Arizona Notebook: Wildcats lose to Cal without Cunningham, Jah steps up, breaking bad habits

With a quick turnaround from Tuesday’s loss to Vanderbilt – less than a day – Arizona women’s basketball had a lot of work to do before facing former Pac-12 foe, Cal, in the third place game of the Acrisure Holiday Invitational.

While the Wildcats looked like a much different team, with shots not falling late and without the services of forward Breya Cunningham, they lost to Cal 74-62 Wednesday at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, Calif.

Arizona is now 6-3, while Cal moves to 7-1.

In the history of this series, the Golden Bears now have the edge on the Wildcats, having won 39 games to UA’s 38. It’s the first time that Cal has beaten Arizona since March 2020 at McKale Center. This Arizona loss ended a seven-game winning streak over Cal.

Arizona now carries its first two-game losing streak of the season into the Thanksgiving break and into Monday’s game against Seattle.

Cunningham had a family emergency and wasn’t with the team for this matchup. Arizona coach Adia Barnes said after the game that someone in Cunningham’s family was hospitalized “I’m thankful that we were only a couple hours away (in Palm Desert from Cunningham’s hometown of San Diego) because she was able to get home.”

Barnes expects Cunningham to be back in Tucson on Friday.

The Wildcats missed her inside presence especially as Cal scored 14 second-chance points and at times just kept getting offensive rebound after offensive rebound. She would have clogged the paint and with her averaging 8 rebounds per game, Cunningham would have shut down many of the Golden Bears’ easy baskets and dominated inside.

“When Breya is gone we just got murdered by the post players,” Barnes said. “The difference is she gives us scoring on the block. We don’t have any scoring on the block when she’s not there. (Sahnya) Jah likes to pull and take jumpers and doesn’t really like to post up. … It wasn’t Isis (Beh’s) night today, which is OK, but she’s not a scorer. We had no one that could put pressure. (Ugonne Onyiah) from Cal is very athletic and loves to block shots, very foul prone and Breya would have probably got her in foul trouble, and we didn’t have anybody that could attack her.”

But there was opportunity and Jah took it. She was inserted into the starting lineup and stepped up on both ends of the court. She scored 9 of her 13 points in the first half and was playing tight defense forcing four steals – two coming in the fourth quarter.

Early on Jah forced a travel, being a pest and not giving any space to her opponent – just using her long arms to disrupt.

She was playing disciplined and understood the assignment. She also had five rebounds – four were defensive. All of this in a UA career high 33 minutes of action.

“I thought she played really hard; I thought she gave us great energy,” Barnes said. “I thought she did some really good things. I thought she got a little bit tired and missed some shots around the basket, but I think she did a great job stepping in and stepping up.”

One Wildcat who always digs deep and has energy is Jada Williams. In the two tournament games she scored 38 points, picked eight steals and pulled down seven rebounds.

Against Cal, someone fell on the ankle that has been bothering her and she had to check out to get re-taped. In the third quarter with Arizona only down by two points, 46-44, Williams picked up her fourth foul and had to sit until the fourth quarter. On the bench she could be seen cheering on and coaching her teammates on the court. During that stretch, Cal extended its lead to nine points and the Wildcats would only get as close as seven points the rest of the way.

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“The thing I am proud about is we didn’t give up,” Barnes said. “We fought, we tried some things that didn’t go our way but we never gave up, and didn’t stop playing.”

‘It’s a marathon, not a sprint’

Arizona hit a rough patch. The Wildcats haven’t looked like themselves for three straight games.

They were flat against NAU and earned their first loss of the season. They beat Grambling State, but only after a surge in the second half. They finally woke up in the second half against Vanderbilt and almost erased a 20-point deficit but just couldn’t finish.

On Wednesday, the Wildcats came up with intensity and even though they didn’t grab the win, they improved.

Up until this point, some of it was letting their opponents dictate the pace and feeling rushed. Then there were so many games bunched together. Barnes said most of it comes down to being young and breaking bad habits.

“It just takes time, and I’m very aware of that, so I have to be patient,” Barnes said. “I have to understand it’s a marathon, not a sprint. I have to keep on teaching every moment I can. I’m really patient, I think, with teaching them, because I’m not going to make them get all this experience like (former UA standout) Helena (Pueyo) had in a couple months. They’re learning stuff … from years of bad habits or years of different system, or years of lack of understanding. You don’t just start reading the defense and understanding passing angles and stuff. It just takes repetition, time. …

“I love the hard stuff; it’s going to be OK. I’m going to challenge myself to find different ways to help them recognize and I think that’s part of coaching. If one way isn’t working … the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over … You do different tactics, you do different ways, you do different strategy and then you figure it out.”

Cleaning up turnovers

Arizona, typically a ‘sure hands’ team – always handling the ball well – has collected so many turnovers in the last six games. Usually, the Wildcats are the ones disrupting others and forcing bad passes, balls thrown out of bounds or just taking the ball away.

In the last six games they’ve given the ball away 134 times with the peak coming against Grambling State (27) and Vanderbilt (26).

Many of those have been the result of football passes or as Barnes calls them “one-handed beams” across the court. Or even, “Anything time you pass across your body, it’s always a turnover or jumping (to pass).”

Against Cal, the Wildcats had 13 total turnovers – only five of those coming in the first half. Barnes said early on the goal is to have 10 or fewer but with this young team, she said 13 would be their sweet spot.

“We showed a ton of film yesterday,” Barnes said. “Just showed like, ‘This is where we’re turning over.’ ‘This is why these are the things we have to do,’ and they did a great job of applying it.”