Nonconference play reveals improvements, weaknesses of Arizona women’s basketball

Arizona women’s basketball has played 10 games this year and it’s still tough to know where they stand. The 8-2 record looks nice, but it came against a schedule ranked 318th by the NCAA.

Arizona has not won fewer than 18 games since 2017-18. While former head coach Adia Barnes did not believe in playing a tough nonconference slate due to the strength of the Pac-12, those games were still won against schedules that ranked in the top half of women’s basketball.

Arizona’s opponents have won at least 53 percent of its games every year since 2016-17, the year Barnes took over. Opponents have won at least 51.6 percent of their games every year since at least 2009-10, the first season available in the Her Hoop Stats database. So far this season, the Wildcats are facing opponents who have won just 36 percent of their games. That’s in the seventh percentile of Division I women’s basketball.

How the Wildcats will fare against Big 12 competition is open to debate until it actually happens, but the 10 games leading up to the final nonconference tilt against Bellarmine suggest where the team will be strongest and where it has the biggest need to improve.

Arizona’s ability and desire to share the ball has been one of the brightest spots for this year’s team. Much of that can be laid at the feet of point guard Lani Cornfield.

The Wildcats average 17.1 assists per game, which places them in the 91st percentile. While that number will likely come down as the competition gets tougher, it’s hard not to be impressed by a number that radically higher than anything Arizona has accomplished in the past 16 years.

Cornfield ranks fourth in the nation with 7.9 assists per game. She does that against just 3.3 turnovers. Her 2.39 assist-to-turnover ratio ranks 48th in DI.

Arizona is also playing at a faster pace this season, which makes the offense more exciting to watch. There are an average of 75.8 possessions in a Wildcat game under head coach Becky Burke. That puts the team in the 84th percentile.

Prior to this season, Arizona was only in the 70th or better percentile five times stretching back to the 2009-10 season. Under Barnes, the program maintained a pace of play in the 70th or better percentile three times in nine years. Its most successful years came when it was below the 30th percentile.

The improved ball movement has bumped up Arizona’s shooting percentages by a considerable amount. The Wildcats are shooting 48.4 percent from the field. That is also the highest since the 2009-10 season. They are scoring 0.92 points per play, a jump of 0.09 over last year and the highest of the 16 seasons tracked by Her Hoop Stats.

That brings up one of the questions about this team. With its ability to share the ball, the high field goal percentage, and the increase in PPP, why does it have problems from the 3-point line?

Arizona has never been a great outside shooting team. Its best season on Her Hoops Stats came in 2011-12, when it shot 35.2 percent. Its second-best season came during the Barnes era. The Wildcats shot 34.8 percent while making 19.9 3PA during the 2019-20 season.

This year, the Wildcats are hitting just 32.5 percent from outside. They are also attempting a low number relative to recent seasons.

Last year, the team took 17.9 shots from 3 and hit 33.8 percent of them. Arizona has just 15.1 attempts from 3-point distance this year. It took more than that seven out of nine years under the previous coaching staff. It hit a higher percentage in six of those nine years.

With Arizona’s size disadvantage, especially inside, it will likely need to hit a reasonable number of 3s to compete in Big 12 play in 2025-26. It has not shown a tendency to take or make those shots so far, something that Burke has said is typical of her teams.

One advantage of relying on the drive and points in the paint is that the Wildcats are getting fouled a lot. They have attempted 23 free throws per game on 10.8 free throw trips through the first 10 contests. Both are the highest numbers for any Wildcat team in the Her Hoop Stats era (2009-present). Despite some recent games with poor free throw shooting, the Wildcats are hitting 71.3 percent of those shots through 1o games.

Up Next for Arizona Women’s Basketball

Bellarmine Knights (2-9) @ Arizona Wildcats (8-2)

When: Thursday, Dec. 17 @ 6 p.m. MST

Where: McKale Center in Tucson, Ariz.

Streaming:ESPN+

Radio:1400 AM (KTUC)

Stats:Arizona Live Stats

The size disadvantage once again crops up when discussing rebounding, but it’s not the only issue there. Rebounding is another area that has been weak for Arizona through multiple head coaches. Whether Niya Butts or Barnes led the program, the Wildcats tended to be middling-to-poor on the boards. That pattern is repeating itself in the first year under Burke.

The Wildcats grab 34.9 boards per game despite playing multiple teams with size disadvantages. That puts them in the 25th percentile. Overall, they have been outrebounded 350-349. It’s something that’s likely to get even worse as the quality and size of the bigs on opposing teams increases.

Burke has gone with a four-guard lineup in all 10 games this season. The bigs who get most of the playing time are Nora Francois and Daniah Trammell. Francois is tied with guard Sumayah Sugapong for the team lead with 4.5 rebounds per game. Trammell is seventh with 2.5 boards per contest.

Francois has shown the best ability to rebound. She leads the team with 11.0 rebounds per 40 minutes. Tanyuel Welch is good for 8.9 per 40 minutes while Sugapong is averaging 8.0 per 40. Trammell grabs 4.5 per 40 minutes.

While Francois is the tallest of the four, it’s not all about size. Welch is listed at 5-foot-10. Sugapong is even smaller at 5-foot-8. Part of Arizona’s rebounding struggles come down to tactics and philosophy.

Many coaches who value transition defense and turning the other team over to create offense simply ignore offensive rebounding. Burke appears to be in this camp.

Burke takes the philosophy to such an extreme that her players do not even stand on the line when the Wildcats are taking free throws. The four players who aren’t shooting head back to the defensive end and prepare for the opponent to come to them with the ball.

The commitment to getting back may be necessary, though. Arizona does not have a lot of margin for error on the defensive end. They also have difficulty defending without fouling.

While the Wildcats are getting to the line more often than recent Wildcat teams, they are also fouling more than recent Wildcat teams. They commit 21.1 personal fouls per game. That is the highest number for a Wildcat team stretching back to at least the 2009-10 season. That is a bit surprising considering how much players like Breya Cunningham struggled with fouls in recent years.

The fouling problems have been especially difficult for the Wildcats to navigate because they affect some of the most critical players. Cornfield has had to sit out significant minutes due to fouls. She averages 4.7 per 40 minutes. Sugapong had a better outing in the last game, but she has struggled mightily this season, too. She averages 5.5 per 40 minutes.

On the positive side, Arizona may have identified some guards who are able to defend without fouling. MJ Jurado has carried torch for most of the season. The Spanish freshman averages just 2.8 PF per 40 minutes.

A second guard has joined Jurado recently. Welch did not play much in the first few games. At times, she wasn’t even in uniform. Over the last three games, she has proven that she can be the key on both ends of the floor.

Not only is Welch one of Arizona’s better rebounders and a capable scorer, but she’s also one of the few who can consistently defend without fouling. She averages just 1.8 personal fouls per 40 minutes. That puts her in the 92nd percentile in Division I.

The Wildcats may have identified a guard who can defend at a high level without fouling, but they have yet to find a big who isn’t prone to fouls. Both Francois and Trammell average more than five fouls per 40 minutes. Achol Magot averages a whopping 20.7 per 40 minutes. Adde Adebanjo hasn’t played enough to produce reliable data, but the early numbers show her committing 8.9 fouls per 40 minutes.

It’s difficult to say how much of the improvements in Arizona’s offensive tendencies will hold steady when Big 12 play rolls around next week. The improvements do show some basic building blocks for this team and the program as a whole, though. The time to start building for the future is now.