Wildcats come out sluggish in Big 12 home opening loss to Utah 69-48

It definitely wasn’t the way Arizona wanted to end 2024 — coming out sluggish on both ends of the court and giving Utah a sizeable 12-point lead at the half.

The matchup got uglier in the third quarter when the Wildcats couldn’t mount a sustained comeback, losing 69-48 to Utah in the Big 12 home opener at McKale Center on Tuesday afternoon.

Arizona is now 10-5, 1-1 Big 12, while Utah is 11-2, 2-0 Big 12.

It was one of those days for the Wildcats where whatever adjustments and personnel changes Arizona coach Adia Barnes made didn’t help.

“We couldn’t run offense,” Barnes said. “I don’t know why we were so passive. I don’t know why we weren’t attacking because we know individually, Utah is not the best defensive team. They are very good as a team (on) defense but one- on-one, we should have been able to attack. They had no problem attacking us. I don’t know why we’re hesitant. I don’t know why we weren’t going downhill. It’s the same things we do, and I think we have gotten better offensively, and today it didn’t show that.”

In the third quarter, the Wildcats defense tightened up, holding the Utes to more than a 3-minute scoring drought. However, the shooting woes continued for the Wildcats – not scoring until the 2:27 mark on a 3-pointer from freshman Lauryn Swann. She would score all nine of the Wildcats points in that quarter — on three consecutive 3-pointers — to give the Wildcats some life.

“I’ll just say one word ‘awareness,’” Utah coach Gavin Petersen said. “I think that’s something every team has to do is they have to be able to grow without a coach having to save them with the timeout. We have so much experience on our roster that I hold this standard a little higher for them, and my expectation is that they figure it out. There (were) three threes in a row. The first one, hats off to her, but we also helped off strong side. Then we try to make a loose play on the ball, which is going to happen in basketball. But then the third one, we go under a screen, like, the kid can shoot.”

Swann would go on to knock down 10 points in the fourth and finish with a career-high 22 points, going 6 for 7 from long range and 8 of 11 from the field. As they say, “shooters gonna shoot,” or as Barnes joked after the game, it all came down to Swann’s new juicing regimen.

“After I saw that first shot going, it was like a sigh of relief, like, ‘OK, back in the flow of it,’” Swann said. “And I guess just the confidence just stayed throughout the whole game.”

Swann, who has been nursing a left shoulder injury, said it’s feeling much better and she’s switched to wear an undershirt with padding on it, so when she falls — usually on the same shoulder — she won’t keep re-injuring it.

Still, the Wildcats were down 45-28 with 10 minutes left in the game, and the Utes started the fourth quarter on a 15-5 run to go up 60-33.

Jada Williams was the only other Wildcat in double figures, finishing with 11 points (5 of 15). She added three assists and had only two turnovers.

Utah didn’t have too many miscues in the first half. The Utes scored at will in the paint — 14 points — and from long range – 4 of 9. The offense was flowing and they had 11 assists on 12 made field goals.

Meanwhile, for the Wildcats, the shots weren’t falling. Breya Cunningham had two early fouls, came back into the game and picked up her third with 3:12 left in the half. She only played six minutes, which limited the Wildcats on both ends of the court.

The Wildcats were out-rebounded (20 to 11) in the first half, and the only thing that was working was forcing turnovers. Utah had 12 in the first half — four coming in the last four minutes. However, these only turned into six points.

Cunningham fouled out with around five minutes left in the game, having played only 13 minutes.

Arizona forced 21 turnovers but only scored nine points off them.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

The Wildcats did hold Utah well under their average scoring of 83.1 points per game. On the other hand, this was the Wildcats’ lowest offensive performance of the season, as they average 71.7 points per game.

The Wildcats have four days to figure things out as they travel to Orlando to play UCF on Saturday.

He said it

“We haven’t won here and we’ve played some close games. That’s a credit to Adia and what she’s done here. Let’s make no mistake about it, it’s hard to win here. We knew coming in, it was going to take our best preparation, as well as showing up to the game and playing the way we did. … Credit to Arizona and how they play. It really forces you to move the ball and if you make plays on your heels or put the ball above your head they make you pay for it. That was big. Something we stressed and we have to stay on attack mode and let the ball find that open man, and they were able to do that tonight so I’m super proud.” – Utah coach Petersen

Stuffing the stat sheet

Cunningham: 2 points, 2 rebounds, 2 steals

Isis Beh: 3 steals

Skylar Jones: 2 points (1 of 7)

Paulina Paris: 0 points (0 for 6), 5 rebounds

The other side

Utah’s Gianna Kneepkens hit two big 3s in the first half, went on to score 18 points (4 of 6 from long range) and pull down nine rebounds just shy of the double-double. Ines Viera dished 11 assists, and Kennady McQueen chipped in 11 points.

By the numbers

3: Arizona made only 3 of 9 layups in the first half. Not much was falling as the Wildcats made just 9 field goals in 29 attempts. Arizona only made two more layups the rest of the way and went 20 for 58 from the field.

12: The Wildcats only had 12 turnovers – eight of these came in the first half.

0: Arizona led this game for zero minutes. The game was tied for 1:53.

3: This marks the third time in the last 13 months that Arizona has been held to under 50 points. At the Battle 4 Atlantis in November 2023, the Wildcats lost 56-47 to No. 23 ranked Ole Miss and in March, in the last Pac-12 regular-season game, they lost to No. 8 UCLA 61-41.