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Even if the Wildcats don't extend their streak of 20-win seasons to 21 by beating West Virginia on Thursday, Arizona basketball players can probably return home safely next week.

The Wildcats have already endured a distraction-filled, injury-plagued season while toiling in one of the nation's toughest conferences. They lost a potential key reserve to a transfer and had only four reliable players available most of the season.

Then they managed to keep the program's point of pride alive with a 24th straight NCAA tournament berth.

Isn't that enough?

"No. No. No," wing Jawann McClellan said. "Obviously, we've been through an up-and-down season. But our season's not over with by far. We want to go as far as we can in the tournament."

That's the kind of attitude UA interim head coach Kevin O'Neill is looking for. Even after he marveled in relief when the Wildcats were given one of the final five slots announced during Sunday's selection show, he made it clear that the relief was not to be mistaken for complacency.

"Getting in, to me, was a big accomplishment," O'Neill said. "But 65 people did that. I would hope we'd want to accomplish more."

They do.

"If we lose our first game, that would be a disappointing season," wing Chase Budinger said. "We're a very talented group of guys and we thought we should make a good run in the tournament."

That means not only beating West Virginia but also even a likely second-round game against second-seeded Duke.

"West Virginia's a good team, but they're beatable," forward Jordan Hill said. "Everybody's beatable. We've got Duke after that and they're definitely beatable. We've just got to play hard and play smart."

Then, if the Wildcats somehow shock the Blue Devils they would play in the Sweet 16 in Phoenix, a fortunate result of the selection committee's having spread out the Pac-10's top four finishers to separate regions.

By then, their run could be a sprint … all the way into UCLA for the regional final.

"If we get past this weekend," McClellan said, "it's like having two home games next week back in Phoenix, which is what we wanted back at the beginning of the year as a 1, 2 or 3 seed. We got in another way. This was not the way we wanted to get in, but we'll take it."

Of course, all that is crazy speculation at this point. Even McClellan says he is focused solely on West Virginia, which appears capable of giving Arizona plenty of trouble.

The Mountaineers went 11-7 in the Big East and are 24-10 overall, losing to Georgetown on Friday in their conference tournament. While they have enough capable three-point shooters that O'Neill compared them to Oregon, the Mountaineers also appear to match up comparably to Arizona.

West Virginia does have a 7-footer, the ironically named Kevin Smalligan, but the Mountaineers often play shorter with 6-8 Joe Alexander in the middle. Nobody else on the roster is taller than Alexander, either.

So O'Neill, who tends to focus on defensive matchups, might be able to breathe another sigh of relief. There will be no Brook Lopez or Kevin Love clogging the middle, no huge wings messing with his scorers' offensive games.

Just an opponent that shoots well and plays hard.

"The first thing you want to match up with anybody is physically," O'Neill said. "The second part is depth. They're probably a little deeper than we are on the perimeter. But you also want to be able to match skill levels, and I think we're able to do that. So I think it should be a heck of a game."