Arizona womenβs basketball finally found itβs groove offensively and defensively in the third quarter, propelled by point guard Jada Williams and got as close as one point but couldnβt finish off the comeback as Vanderbilt ended up winning, 71-60, Tuesday afternoon in the Acrisure Holiday Invitational in Palm Desert, California.
Arizona (6-2) will play former Pac-12 foe, Cal (6-1), Wednesday at noon for third place, while Vanderbilt (7-0) now moves on to face Michigan State (7-0) in the championship game at 2:30 p.m.
Arizona guard Jada Williams and the crowd celebrate her long-range 3 that forged some space late against UNLV on Nov. 12, 2024.
Williams, UAβs sophomore point guard, led the way with 20 points β nine coming in the fourth quarter (4 of 8 from the field). Breya Cunningham chipped in 17 points, 11 coming in the second half.
This was the second time in as many games that the Wildcatsβ defense sparked the offense in the comeback. However, this time, UA couldnβt finish the job.
βNothing surprised us at all (about Vanderbilt),β Arizona coach Adia Barnes said. βIt's exactly what I thought. But it concerned me. I knew they were going to go to certain sets. I knew (Jordynn) OliverΒ β if we were going big, she was going to handle it sometimes when we put Isis (Beh) out there. I knew that. Nothing surprised me. It's everything we thought. But it really affected us more than I would have thought because of my expectations that we can break it like we did in the second half and got layups, but we weren't able to do that first half.
βThe other thing that bothered us is they were ready on on-balls. But the crazy thing is, we're very experienced with that because we do that to each other in practice. It surprised me that we didn't handle that well, because we do that all the time.β
Arizona got down as much as 20 points at the beginning of the third quarter, before Williams and her teammates tightened up the defense.
It started with Williams getting on the floor going for a 50/50 ball after an inbounds play under the Arizona basket. Then, Cunningham got in the passing land and tipped a ball to Williams. Williams got on the floor again β this time going after a rebound. Slowly the Wildcats start chipping away at that Commodore lead.
Williams kept attacking on offense, scoring and drawing fouls. You name it, Williams was doing it. She got rebounds over three bigger defenders and she got on her teammates to play smarter and harder. Williams left every ounce of energy on the court.Β
βShe's really important because she's tough,β Barnes said. βShe fights, she dives for balls, she attacks. She had the ball a lot; she was handling pressure a lot and the ball was in her hand a lot. I felt bad, we couldn't really help her out and she just was dying. But she's just mentally tough. She's the toughest kid we have, and she has a big heart and she just fought and so I'm proud of her.β
At the start of the fourth all this effort started paying off. Down 50-37, the Wildcats started off on a 6-0 run with Cunningham getting a tip in, Skylar Jones scoring on a turnaround jumper and Paulina Paris getting a steal off the inbounds and finishing.
Vanderbilt called a timeout as Arizona had made it a seven-point game, 50-43, with nine minutes left in the game. It didnβt help as the Wildcats continued the run, coming within two points, twice on baskets by Williams β a jumper and a step back 3-pointer β and pulled within one-point, 55-54, on a mid-range jumper by Sahnya Jah, with under five minutes left. The Dores ended up pulling away on an 11-4 run over the last four minutes.
Lauryn Swann went down hard on her left shoulder β the same one she hurt a few weeks agoΒ β towards the end of the third quarter and was in pain. When she walked off the court, she low-fived all her teammates on the bench with her right hand and she returned to floor in the fourth quarter.
After the game, Barnes said that Swann would be fine.
The Wildcats have a quick turnaround to try to clean up some of the miscues from cutting down on the early turnovers and bringing the intensity from the tip.
She said it
βWe just needed a little bit more, a little bit earlier but we have to learn from that. We continue to talk about the same things we've talked about. We talk about turnovers, we talk about missed box outs. They had 29 points off our turnovers, and they had 17 points off second chance (opportunities). So that's the game. We have to be able to address the turnovers. We had 10 the second half, we were better and against the press the whole time. But we have to grow in that area.β β Barnes on the loss
Stuffing the stat sheet
Williams: 6 steals, 4 rebounds
Cunningham: 9 rebounds, 3 steals
Paris: 9 points, 5 rebounds, 3 assists
The other side
Mikayla Blakes finished with 23 points β 16 of them in the first half. She went 4 of 6 from long range in that half. Khamil Pierre made the difference in the second half, scoring 17 of her 25 points in the last 20 minutes. Pierre had seven total steals β four in the second half β while Blakes had four in the first half.
By the numbers
4: Four Wildcats ended up with four fouls β Williams, Jones, Paris and Jah. Meanwhile, Vanderbilt only had one player with four β Blakes.
20: Vanderbilt had 20 more free throw attempts than Arizona. The Dores went 23 of 31 (74%), while the Wildcats only made 6 of 11 (55%).
10: Vanderbilt scored 10 more points on turnovers than Arizona. On the Wildcatsβ 26 turnovers, the Dores scored 29 points. Vanderbilt committed 23 turnovers and UA only scored 19 points off of them.
