2019-20 Pac-12 preview: Oregon atop a deep conference

Can the Wildcats take the next step?

What happened last year?

After going 6-24 in 2017-18 (including a 2-16 mark in the Pac-12), Arizona finally took a big stride forward under Adia Barnes, the third-year head coach and former on-court star for the Wildcats. The team had an 18-game improvement overall and a five-game improvement in conference play, ending up 24-13 (7-11 Pac-12) and playing their best ball at the end of the season.

That late-season form led the Wildcats to the WNIT postseason title, an honor they took in front of ever-increasing crowds. When all was said and done, Arizona was cutting down the nets in McKale Center in front of a sellout crowd of 14,644 fans–a record for the most fans to ever attend a Pac-12 women’s basketball game.

“It was a lot more than I thought,” Barnes said about the WNIT run. “You know, a lot of people asked me was I disappointed because we didn’t make the tournament. I mean, of course you are. You always want to make the tournament. But it was the absolute best thing for our program and where we’re at. I mean, going to the NIT, playing six games, ending the season with a win,
having momentum carry over to this year, it was the best thing.

“I think one of the most rewarding things was seeing how the city just gravitated towards it. They were hungry for excitement with women’s basketball, and the crowd just grew every single game. It was fun. We weren’t focused on the crowd. People were like, ‘Oh, you were marketing, you were doing this and that.’ No, I was having fun and it doesn’t take a lot to tweet, so thank goodness for social media and you guys because it was easy. That was the easy part. It was fun, and we all believed in our room, we believed that we could win, so we were on a mission to win. Like I said, there was two teams that were happy at the end of the year, it was us and Baylor, so that was a pretty good situation to be in.”

Key losses

The best news for the Wildcats? There were no major losses after their WNIT title. The team lost only two reserves from their 11-player roster.

The biggest loss of the two was reserve post player Destiny Graham. Graham was the last player from the Niya Butts era still taking the court for the Wildcats. While Graham started 60 games in her first three years–including all 30 games her junior season–things changed after the Wildcats’ highly-ranked 2018 recruiting class and transfers arrived on campus.

During her senior season, Graham’s primary role was to take some of the pressure off starters Dominique McBryde and Cate Reese. Barnes also tasked her with providing on-court guidance to Reese and fellow freshman post player Semaj Smith.

Key returners

Everything went through Aari McDonald last year. The nation’s top returning scorer will once again be the focal point, but Barnes expects the nature of that focus to be different.

McDonald’s scoring got all of the press during her redshirt sophomore season. While her 24.1 ppg was an impressive stat, Arizona’s new single-season scoring record holder had more than that in her toolkit.

She was second in the Pac-12 in steals per game with 2.5 and ninth in the league with 4.6 assists per game. She was the total package, becoming the first player in the conference to score 800 points, corral 200 rebounds, dish out 150 assists and grab 90 steals in one season since 2000.

McDonald joins seven other returners from last year’s squad. Sophomore Reese was second on the team in scoring (11.8 ppg) and first in rebounding (6.8 rpg) last season.  Those numbers were tops among Pac-12 freshmen, earning her a spot on the Pac-12 All-Freshmen team.

Key additions

By the end of last season, Arizona had 11 players on the roster. That included 2019 guard Tara Manumaleuga, who enrolled a semester early but did not play. Manumaleuga was one of five members of the 2019 class, all of whom hail from overseas. She’s also the only one whose native language is English.

While Barnes has said that she hopes future classes aren’t so big, she has spent her first few years at Arizona shoring up the roster in both numbers and talent. Overseas has been kind to her.

Wings Helena Pueyo (Spain) and Mare Mote (Latvia) will help spread the floor, clearing the lane for McDonald’s drives and Reese’s inside shots. Posts Sevval Gül (Turkey) and Birna Benonysdottir (Iceland) give the Wildcats more size.

Beyond language difficulties, the major disadvantage of an international class was the loss of summer workouts. All of the incoming freshmen spent the summer playing for their national teams in FIBA events, some of which lasted into early August.

“It’s a big cultural transition for a lot of those players,” Barnes said. “But the returners have to be
great right away, and that’s their job is to be role models, and their job is to bring the freshmen along. We have seven new players. There is a little bit of language barrier, but I think that’s what makes it so special. We’re a special group with a lot of different people, and I think that makes them culturally more diverse and more well-rounded.

“So I think things will be a little bit slower because there are so many new people. But with everybody back from last year, all the starters back, I think that it’s easier for those freshmen not to have pressure to be so great.”

The Wildcats also added two transfers to their class of five freshmen. Penn State grad transfer Amari Carter will play immediately. She averaged 10.5 ppg, 3.5 apg, and 3.2 rpg in her 92-game career at Penn State.

Shaina Pellington, the 2017-18 Big XII Freshman of the Year for Oklahoma, will sit out her transfer year this season. However, Pellington’s presence is already felt in practice where Barnes says she is one of the few players who has the speed to stay with McDonald.

Outlook for 2019-20

The Wildcats have a good chance of making their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2005. Barnes and her players say that another WNIT would be a disappointment.

“I’ll reflect back on last season,” McDonald said about what she will use as motivation this season. “I know that the NIT, like we weren’t satisfied, so just winning that will make myself and my
teammates hungrier for this year, and we’re hoping for better things.”

The biggest knock on the team in the early going will be their schedule. While their non-conference slate was slightly upgraded this season, they still won’t be able to prove much before Pac-12 play starts. If they make that first NCAA appearance in 15 years, they could see their seed suffer as a result of the scheduling.

On the court, McDonald will be able to show her ability to distribute. The Wildcats should have enough help that she’s not forced to put the team on her back so often and take a beating in the paint every night.

In conference play, the Wildcats should be helped both by their own improvement and by the teams ahead of them losing ground. It wouldn’t be shocking if they were able to outperform the coaches’ projection by a spot and leapfrog rival ASU.

The coaches already expect them to leapfrog several teams that finished ahead of them last year…