Arizona women’s basketball closes out 2024 on New Year’s Eve trying to stay perfect in Big 12 play. That would mean beating Utah in Tucson for the sixth straight time.
The Wildcats are 7-2 in the last nine games against the Utes. The only two losses over that stretch took place in Salt Lake City. UA last lost a home game to Utah in the first month of 2018.
It will take a lot to continue that home winning streak but the most important thing might be efficiency. It’s something that Utah has but Arizona is still striving for this season.
The Utes lost Alissa Pili to the WNBA Draft, but Arizona head coach Adia Barnes doesn’t think that’s a major issue because they got Gianna Kneepkens back from injury.
“I think she’s really good,” Barnes said. “I need to find a player like that. To me, I love her game. She’s going to be a good pro because she’s so…efficient. She’s six foot. I like her size. She can shoot it. She can drive. Her handles aren’t bad. She’s not like, shifty, but who cares? She’s efficient with what she does, I think. She’ll post up…If you go under a screen, she shoots the 3. She can drive it. I think she’s really good. Like, really good. She was one of my favorite players the last few years. I really like her. I think she’s very hard to guard because you put an athlete on her, she can still drive, and she can still score, and…she doesn’t take 20 shots.”
Arizona has always been a defensive-oriented team under its current head coach. Despite not having a real “stopper” on the team this year, the Wildcats are still ranked 35th in opponents’ points scored per 100 possessions. That’s sure to change as things get tougher on the schedule, but it would have to spike over 90.8 to be worse than last year.
The Wildcats’ offense, on the other hand, took a dive early in the season despite a weaker pre-conference slate this year compared to last season. They score 95.5 points per 100 possessions.
If that trend continues, it would be the first time the Wildcats have scored fewer than 96 points per 100 possessions since 2020-21. They ended at 95.6 that season.
The Wildcats played in a loaded Pac-12 that year. The conference provided both competitors in the 2021 national title game. Neither Arizona’s nonconference nor its conference schedule will be that loaded this year.
They may not be where they want to be, but the Wildcats have improved over the 14 games this season.
“If you watch us, we’ve gotten better,” Barnes said. “Passing got better. Offense is flowing better. I think all those things…improved the last few weeks. I think just confidence….People kind of finding their roles a little bit more.”
There’s still a way to go if the Wildcats want to integrate some of the efficiency that Barnes admires in Utah’s game, though. To get there, all of Arizona’s players need to take better shots and make better decisions on the court. Because she has the ball in her hands most often, it starts with point guard Jada Williams.
Williams has had some big games this season. She scored 20 points against Vanderbilt and 18 against California when her scoring was desperately needed. She also put up 24 against Weber State. She has scored in double digits in eight of the 13 games she has played.
The problems for Williams are the number of shots she needs to get those points, the types of shots she’s taking, and the point in the shot clock when some of them are taken.
Williams currently leads the team with 11.0 field goal attempts per game. While that number is not excessive, it does exceed the numbers taken by players who are more efficient.
When Williams shoots from 2-point distance or the free throw line, she is efficient. She hits 40.2 percent of her shots inside the arc and 84.8 percent of her free throws. She attempts more free throws than anyone on the team with 3.5 per contest.
Both Williams’ efficiency from inside the arc and the number of free throws she shoots make driving to the bucket her best option for scoring most of the time. However, she is taking 4.7 of her field goal attempts from 3-point distance. That’s 42.7 percent of her field goal attempts coming from outside. She has hit just 24.6 percent of those shots.
On occasion, those 3-point shots come early in the shot clock. The urge to shoot those is what Williams needs to resist. At other times, those shots are desperation shots at the end of the shot clock because the Wildcats couldn’t find the gaps in a zone. Those are things the team needs to improve on as a unit.
Barnes thinks the offensive issues of several players—including Williams and Skylar Jones, among others—come down to one thing. That thing is knowing when to shoot. Should they continue looking for a better shot? Should they kick to an open teammate? Should they pull up?
“‘Jada, don’t take all these Hail Mary last-second shots like that,’” Barnes said. “‘You don’t have to take that shot with 10 seconds…You might create an advantage and get that shot later.’ But you gotta teach because they’re young. ‘Sky, if I call this play for you to drive, that doesn’t mean you drive and run over three people. You may drive and draw three people. It’s a great pass out. That’s still a good offense.’”
Where Williams has improved as the season has progressed is her assist-to-turnover ratio, which finally got into positive territory with her 7-assist game against Weber State. To add to Arizona’s difficulties, Paris fell below 1.0 ATO after the California game.
