And how sweet it is. After winning over Texas last Sunday, the University of Arizona Men’s Basketball team secured a slot in the NCAA’s coveted Sweet 16.

"It's an incredible feeling,” said Wildcat Head Coach, Sean Miller. “You see the emotions in the locker room and how much it means, and the reason it means so much is that it's so hard to do. The focus, the ups and downs, the adversity a season brings, and to be here at the end, and to move through the tournament with only sixteen teams is just, an incredible feeling.”

Now, the No.5 seeded Wildcats will travel to Anaheim to take on No.1 seeded Duke in the West Regional Semifinal transpiring on Thursday. The meeting will be the eighth time UA has faced Duke, with the latter holding out a 4-3 record over Arizona.

"I think that, no matter who the coach is, or what team you coach, when you play Duke, it's about one thing: giving them the proper respect that they deserve,” Miller said in a press conference on Tuesday. “From the perspective of there not being a harder playing, consistent team, than them.”

Miller continued about the large effort UA will have to put forth to play on par with the well-noted energy of Duke’s players.

“Every team tries to match their intensity and effort, and at best it's almost a wash,” Miller said. “For us, looking at our game, it's almost the one thing we're trying to instill in our team is that this game is so much about great effort, because the team you're playing is great at that. They have a lot of talent, a great coach, defense is terrific, but it's their effort level that they play at that sometimes can catch you off guard. We're trying to not let that happen to us.”

With seating for 17,608 patrons, Anaheim’s Honda Center will be a packed house for the game beginning at 6:45 PDT on Thursday. CBS is set to broadcast live coverage.

For Arizona player Lamont Jones, going in to the game with a calm attitude and perspective is the current task at hand.

“Of course it's a big game, it's probably the biggest game of our college career right now--the Sweet Sixteen against Duke, a number one seed,” Jones said. “It's a big game and I try not to think about it because I know how I get when I get hyped up. I just try to stay levelheaded about the whole situation."

To Learn More

UA Men’s Basketball, www.arizonawildcats.com