Arizona went from untouchable to uncertain in five days, and the injury to its projected lottery pick may be the difference between a No. 1 seed and a second-weekend exit.
What Peat’s Absence Already Looks Like for Arizona
Koa Peat scored only on free throws in the first half against Texas Tech on Saturday. He played 11 minutes, scored two points on free throws, grabbed one rebound, and then exited late in the first half with a lower-leg injury. He never came back.
What followed was a preview of Arizona without its most physically imposing player. The Wildcats led 64-57 with just over three minutes left in regulation and couldn’t close. Arizona failed to make another field goal for the rest of regulation as Texas Tech ripped off a 9-0 run to force overtime, where JT Toppin finished off a 31-point, 13-rebound masterpiece to give the Red Raiders a 78-75 win in Tucson.
Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd was measured afterward but offered nothing concrete. “We’re gonna figure it out. It’s a lower leg deal,” Lloyd told reporters, adding that doctors were doing testing and he didn’t have further details.
The Wildcats were already shorthanded. Freshman forward Dwayne Aristode missed Saturday’s game due to illness, reducing Arizona to a six-man rotation once Peat went down. Tobe Awaka stepped in capably alongside Motiejus Krivas, but the offense cratered without Peat’s interior gravity. Arizona managed a season-low 26 points in the paint, well below its season average.
Lloyd tried to frame the loss as execution, not personnel. “It hurts us a lot, but we had enough to win,” he said. “You’re up seven with three minutes and change to go, you got to find a way to close that out.” He’s not wrong. But the fact remains that Arizona’s offense flatlined at the worst possible moment, and the player most capable of generating a bucket in traffic was watching from the bench in street clothes.
Five days earlier, Peat struggled in Arizona’s first loss of the season, an 82-78 defeat at Kansas. He finished with just six points in a game where the Wildcats were outscored by 16 during a second-half stretch and missed 13 of 14 shots. Between the Kansas game and his early exit against Texas Tech, Peat scored a combined eight points in Arizona’s two losses.
The 23-game winning streak that opened the season feels like ancient history. Arizona is 23-2, still in strong position for a top seed, and the sky isn’t falling yet. But the schedule ahead is merciless, and the margin for error without Peat is razor-thin.
Bracket Picture, Draft Implications, and the Caleb Wilson Parallel
Arizona’s remaining regular-season slate reads like a Selection Committee stress test. The Wildcats host BYU on Wednesday, travel to Houston on Saturday, visit Baylor the following Tuesday, then come home for Kansas and Iowa State in a three-day span. Five of their final seven games are against AP-ranked opponents. Navigating that gauntlet at full strength would be hard enough. Doing it without Peat could be the kind of stretch that drops a No. 1 seed to a No. 3.
The timing is brutal for Peat personally, too. He’s averaging around 14 points, better than five rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game while shooting north of 54% from the field.
Most mock drafts have him slotted in the lottery range of the 2026 NBA Draft, with opinions split on whether his combination of interior toughness, mid-range scoring, and defensive versatility at 6-foot-8, 235 pounds translates to a top-five pick or a late-lottery selection.
Either way, a significant absence during the most important stretch of the college season would stall momentum he’s built since dropping 30 on Florida in the opener.
The parallel to North Carolina is impossible to ignore. Two days before Peat went down, UNC announced that freshman star Caleb Wilson fractured his left hand and is out indefinitely. Wilson, who averages nearly 20 points and more than nine rebounds, is a projected top-five pick whose absence has already reshuffled expectations in Chapel Hill.
The Tar Heels went from a team riding a signature win over Duke to one scrambling to hold its NCAA Tournament seeding together.
Arizona could be staring at the same kind of recalibration. Peat isn’t Wilson in terms of usage rate or scoring volume, but he’s the connective piece that makes the Wildcats’ offense function inside the arc.
Without him, Arizona becomes a perimeter-dependent team that can be crowded and sped up by physical opponents. That’s exactly what Texas Tech did on Saturday. It’s exactly what Kansas did on Monday. And it’s exactly what Houston, Iowa State, and a second meeting with Kansas will try to do in the weeks ahead.
If the tests come back showing something minor and Peat returns for Houston, this week becomes a footnote in an otherwise historic season. If it’s a multi-week absence, Arizona’s margin for a No. 1 seed shrinks considerably, and the Wildcats will need Jaden Bradley and Brayden Burries to carry a perimeter load they haven’t had to shoulder alone all year.
Tommy Lloyd built this roster to absorb a punch. The next 10 days will determine whether Arizona can take two.