A little more patience needed for Arizona Women’s Basketball

Following a drubbing to the No. 5 Oregon Ducks, a little more patience is needed in the growth with the Arizona Women’s Basketball team.

For those that have been following, it has been a loooong and tumultuous road for the Arizona Women’s Basketball for quite some time now.

A program that has gone a combined 146-208 since the 2007-08 season (including 2018-19), the 33-point loss to the No. 5 Oregon Ducks on Sunday should signify just how much further we have to go as a program.

Arizona Wildcats

So is the nature of college athletics, but it’s a competitive world out there and the Wildcats are in the midst of it, trying to find their equal footing.

A team that saw a change from the top down just a few seasons ago, Arizona is trying to drastically change a losing culture.

For those in need of a brief history lesson, Arizona hasn’t had a winning season since 2010-11, and moreover, the program has been to the NCAA Tournament since 2005.

In comes former Wildcat legend Adia Barnes in 2016-17, taking a five-win team from the year prior, guiding Arizona to a 14-16 record in her first season as a collegiate head coach. The following year, wasn’t a great follow-up to that, taking a step back by finishing 6-24 this past season.

Finally, perhaps in year three things would be significantly turned around, right? Well yes, but not entirely.

I for one will say I was a bit ecstatic with the 12-1 start by Arizona, but nonetheless, I was still a bit skeptical about the hot start. The Wildcats mostly beat inferior competition throughout that stretch highlighted by a win over rival ASU who was then ranked No. 17. Since then, they have gone just 1-4.

Their competition in that span? Utah (16-1), Cal (12-5), No. 6 Stanford (16-1), No. 10 Oregon State (15-3) and No. 5 Oregon (17-1).

Certainly a daunting task for any team, but perhaps more indicative in the current state of the program, is the average margin in those four losses. In the four losses, Arizona has been outscored 337-236, an average difference of 25.3 points per loss.

That’s not really close.

This isn’t to bag on the program by any means, no. This is to merely show how much of a discrepancy in overall talent the program has to overcome still.

The team and program has made great strides thus far, but more growth is needed, and during this time, more patience will be needed as well.

Under previous head coach Niya Butts, Arizona Women’s Basketball was bad. Now it’s time to get out of that rutt, but unfortunately as we are learning, it’s still going to take some more time and patience.

Head coach Barnes has some good, foundational pieces, but unfortunately Arizona needs a few more.

For now, let’s be patient and see how this team continues to progress. The exciting thing is Arizona has young talent. Aari McDonald is just a redshirt sophomore, Cate Reese a freshman and Sam Thomas a sophomore.

Arizona Women’s Basketball definitely has a bright future, and fans need to continue to support the team and the overall building process! Bear Down, Arizona!