Sue Alexander moved to Tucson to chase her love of basketball, and in the past few years alone, that gamble has payed off more than she ever could have imagined.
And even though her beloved Wildcats didn't punch their ticket to the Sweet 16 Monday night, falling to North Carolina 63-45 in McKale Center, there's no other team she'd rather be cheering for — and no place she'd rather be.
"There's nothing I like better than basketball in March," Alexander told the Star Monday before the game. "And finally, the women are getting a chance to show their stuff."
Women's basketball is more popular than ever, especially in Tucson, with 8,333 fans turning out for Monday night's game.
McKale Center was surrounded on all sides by fans shortly before the doors opened at 6 p.m., with hundreds of people eagerly waiting to get inside an hour before tipoff. The excitement was palpable, as fans chatted within their groups or striking up friendships with strangers waiting in line.
Posted up by the front entrance was Tom Powell and his 14-year-old daughter, Payton, who were attending the Wildcats' NCAA Tournament run for the second year in a row.
Tom Powell graduated from the UA in 1996 and worked on campus for years, supporting the team along the way.
"It's been exciting with both teams going and going far," he said.
Sahuarita High School sophomore Payton Powell is a fan of the team and sport, a basketball player herself who took part in Adia Barnes' camp a few years ago. She's planning to attend the UA and said she'd love to get a chance to play for the team.
Monday night, though, Payton Powell was just hoping for a Wildcats win.
Shortly before tip off, a pair of attendees wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase, "Canada Cats," along with a Canadian flag with the maple leaf replaced by a saguaro starting handing out matching shirts to other people in their row. Soon, the Canada Cats were a small group of eight that was hard to miss, sitting courtside, right between the home and visiting bench.
The Canada Cats were clear in their support of the Wildcats — and particularly Pickering, Ontario native Shaina Pellington — but, true to the stereotype associated with their homeland, they were reserved in their celebration throughout much of the game.
The rest of the fans.... not so much. The crowd roared to life every time the Wildcats scored and every time a call didn't go their way.
Alexander, who turns 78 Wednesday and was hoping to celebrate with a Wildcats victory, remembers a time when those roars could only be heard at men's basketball games, having lived through them during her college days at Illinois State and Oklahoma.
"We didn't go to women's games, it just wasn't happening then," she said.
While some colleges may have had club basketball teams, it wasn't until the passage of Title IX 50 years ago that women gained equal opportunity to play college athletics. And although Indiana's athletic department started supporting women's athletics in 1971, it didn't integrate women's basketball until 1974.
There may not have been a lot of fanfare associated with the women's games in those games, but Alexander still followed along.
"I knew who all the good players are," she said. "I learned basketball from Bobby Knight, Lute Olson and people like that."
That's what made the decision on where to relocate so easy when the time came in 1993.
"I was told by everybody I should go to Phoenix," Alexander said. "But Bill Frieder was coach, so I said, 'No way, I'm not going there. Lute Olson is in Tucson.'"
The rest is history and the making of her nearly 30-year fan relationship with Wildcats basketball.
"When I got here, I had to find out about women's basketball and things like that," Alexander said.
She picked it up quickly. Working in gerontology, Alexander spent a lot of time in nursing homes and often found herself driving from Green Valley straight to games, still wearing her uniform skirt.
"I had tickets to the men's and women's, but they were so expensive, I had to split them with a group of women who were lawyers," she said.
Alexander remembers fondly watching now coach Adia Barnes play for Joan Bonvicini, saying she loved watching the passion in the latter's work in the late-1990s.
When Bonvicini left, Alexander watched as much of Niya Butts' tenure as she could endure, but eventually took a break from the games. But even though she wasn't there in person, Alexander was still holding pep rallies for the team at the nursing home where she worked and always held them close to her heart.
"When Adia came back, I was there," she said.
These days, Alexander is a staple at games, attending with about a dozen of her friends, who she found easy to recruit after the Wildcats' WNIT success in 2019.
"It's so exciting to feel that championship feeling. I was there in 1976 at Indiana University as a grad student and we won every game," she said. "That's the last time any basketball team has made it through the whole season and finals without losing, so I know what that championship feeling is like and the luck and dedication it takes. And we almost did it last year."
But the 2021 season was vastly different in terms of COVID protocols and fan attendance, with fans not being able to experience most of the games with the team.
"It felt like we were left out sometimes. We didn't get to do the same kind of things we got to do, and we understood it," Alexander said, adding that she was grateful for the masked and cashless experience this season afforded.
"We never really got to see Sam (Thomas) or Trinity (Baptiste) last year, so to be there in the actual building with the players, I was just thrilled," she said.
She's also grateful that fan favorite Sam Thomas stayed for another season. A former student worker at both Indiana, Illinois State and Oklahoma, Alexander said she knows what a real student-athlete is like and Thomas fits the description.
"She's the ultimate student-athlete," she said. "We've seen her come from a scared little kid to being able to speak in Washington, D.C."
Out front of McKale before the game, longtime fans Myrna and Steve Feldman struck up a conversation with the Powells. The Feldmans have been season ticket holders since moving to Tucson in 2004 by way of Connecticut.
They were hopeful for a chance to watch their beloved Cats take on No. 1 overall seed South Carolina later this week, with Steve Feldman saying, "To be the best, you've got to beat the best."
Myrna Feldman loves the friendships on the this year's team and the way the women help each other out, recognizing they function better as a unit than as individual players.
"There's a great cemented feeling between the people on the team," Myrna Feldman said.
Alexander agrees, pointing to the team's deep roster of international players.
"This team has Shaina, who got to play in the Olympics, and all the international players I watched in EuroProBasket this summer," Alexander said.
Pellington was a huge asset in the Wildcats' second tournament run under Barnes, scoring 30 points in Saturday night's victory against UNLV's Lady Rebels.
With less than two seconds left in the game and the Wildcats down by 21 points, McKale Center rose to its feet and gave Sam Thomas a standing ovation as she sunk one last three-point shot as a Wildcat.
"It was a hard year to hang in there. I think they have the grit, but I think they forgot about it for awhile," Alexander said before the game, marveling in her good fortune. "I chose Tucson out of any place I could have spent my retirement and it really paid off."
