ÃÛÌÒÓ°ÏñAV

That was the day was released. They didn’t think very much of your Wildcats, picking them to finish ninth among the 11 baseball-playing schools.

The poll, for whatever it was worth, suggested that Arizona would barely make the Pac-12 Tournament, let alone the NCAA Tournament.

Even Chip Hale wasn’t sure what to expect from his team, which had many new faces and placed countless players into new roles. Having lost Chase Davis, Kiko Romero, Nik McClaughry, Tony Bullard and Mac Bingham to pro ball or the transfer portal, Arizona seemed destined for a rebuilding year. A 10-13 start — albeit against a brutal slate of NCAA-bound opponents, mostly on the road — only affirmed that notion.

Fast-forward to late May. Led by a vastly improved pitching staff, the Wildcats proved that those preseason expectations were misguided at best. They blew them away. Arizona won the Pac-12 regular-season title with a 20-10 record — just the third time the Wildcats have won 20-plus conference games since the 30-game format was introduced in 2012. The other two times, in ’12 and ’21, Arizona advanced to the College World Series.

Add in a Pac-12 Tournament title, and it’s a wholly different discussion. Thanks to their stellar play, the Wildcats raised expectations tenfold. That’s why the outcome of the Tucson Regional — losses to Grand Canyon and Dallas Baptist in which Arizona didn’t do anything particularly well — felt so disappointing.

I’m not going to sugarcoat any of that. The Wildcats didn’t play up to the standard they had set during the season. If nothing else, they were almost always a tough out — a team that would battle until the last at-bat. For whatever reason, that team never appeared during the regional.

It doesn’t mean that the season overall wasn’t a success. Because it unequivocally was.

With the least talented roster he’s had (in my opinion), Hale did his best coaching job — as both a program and dugout leader. In critical ways, Arizona took a big step in the right direction.

It began with Hale’s best move of the 2023 offseason — hiring Kevin Vance as pitching coach. With his modern approach — expertly blending analytics and mental toughness — Vance transformed a weakness into a strength.

That, in turn, helped improve the clubhouse culture. Instead of us (the hitters) vs. them (the pitchers), it became all for one and one for all.

The lingering question is how to take the next step — how to go from making an NCAA regional to winning one.

Before I get into that, it’s worth noting that Arizona made the tournament for a fourth straight year — something that had never been done in the modern history of the program. I realize that the format has changed, the field has expanded, etc. But it’s not nothing. Three of those appearances came on Hale’s watch.

Jerry Kindall, Andy Lopez and Jay Johnson never led their teams to four consecutive NCAA Tournaments. But two of the three won the CWS, and the other got there twice in five tries. That’s the overarching expectation for Arizona baseball. That’s the goal. That’s how Hale can win over the doubters.

Getting back to Omaha will require further advancement in areas where the Wildcats already have made strides. Some changes could be in order as well.

Arizona can’t expect to make the CWS if its pitching regresses. So retaining Vance is paramount.

I haven’t so much as heard a rumor about Vance going elsewhere. Although he played college ball on the East Coast, he’s a West Coast guy (San Diego). He fit in seamlessly at Arizona, and the program has provided him the funding and space to build a pitching lab inside the Terry Francona Hitting Center.

But when you do your job as well as Vance did — the Wildcats’ ERA dropped from 5.97 to 4.46 with mostly the same arms — other programs will take notice. If an SEC school were to lure Vance away with a financial package Arizona couldn’t match, it wouldn’t come as a surprise. Hopefully Hale and the UA will do right by Vance and incentivize him to stay.

The Wildcats will need to rebuild their starting rotation with Clark Candiotti and Cam Walty running out of eligibility and Jackson Kent more likely than not to be drafted. They’ll have to find at least one veteran starter in the transfer portal, maybe two. Vance and his right-hand man, John DeRouin, know exactly what they’re looking for in terms of makeup and metrics, all the more reason to make sure they stick around.

The offense — which was never great, at least by recent UA standards — should improve organically. Most of the position players who occupied significant roles or are projected to next season — Mason White, Brendan Summerhill, Maddox Mihalakis, Adonys Guzman, Easton Breyfogle, Andrew Cain, TJ Adams — were sophomores or freshmen in 2024. They all should get better with more high-level at-bats.

Arizona finished the season with a .278 batting average — the first time the Wildcats have been below .280 since 1994. Aside from White, the ’24 squad didn’t make up for it by hitting the ball over the wall. Arizona’s 57 home runs were 41 fewer than last year and marked its lowest total in a full season since 2018. The Wildcats didn’t hit a homer in any of their last eight games at Hi Corbett Field.

If the ’24 team had the ’23 team’s hitting — or the ’23 team had the ’24 team’s pitching — you’re talking about a national-title contender. When the two are in sync, it makes for a magical season. Again, that’s the goal.

Something else was missing during the Tucson Regional, and it’s much harder to quantify. Similar to the first two games of the Oregon State series, the Wildcats seemed oddly flat. Maybe it’s because all those games started unfavorably, with Arizona facing early multiple-run deficits. Maybe it’s something deeper.

Hale said he was thinking during the DBU loss about ways he might prepare his team differently for future NCAA Tournament games. Here’s an idea: Add a graduate or undergraduate assistant to change the vibe a bit.

Hale, Vance and assistant coaches Trip Couch and Toby DeMello are generally laid-back guys. Perhaps it was just a coincidence that Arizona won a pair of games in the Coral Gables Regional in 2022 with fiery Brian Anderson also on staff. Perhaps not.

Regardless of what changes are coming to college sports, these players are not professionals. They’re young and emotional. That can be a detriment at times. It also might be something that’s worth tapping into.

<&rule>