While there’s still work to be done, both have positive ratios now. Williams leads the team with 2.9 assists per game and has a 1.1 ATO. Paris is second on the team with 2.2 assists per game. She has a 1.2 ATO.
The teammates they’re assisting also have various offensive holes to fill. The most important is Breya Cunningham because she’s the Wildcats’ most effective and efficient offensive threat. The post player leads the team with 13.6 points per game on 66.9 percent shooting from the floor. She has a superb player efficiency rating of 39.5. That is also the highest on the team.
Barnes believes Cunningham can be even better. Part of that is improvements she can make. Part of it comes down to the coaches continuing to teach everyone and finding the right combination of players to help them be successful.
“She’s getting more confidence as time goes on, getting more confidence against better teams, having some success just all these games in a row,” Barnes said about Cunningham. “I think now she’s playing at a high level because she’s feeling good and she sees that we’re depending on her. We want to get the ball in to her. And she’s an unselfish player. She rarely shoots over doubles and doesn’t score, but she’s 67 percent. As a coach, this is the hard, analytical part. It’s like, I see 67 percent…so of course she’s getting five or six more shots. But that’s dependent on the ball getting there and structure in offense—now with help. Then, you got to find the personnel that can do it. Well, is that personnel good enough defensively? Who gets her the ball? Who runs the team? Those are the challenges, because ideally, then you manufacture and run five more plays for her—which I’m going to. But she’s getting doubles now. She’s passing it out. So they have to hit shots or get the ball back into her.”
For Cunningham herself, the most important improvement is simply staying on the floor. One reason other players have taken more shots is that Cunningham has spent so much time on the bench with foul trouble.
Cunningham averages 21.6 minutes per game. The only Arizona starter who averages fewer is Isis Beh at 20.6. Both suffer from the same issues.
While Cunningham’s fouls have gone down this year and she’s only fouled out twice, she’s still picking up first-half fouls that force her to sit. When she goes to the bench, Arizona becomes a very different team. Its opponents tend to come back during these periods.
BYU was the latest to overtake the Wildcats when their best player was sitting out with two fouls in the first half. Arizona took an 18-8 lead after the first 10 minutes but had to fight back in the second half to win its first Big 12 game.
Jones is also struggling with foul trouble. Like Cunningham, she often picks up two fouls in the first half and has to sit. Her absence hits Arizona in a number of areas.
Jones is the third-leading scorer with 10.4 ppg. She does that on 8.2 FGA per game. She gets to the free throw line more than anyone except Williams and hits 71.1 percent of her 2.9 FTA. Her 2.0 steals per game are just behind the team-leading 2.1 that Williams secures. She gets 2.1 assists per game, good for fourth on the team behind Williams, Paris, and Montaya Dew. However, her 3.1 fouls per game trail only Cunningham and she trails only Sahnya Jah in turnovers.
Jah is still trying to get over her tendency to turn the ball over, but she has started to find her way offensively in Arizona’s last two games. She scored a career-high 22 points against Weber State. At BYU, she showed some progress in her decision-making by passing out of double teams in the post. That progress must continue because Arizona needs the athleticism she brings.
Right now, Barnes is starting Cunningham and Beh in the frontcourt. Both players are best suited playing at the five, but Beh has been pressed into service at the four. That forces Beh to guard more mobile players. If Jah’s improvement continues, it would give the coaches more flexibility in constructing the playing rotations and allow more players to play to their strengths.
Jah has been a pleasant surprise beyond the arc. She is second on the team with a 36.4 percent success rate from 3-point distance. She trails only Katarina Knežević, who has hit 41.2 percent of those shots. However, neither player attempts more than 1.7 shots from outside.
The only player who shoots more than 1.7 shots from outside and hits a decent percent of those shots is Paris, who’s good for 34.8 percent of the 3.3 outside shots she takes. Williams and Lauryn Swann are the only other players who attempt more than 3.0 outside shots per contest. Both hit less than 30 percent of those shots.
As a team, Arizona is shooting just 30.2 percent from 3-point distance. That is the lowest since 2017-18 when the Wildcats hit 30.6 percent of their outside shots. While Barnes does not expect the team to be a top shooting team, she does think the team’s 3-point shooting percentage could and needs to be around 34 percent.
The Wildcats had nine days without a game between its win at BYU and its Big 12 home opener against Utah. Although the players had time off to see family, they still had a lot of down time to practice and work on the fundamentals that Barnes has harped on all season. The Utes will tell them whether it paid off or not.