Arizona excited to head east to play West Virginia in 1st round of NCAA women's bracket

Adia Barnes walked into her team’s Selection Sunday party at the Sands Club confident and excited. the Arizona coach knew there was more basketball to play. Barnes was ready for postseason — the most exciting time of the year.

As she walked in there was a sea of red; all the players and staff were wearing their red UA hoodies.

Inside the room where the Wildcats ate their meal and watched the show, there was a dessert table filled with a cake that said “Made for it”; cupcakes with each player’s face on them; cookies from Crumbl; plus cookies that looked like Cacti, basketballs, Nike tennis shoes and jerseys with each player’s name and number on them.

Now, there would be more waiting and wondering who was next for Arizona.

Those answers would come soon enough.

The No. 7-seeded Wildcats (21-9) will play No. 10 seed West Virginia (19-11) on Friday in College Park, Maryland, as part of the Greenville Regional. All games will be televised on the ESPN family of channels.

“I’m really excited,” Barnes said. “Just to be at this point in the season, to make three straight NCAA Tournaments, it’s a great accomplishment. I like our field; good teams. I think we match up well.

“This is a great opportunity, and we want to take advantage of it. We’re hitting the road, unfortunately, because we wanted to play in front of our fans, but this is the best time of year.”

UA forward Esmery Martinez played at WVU for three seasons before transferring. It’s also special assistant to the head coach Bett Shelby’s former team. If the Wildcats win the first game, they would probably play host Maryland in the second round -—former Wildcat Brenda Frese’s team.

Arizona has made the NCAA Tournament for the third consecutive year. It would have been four years; however, there was no tournament in 2020 as COVID-19 shut down the world. UA has made postseason play four of the last five years, starting with the WNIT in 2019.

It’s been 18 years since the Wildcats made three straight trips to the NCAA Tournament — 2003, 2004 and 2005. The school record is four consecutive trips from 1996-2000. All of those teams were coached by Joan Bonvicini.

No. 7, one of seven

The Wildcats didn’t have to wait long to see their name pop up on TV as they were revealed in the second section of the first side of the bracket.

“This is exciting for it to finally come to fruition,” fifth-year senior Jade Loville said. “I’m so proud of all the work that we put in. March is the best time of the year when we can start brand new, but also build on what we’ve done previously. I think just to see our name pop up is exciting and (to) find out where we’re going, who we’re playing now, we can really dial in.

“We felt the excitement. Starting with practice at noon, and the energy was was high. We were really excited to finally get to this moment and figure out who we’re going to play. It’s going to be fun.”

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A total of six other Pac-12 teams made the field of 68: Stanford, Utah, UCLA, Colorado, Washington State and USC. Only one conference, the ACC, had more teams make the field (eight). The Big Ten and the SEC also had seven teams in.

The NCAA Selection Committee had quite the task this past week. It’s always difficult. However, this year, with so many conference champions not playing in league tournament finals, there were at least 10 teams stealing automatic qualifier spots. Case in point: In the Pac-12, WSU won the conference tournament, while co-league champions Utah and Stanford were sent home earlier in the week.

The selection committee uses 14 criteria to determine who is in, who is out and where they get seeded. One of them is loses and how competitive you are in those games. For the Wildcats, that loss at Utah by one point counted more in their favor, because it was a close loss that wasn’t played at home.

An added point this year was observable components. That means that while watching games, the committee members look for things that don’t show up in a stat sheet or a final score. For example, if a game was close and in the last minute it came down to free throws, they would take this into consideration.

A few pluses for Arizona: Beating five ranked teams and winning 21 games. Also on the positive side of the ledger was that the Pac-12 was tough one through 12. The teams beat one another up game in and game out.

Oregon, which had flirted the last two weeks with being in the NCAAA Tournament field, was left out. Most likely the Ducks will be in the WNIT. Washington might also be in that field, which was announced later Sunday night (after the Star went to press).

Time to perform

Before the Wildcats got to all of that, there was a special video with families — and dogs— of the Wildcats with special messages, from Helena Pueyo’s family to Shaina Pellington’s parents. There were even a few more surprises with Las Vegas Aces’ Kelsey Plum who said she was “rooting for the Wildcats” and loved Barnes and former UW teammate Aari McDonald. Steve Kerr said: “it’s been so much fun watching you kick a** the last few years.”

Former WNBAer and teammate of Barnes in Seattle, Sue Bird, said: “Adia and (UA assistant) Salvo (Coppa) are my people. I always have an eye on the Wildcats.”

Others joined in such as former UA standout Jason Terry, WNBAer Jewel Lloyd and Indiana Pacers assistant coach Jenny Boucek. Boucek was one of Barnes’ coaches when she played. She told the Wildcats: “Trust your coach. She knows what it takes to be be great and what it takes to win. Have fun and savor every moment.”

Now, it was go time.

As soon as their names were called, the Wildcats celebrated.

After the show, Barnes toasted her team with sparking juice:

“This is to hard work ... be proud and we’re going to make a run. Remember what Jade dad’s said: ‘Wear your best dancing shoes.’ We’re going to make a long run.”