made an endorsement<\/a> of the No. 1 Arizona Wildcats.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ve been watching these games very closely because it\u2019s starting to get serious,\u201d Barkley said. \u201cI\u2019ve been watching more college basketball, and as I call March Madness, it\u2019s the \u2018Arizona Invitational\u2019 just for the record. That\u2019s what March Madness is going to be. It\u2019s gonna be the \u2018Arizona Invitational.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Barkley made that claim after Arizona maintained its undefeated record with a thrilling 86-83 win against the No. 13 BYU Cougars on Monday at the Marriott Center in Provo, Utah.\u00a0 The Wildcats were put to the test by AJ Dybantsa and the Cougars and came away with yet another Quadrant 1 victory.<\/p>\n
There are reasons why March Madness is arguably the most exciting playoffs in sports, and its extreme unpredictability is part of its charm. As strong as Arizona has looked thus far in the 2025-26 college basketball season, it will still be vulnerable to the chaos of the national tournament.<\/p>\n
Still, it doesn\u2019t appear that Barkley is going to change his mind on Arizona soon. Unless, of course, the Wildcats drop in form in the final stretches of the season.<\/p>\n
The 21-0 Wildcats, who are ranked No. 1 by the Associated Press Poll and KenPom, will look to keep it going on Saturday against the Arizona State Sun Devils at Desert Financial Arena in Tempe, Ariz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Charles Barkley just shared a big take on the Big Dance. Although March Madness is still several weeks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[12309,7,2001,7456,1400],"class_list":{"0":"post-569879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-arizona-wildcats-basketball","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-charles-barkley","11":"tag-march-madness","12":"tag-ncaa-tournament"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115981828428055172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}