arizona to beat San Diego State in the Diamond Head Classic championship game.
Writes Katz: “Arizona over San Diego State: If this game were earlier in the season, when Arizona’s coterie of freshman were still finding their sea legs, I’d probably give the edge to SDSU. But come Christmastime Arizona will have had nearly two months to build around that star-studded freshman class, and their sheer talent wins out.”
For the full Arizona basketball schedule, click the link to arizonawildcats.com.