Of all the scenes that Al Pacino steals/owns in The Devil’s Advocate, one of my favorites is the rooftop job interview with Keanu Reeves:

Pacino: “I know you’ve got talent. I knew that before you got here. It’s just the other thing I wonder about.”

Reeves: “What thing?”

Pacino: “PRESSURE! It changes everything. Pressure. Some people, you squeeze them, they focus. Others fold.”

In the first official year of the post-Lute Olson era, Arizona is facing more pressure than any lower-seeded team in the NCAA Tournament. The 12th-seeded Wildcats were able to keep its Big Dance streak alive at 25 under new coach Russ Pennell, but now face the task of reversing a recent trend of early postseason exits for one of the country’s supposed-to-be elite programs. Since Mike Bibby, Miles Simon and Jason Terry helped lead the ‘Cats to a national championship in ‘97, Arizona has suffered four first-round Tournament losses and two second-round losses. The last two seasons have ended with first-day exits, despite a rotating cast of NBA-caliber players that included Jerryd Bayless, Hassan Adams and Marcus Williams.

As Pacino said, talent has never been the problem. Along with UCLA, Arizona has always been able to cherry-pick the best players on the West Coast and throughout the country — this year they have projected Top-10 pick Jordan Hill (18.5 ppg, 11.0 rpg) and Chase Budinger (17.9 ppg, 6.3 rpg), who’s also expected to go in the first round as an underclassman. Junior point guard Nic Wise (15.1 ppg, 4.6 apg) would also be getting more NBA looks if he wasn’t 5-foot-10, but on the college level is a legit force; he dropped 29 points on Washington earlier this season, scored 27 apiece on USC and Stanford, and gave UCLA 26.

Pound-for-pound, ‘Zona has more talent than Utah; they even have enough ability to (theoretically) hang with likely second-round opponent Wake Forest. But there’s a reason they only finished 9-9 in the Pac-10 and dropped their first-round conference tourney game. There’s a reason they only barely got into the field of 65 with a 19-13 overall record, the third straight year the Wildcats have had to sweat out a Selection Show. Can they handle the pressure of big expectations, or will they disappoint yet again?

There’s another scene in Devil’s Advocate, when Pacino is giving Keanu the “They don’t see me coming” speech. In it, Pacino tells this story: “There’s this beautiful girl just (did) me 40 ways from Sunday. We’re done, she’s walking to the bathroom — she’s trying to walk — she turns … she looks … it’s me. Not the Trojan army just (did) her. Little ol’ me. She has this look on her face like: ‘How the hell did that happen?’”

Too many times, Arizona fans have see their team with that same look on their faces after unexpected losses to lesser-talented teams. The odds say it will happen again when they face the Utes on Friday in Miami, unless they can turn that pressure into an advantage.

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