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Championship aspirations

Arizona Summer Wildcat

Edgerson returns to an already deep team

Expectations have a way of crumbling a team when they are too heavy. Don't tell this to the UA men's basketball team, though, as they prepare for the 2000-01 season.

Lofty expectations are the norm for the Wildcats, who will enter the season as the one of the favorites to capture the national championship.

"I don't think any player who comes to Arizona doesn't come here in part because that's what they want," UA head coach Lute Olson said about the possibility of being No. 1 next season. "They want the expectations to be high -and certainly they will be high next year. I wouldn't want them to think anything less than they are going to play for the whole ball of wax. That's the way we approach every year."

The team returns all five of its starters from last year's squad that won the Pacific 10 Conference championship and was the No. 1 seed in the west region of the NCAA tournament.

Sophomore guards Jason Gardner and Gilbert Arenas, junior forwards Richard Jefferson and Michael Wright and senior center Loren Woods will provide balanced scoring from all five positions on the floor.

"We have such a dynamic starting five," undergraduate assistant coach Josh Pastner said. "We have five stars playing together."

In addition to the return of the starters, Arizona will also have the luxury of having depth on the bench as sophomore forward Luke Walton and senior forwards Justin Wessel and Eugene Edgerson will all see considerable playing time.

"With everyone returning and the experience the guys on the bench received, our depth - which was a weakness last season - will now be one of bigger strengths," Olson said. "With our experience, the way that the guys played before the injuries and the way the guys who stepped into the lineup, there should be great expectations of our team."

Due to a rash of injuries and departures, the Wildcats were severely undermanned last season, using only a six-man rotation in many games.

One of the key's to the 2000-01 season will be the recovery of Woods, the Pac-10 Newcomer of the Year, from offseason back surgeries that forced him to miss team's final nine games last season.

A healthy Woods gives UA one of the top centers in all of college basketball and provides huge match-up problems for most team when trying to guard the 7-foot-1 center.

The return of Edgerson, though, may be the biggest addition to the roster as he returns after red-shirting last season.

"I think Gene is going to be a huge key," Pastner said. "He is such an enforcer."

Also entering the mix this season will be two freshman - guard Travis Hanour and forward Andrew Zahn.

With such a deep team, breaking into the regular rotation could be difficult for the freshman, but both will play valuable roles on the practice floor.

"Both Travis and Andrew will play big roles," Pastner said. "They are going to have to try and bust there butts to get into the rotation."

Being freshman, both Zahn and Hanour will have plenty of experienced players to look up to and pattern themselves after, but they will also have to encounter the difficulties of being freshman on a veteran team.

"Let them experience what it is to be a freshman," Arenas said of the new freshman. "What Loren (Woods) did to us, we will do to them. We didn't get any slack. He said he didn't like us, we didn't get any calls. If he fouls us, he gets the ball back, but if we touch him, it's a foul."

The biggest challenge for Arizona this year may not be the lofty expectations but a grueling schedule that will test the Wildcats early and often.

"If you have seen the preliminary schedule, you can see that we are in very deep in terms of the competition we are going to face," Olson said. "We are going to play quite a few of those on the road or neutral site locations. The Maui Invitational is loaded again as it always is (Arizona, Chaminade, Connecticut, Dayton, Illinois, Louisville, Maryland, UNLV). We will play Illinois at the United Center, Purdue in Indianapolis at the Wooden Tradition, LSU here, Texas here and we go to Connecticut."

Along with a tough Pac-10 schedule, the Wildcats have a long road Minneapolis, the site of this year's Final Four.