New Arizona women’s basketball coach Becky Burke has a more polite version of the “BTFD” hashtag Wildcat fans have become fond of.
“BDB,” she said. “Bear Down, baby!”
She will need to, coming in this late in the hiring and portal recruiting cycle with one returning player and one known transfer pickup. She seems to have the drive to do it.
“You’re getting a high-level competitor,” Burke said, referring to her college career as a Final Four competitor at Louisville. “I’m the same way as a coach as I was a player. You can go back and watch the film of me on the court. It’s going to look very similar to what it looks like on the sideline. Secondly, no one will ever outwork me. I am going to be the hardest worker in the room, every room I walk into, and I take a tremendous amount of pride in that. And no one’s ever going to outwork us, because I’m hoping that our team takes a little bit of the personality that I have in terms of just work ethic. And then I think the last thing, the key thing that people need to know about me, and what I’m promising you guys that I’m gonna bring here is …I have one speed, that’s full speed, and I have one way, and that’s all in.”
All-in includes recruiting new players, reaching out to the lone player left over from the previous coaching staff, and reaching out to Arizona players who are in the portal but haven’t committed elsewhere.
“This is home for them,” Burke said about the possibility of trying to woo some of them back.
Burke has spoken to Montaya Dew already. Dew is currently planning to stay at Arizona. The new coach has also spoken to the trainers to see how Dew is progressing from her late-seaon knee injury, although she didn’t want to share information about the prognosis. She is planning to meet with the forward tomorrow.
That is just one part of a big job she has before she ever coaches a game at Arizona.
“I’m very aware of the roster situation, and I’m very aware of the support, and I would not choose to be here and be standing in front of you guys if there was not the support needed to help us be competitive this season,” Burke said. “I believe in our staff and what we’re going to do and how we’re going to be able to hit the ground running and recruiting, and I’m very aware of what I walked into.”
She also knows that she’s behind the two teams that played for the Big 12 title last year because of the timeline of the search. TCU just signed former Notre Dame guard Olivia Miles. among others. Baylor has a commitment from former Arkansas and Auburn guard Taliah Scott. She thinks she can eventually compete with them on the recruiting trail, though.
“That’s the plan,” Burke said. “Are they a little bit further along in their journeys as head coaches at their universities than we are right now? Yes. Yeah. I expect to be right in those conversations in our next couple recruiting cycles. At this moment, would it be difficult? Yeah, I’ll be fully transparent with you, to get the heavy hitters that they’re getting right now in this moment, but I fully expect to be in those conversations in the next couple years and and then getting those caliber of players. But with our scheme and with our discipline and with our habits, I think the sky’s the limit.”
With so much work to do in the portal for the current roster, much of that work will have to be done on a compressed timeline. It’s just one thing that can lead to difficult locker room situations.
Conflict has been a consistent theme in the Arizona locker room over the past couple of years, whether between coaches and players, coaches and parents, families and their relatives’ teammates, or players and other players.
Burke spoke about “petty locker room stuff.” While she didn’t speak to past issues at Arizona in that regard, she did address how to try to head that off at the pass in a general sense.
“Recruiting high-character people and players that we believe are good people and high character,” Burkes said. “But even when you do that and you do your homework, 18 to 22-year-old young women are going to make mistakes and are going to have hard times and not going to be perfect, and we have a lot of grace for that. But I know I haven’t had a whole lot of what you would say are issues in a locker room, and I’ve been lucky because not a lot of people can say that.”
Talking about her team on the court got Burke excited the most.
Do not expect a huge change in style of play at Arizona. When Burke gets her team on the court, expect to see a defensive-oriented team just like Adia Barnes preferred. Burke was emphatic when asked whether she was defensive or offensive-minded.
“I like to play fast,” she said. “We were top five in the country this year in pace playing at Buffalo because we guard. You can’t play fast if you’re taking the ball out of the net because the other team’s scoring every time. You have to guard to play fast and be up-tempo and playing transition. Yeah, I am an openly defensive-minded coach.”
Athletic director Desireé Reed Francois said that her goal was for the program to hang banners. That circled around to several resource questions.
Burke and Reed Francois fielded numerous questions about resources, including in the realm of NIL for players. Neither wanted to get too specific, with Burke saying it was only for “the people that need to know the information.”
“It’s important that you have things, but I also think you don’t need everything,” Burke said. “I’ve never been anywhere where I’ve had the most or the best—and I’m not saying we don’t—but like I said, I prefer it the hard way, and we’re going to get it done, and we’re going to find a way, and I’m going to roll my sleeves up and figure it out. But the support is there, the vision is there, and the conversations have been had.”
Reed-Francois stated that Arizona was third in the Big 12 for women’s basketball NIL but did not provide numbers or give an idea of what the gap is between Arizona and the heavy hitters in the league. She also didn’t directly address a question about why fans have reported feeling stonewalled when trying to start collectives for Arizona women’s basketball and what they could do going forward.
“At the same time, we don’t want to use it as an excuse,” Reed-Francois concluded about NIL.
Burke’s offer sheet at Arizona was not available. She made up to $307,000 including incentives with a base salary of $250,000 at Buffalo for the 2023-24 season according to the USA Today Women’s Basketball Head Coach Salaries database.