Money, or lack thereof, changes Barnes’ trajectory | Greg Hansen

Three months after playing in the 2021 Final Four championship game, Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes signed a five-year contract for roughly $6.2 million. She was probably the hottest coaching property in women’s hoops.

Today, in year four of that contract, Barnes’ Wildcats are 8-4 with no Quad 1 victories and damaging losses to low-brow schools NAU and Grand Canyon. When the Big 12 regular season begins next weekend, it is an easy prediction that Arizona, ASU and Houston will bring up the rear in the Big 12, battling for 14th, 15th and 16th places.

What in the world happened? Follow the money.

Arizona hasn’t been able to be competitive at the Top 25-type level of NIL “free agency’’ even though it went 88-31 from 2020-23, always at or near the AP Top 10.

The best example occurred last spring. Six all-conference Pac-12 players transferred, and Arizona didn’t get a sniff, even though all of those six players got beat by Arizona at McKale Center in front of robust crowds in excess of 7,000, the league’s top draw.

Oregon State’s Raegan Beers went to Oklahoma, where she’s averaging 18 points per game.

WSU star Charlisse Leger-Walker went to No. 1 UCLA, where she is redshirting with an injury.

Colorado’s Aaronette Vonleh went to Baylor, where she is averaging 14.6 points.

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Oregon’s Grace Van Slooten went to Michigan State, where she starts for a 9-0 team.

OSU’s Talia von Oelhoffen went to No. 6 USC, where she starts and averages 7.5 points.

OSU’s Timea Gardiner went to No. 1 UCLA where she starts and averages 9.2 points.

Given Arizona’s rise in national prominence since 2019, it would’ve been realistic to think the Wildcats would’ve signed at least one of those six elite Pac-12 transfers. But it was not financially competitive. Rather, the UA lost one of its subs, Salimatou Kourouma, a transfer from Arkansas-Little Rock, to Oregon, a cratering program, for what is believed to have been $65,000 in NIL money.

This all leads to two edgy questions: Will Barnes be satisfied to stay at a school not blessed with Top 25 NIL resources?

Has her national reputation taken such a hit that when her contract expires next season she will not be attractive to Top 25 schools with coaching vacancies?

Stay tuned.