Teams with winning traditions struggling

Arizona, Kentucky, Maryland, Syracuse and others are short on victories.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — In many years, Arizona, Kentucky, Maryland and Syracuse would be a strong Final Four.

This year, it might be the NIT Final Four.

As the regular season winds down and conference tournaments tip off, the Terrapins, Orange and Wildcats — the Arizona and Kentucky varieties — are in bubble trouble.

If pedigree were all that matters, they’d have nothing to worry about on Selection Sunday. But while these powerhouses are long on tradition, at the moment they’re short on victories.

“We are in desperation mode now,” Arizona forward Chase Budinger said.

Arizona has reached the NCAA tournament 23 straight years, the nation’s longest active streak.

Kentucky has played in a record 48 NCAA tournaments, with seven titles and 13 Final Four appearances.

Maryland and Syracuse have each won national titles in this decade.

They aren’t the only big names sweating the stretch run. Florida (21-8, 8-6 SEC), the two-time defending national champion, has lost five of eight and has few notable victories.

Ohio State (17-12, 8-8 Big Ten), which reached the national final last spring, beat the Gators in December but has lost five of its last six.

Big East bully Villanova (17-12, 7-9 Big East) also has work to do.

“We know we’ve got to win some games to get in the [NCAA] tournament,” Florida freshman forward Adam Allen said Monday. “Nobody wants to go to the NIT. It’s like the champion of the losers if you win that.”

Allen was talking about the Gators, but he could have been speaking for all the elite teams scrambling to improve their tourney resumes.

Start with the Arizona Wildcats (17-12, 7-9 Pac-10), who have picked a bad time to hit the skids. They’ve lost six of their last seven and were swept over the weekend by USC and No. 4 UCLA at McKale Center, their once-impregnable home.

Even so, interim coach Kevin O’Neill believes his team deserves strong consideration from NCAA selectors.

“I just want to play through the rest of the season and see what they say,” O’Neill said. “I doubt there are 64 teams better than us, but we will see.”

The Wildcats finish the regular season at last-place Oregon State and Oregon this weekend. The Wildcats split with those teams in January.

Kentucky (16-11, 10-4 SEC) is going in the other direction. After a 7-9 start, including an unthinkable loss to Gardner-Webb, the Wildcats looked as if they had no prayer of making the tournament. But with nine wins in their last 11 games, they’re closing with a rush, and Saturday they threw a scare into then-No. 1 Tennessee, losing 63-60 in Knoxville.

The Wildcats have lost freshman Patrick Patterson, their No. 2 scorer and leading rebounder, for the rest of the season with an ankle injury.

Kentucky visits South Carolina on Wednesday and wraps up the regular season against Florida on Sunday.

“I know they can win these games without me,” Patterson said. “I know they can play because if they couldn’t, they wouldn’t be here. We have total confidence in ourselves and our teammates.”

Kentucky last missed the NCAA tournament in 1991, Rick Pitino’s second season in Lexington — and it wasn’t because of performance. The Wildcats went 22-6 but stayed home because they were on NCAA probation.

The last time the Wildcats were eligible and failed to qualify for the NCAAs was in 1988-89, when they went 13-19 in Eddie Sutton’s last year. To put that into perspective, Patterson was born on March 14, 1989, four days after Kentucky ended its season with a loss to Vanderbilt in the SEC tournament.