Arizona has been here before.

Sure, the Wildcats have played an NCAA West Regional semifinal game in Denver before, a 68-67 loss to UNLV in 1989. This also marks UA's fifth appearance in the Sweet 16 in the last nine years. But beyond that, UA has been in the position they find themselves now, just hours before they take on Kansas, several times this season.

Arkansas. Michigan. Georgetown. UCLA (twice). Cincinnati. In each of these contests against the upper echelon of college basketball, even before center Joseph Blair was declared academically ineligible, UA was thought to be undermanned. Once Blair went down in January, the Wildcats were thought to be undermanned and incredibly small.

Yet Arizona went 5-1 in those games.

"When we play the big boys, we always seem to step up as a team," senior point guard Reggie Geary explained.

The third-seeded Wildcats (26-6) will need every bit of that "step up" tonight against the No. 2 seed Jayhawks (28-4). The winner gets the Syracuse-Georgia winner Sunday at 12:30 p.m. for the right to go to the Final Four in East Rutherford, N. J., next weekend.

In the Jayhawks, UA will meet a team with height in the middle and an explosive point guard. Sophomore Raef LaFrentz (6-foot-11, 220 pounds) and junior Scot Pollard (6-10, 250) will each enjoy height advantages in the paint. LaFrentz will be matched with UA's 6-6, 217-pound Joe McLean, while Ben Davis (6-9, 255 pounds) will guard Pollard.

Despite what seems to be a mismatch, the Wildcats are confident they won't be pushed around inside.

"We've played a lot of big teams. UCLA was pretty big," said Davis, who leads the team in scoring (14.3 points) and rebounding (9.7). "Size really doesn't matter."

"Pollard is very physical, but LaFrentz, for a sophomore, isn't very physical," said UA head coach Lute Olson. "We've played physical teams. No one is more physical than Georgetown and Iowa. Frankly, our guys like it when it's more physical."

KU head coach Roy Williams recognizes his team will have to take advantage of the mismatches for Kansas to be successful.

"They have the ability to score, and they need to do it," he said of his post people. "Raef has good, long arms and needs to be a force offensively."

Despite their bulk, Kansas still likes to run, with point guard Jacque Vaughn leading the charge. Vaughn, a second-team All-American who was named Big Eight Player of the Year this season, averages 10.5 points, a conference-high 6.5 assists and 3.2 rebounds as the do-it-all member of the Jayhawks.

Pollard even suggested he wouldn't mind getting into an up-tempo game with Arizona, though it appears on paper that the Wildcats are quicker as a team and would want an up-and-down game. That suggestion brought a smile to the face of Geary.

"C'mon, if they want to run, we'll run," Geary said, who will co-star in the marquee matchup against Vaughn. "This isn't Torrey Pines anymore."

Despite the subtle dig on Pollard's California high school, UA is not overconfident heading into tonight's game. Olson said these teams, in his mind, are basically even.

"They've got scoring balance, we've got scoring balance. Jacque Vaughn makes them go, Reggie makes us go," Olson said. "They play great defense, they have for years. They hold opponents a couple of percentage points below us (41 percent to 39 percent) and we shoot a couple percentage points higher than them (49.3 percent to 45.9 percent). We're almost identical."

KU's defense benefits from their height in the middle, but Corey Williams said UA's quickness can minimize that advantage.