Paulina Paris came to Arizona ready to show what kind of player she was. The junior guard did just that as she led the Wildcats to a 78-43 victory over Seattle University on Monday evening.
“I’m really proud of how we bounced back after a long couple weeks and a long trip,” Arizona head coach Adia Barnes said. “So, learned a lot of lessons, I think. Got really disappointed, but got everybody back, regrouped, and got better. I think we played a lot better today.”
Paris matched her career high of 22 points set when she was a freshman at North Carolina. She hit 10 of 13 shots from the field and went 1 for 2 from the line. The three shots she missed were all from 3-point distance where she went 1 for 4.
It wasn’t just about scoring, though. Paris narrowly missed a double-double with a career-high eight assists. Her previous high was six during her sophomore year at UNC. She added two rebounds and three steals.
“I thought she played awesome today,” Barnes said. “I mean, 10 for 13 for a guard. Twenty-two. Eight assists. Three steals. That’s a phenomenal game for her. I thought she played the best game yet, and I think she can play like that a lot. I’m proud of her.”
The junior guard is still playing with a broken nose that she suffered in practice two weeks ago, but she’s able to compete without the protective mask she wore for the games against NAU and Grambling State.
“The mask is definitely not something easy to play with,” Paris said. “It was difficult. You really don’t have any peripheral vision, and obviously it showed in my free throws. I dropped significantly, percentage-wise, but taking that mask off is great. It’s a relief. I could breathe, but still trying to keep my head out of certain areas, because it’s still broken. So just try to be smart.”
Paris shot 45 percent from the line in the three games following the injury, hitting 9 of 20 free throws against NAU, Grambling State, and Vanderbilt. She is 3 for 4 in the two games since. She has hit 88.9 percent of her free throws outside the three games she played after breaking her nose.
The Wildcats also got double-digit scoring from Skylar Jones (16 points) and Breya Cunningham (13 points). Both players went 6 for 8 from the floor. Jones also had one rebound, one assist, and three steals in 21 minutes. Cunningham added nine rebounds and one steal in 17 minutes.
Fouls continued to be a problem for Arizona’s starters. Despite playing an easier schedule this season and having a year under their belts, sophomores Cunningham and Jones have racked up fouls early and often. This outing was no different.
Cunningham picked up two fouls 15 seconds apart roughly 90 seconds into the game. Jones picked up her second foul with 3:04 on the clock in the opening frame. Both players picked up one of their fouls on the offensive end, Jones on a charge and Cunningham on an illegal screen. Both players ended the game with three fouls despite not playing the fourth quarter.
Barnes was forced to put both back into the game in the second quarter when Seattle started to make a run. Arizona had an 11-point lead with 30 seconds to go in the opening frame. Three straight 3-point shots beginning with one at the buzzer made it a two-point game. Cunningham and Jones re-entered the game along with Jada Williams.
While Jones had one charge assessed to her, Barnes felt she played with much more control than she had shown in the previous games. She didn’t put up so many wild shots while falling out of bounds. She didn’t bowl over the opponent. Even the charge she was whistled for didn’t have much behind it; the opponent definitely sold the contact.
“Overall, we’re getting better, but we still have a lot of work fundamentally to do,” Barnes said. “Like balance. You saw Sky. Sky was different today. Sky was jump-stopping under control. She had one offensive foul, but I’ll take that as a jump stop…I thought she did a great job of that.”
The Redhawks tied it up on the bucket after Jones and Cunningham returned, but the Wildcats reasserted themselves from that point. Montaya Dew scored all four of her points on back-to-back buckets, which put Arizona back in the lead. Cunningham followed with four points of her own to stretch the lead back to eight. The lead had returned to 11 at the half.
Arizona held Seattle scoreless for the first three minutes of the second half. The lead was 20 before Taisiya Kozlova finally hit a bucket for the Redhawks. It was 24 when the third quarter ended.
Barnes went back to her reserves for the final quarter. The only starter who played the entire fourth quarter was Dew. She was making the first start of her career with Isis Beh in concussion protocol. Paris played five of the final 10 minutes.
Dew didn’t score a lot of points, but she had an impact all over the court. She led the team with 11 rebounds. Her four assists were third on the team behind Paris and Williams. She had five steals and a block as she used her length to apply defensive pressure to the Redhawks.
“I feel like each game, I just progressively get back into playing how I used to,” Dew said. “Just getting more comfortable out on the court, especially being more comfortable with my teammates, and just being able to play in my role like how I did in the past. So I feel like I’ve been getting better every game and practice. Just continuing to grow.”
Despite having a lot of youth on the floor, the Wildcats held the Redhawks to just two points in the fourth quarter. Seattle only scored 11 in the second half.
In addition to the familiar foul issues, Arizona also continued to turn the ball over. After cutting their turnovers to 13 against California last week, the Wildcats shot back up to 19 against an inferior opponent.
UA was also stagnant in the halfcourt. It scored 23 points off Seattle’s 19 turnovers. As is often the case, there was a lot of standing around when forced to play half-court offense. In addition to making scoring more difficult, it exacerbated the turnover issues as players picked up their dribble and had nowhere to pass. That led to forced passes by the Wildcats or steals by the Redhawks.
“I thought more movement now than in the past,” Barnes said. “I think we just tend to get really stagnant against the zone. Just understanding where to pass the ball, not playing so high, not just having the ball pass around the perimeter. But I thought we moved it better than we have in the past, and we turned it over less than we had been. I look, it’s like, ‘Oh, we did better.’ We still had 19 (turnovers). But we’ve had a negative assist-to-turnover ratio for a while, so this is a work in progress.”
Arizona will take a step up in competition again when GCU comes to town on Thursday, Dec. 5. The Lopes defeated ASU by 11 and held Deja Kelly to 0 points in a 16-point loss at No. 23 Oregon.