The UCLA basketball team has proven it’s good enough to dispatch even middle-tier Pac-12 competiton with relative ease. There is, of course, always the possibility the No. 3 team in the country will fall victim to an upset. That aside, UCLA is left with less than a handful of pivotal games on the schedule. Saturday is one of them.

A win over No. 14 Arizona will leave UCLA with just a single loss to an 11th-ranked Oregon team it’s going to face again. A loss to Arizona and UCLA will have two sizable hurdles between it and a Pac-12 championship – UCLA hosts Oregon Feb. 9 and visits Arizona Feb. 25.

Remember when the Bruins were breezing through a relatively weak non-conference schedule, save Kentucky? They are still in need of quality victories, as their 118th-ranked schedule, according to kenpom.com, would indicate. A win over Arizona would be a significant piece of UCLA’s NCAA tournament resume.

Similar to UCLA’s signature win this season at Kentucky, Arizona provides an opportunity to see how some of the best young talent in college basketball matches up against each other. Lonzo Ball will try to push the pace against the best defense in the Pac-12. TJ Leaf will face off with another potential lottery pick in Arizona’s 7-foot Finnish freshman Lauri Markkanen.

There is plenty of intrigue surrounding the first matchup of top-20 teams at Pauley Pavilion in nine years.

Links to our pregame coverage of UCLA versus Arizona:

UCLA enters matchup with more hype than Arizona for a change

March Madness in the air for biggest event at Pauley in years

Arizona caught looking crosstown during Thursday’s win at USC

UCLA to honor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at halftime