En route to 6-0 start, new Arizona women's hoops coach building with discipline

Since her team started playing publicly at McKale Center last month, Becky Burke played her top scorer off the bench in the season opener, sat her point guard for the first half of another game and has removed a potential rotation player from the team.

Those players aren't the only ones who have felt the pain. Burke has, too.

At least that’s how the first-year Arizona women's basketball coach explained her decision to suspend point guard Noelani Cornfield for the first quarter of UA’s win over Northern Colorado on Nov. 25 and what’s happened since then, including how Cornfield led UA to a 78-63 win over Cal State Bakersfield on Saturday at McKale.

“Do I want Lani on the bench for a quarter? Absolutely not,” Burke said, sitting next to Cornfield and center Achol Magot after Saturday’s game. “But I’ll hold Lani accountable the same way I'll hold Achol accountable or a walk-on accountable."

Considering Cornfield is a fifth-year point guard who led the Burke-coached Buffalo team to the WNIT title last season, the decision to sit her out for 10 minutes may have sent a particularly clear message.

But Cornfield said she was “right with coach Burke” on the issue.

“Over my year at Buffalo and to here, she knows who I am, and she knows exactly how to go about things with me,” Cornfield said. “We can talk about things one-on-one, hear each other out, but at the end of the day, she's a coach and I’m a player.”

Burke’s brief benching of Mickayla Perdue was also eye-opening, since Perdue was the Horizon League Player of the Year last season at Cleveland State and an obvious candidate to become the Wildcats’ top scorer this year.

But Burke has said she didn’t like Perdue’s effort in UA’s exhibition loss to West Texas A&M and had said she was looking for consistency and reliability from Freddie Wallace, who had not appeared in a game.

“Freddie's got a lot of talent but gets in her own way sometimes,” Burke said earlier this month. “Freddie really could help us. But I'm not a coach that's just going to play the people that are talented…I hope she comes around. I hope she earns the opportunity.”

While confirming Wallace was no longer with the team Saturday, Burke declined to detail if there was a breaking point that led to the move since she made those comments.

“Since then, obviously we've just progressed to the point where she's no longer with us,” Burke said. “Really wishing her the best.”

While Wallace’s 6-2 size might have come in handy for the undersized Wildcats, both Cornfield and Perdue have excelled for them since their bumpy moments. Perdue led UA to a 62-59 win over UC Riverside with 17 points on Nov. 6 and is averaging a team-high 17.7 since then after she had 14 points and three steals Saturday against the Roadrunners.

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Cornfield, meanwhile, totaled 11 points and seven assists while hitting 7 of 10 free throws in 27 minutes against Northern Colorado, then didn’t leave the floor at all Saturday.

Over 40 minutes against the Roadrunners, Cornfield had 22 points while hitting 7 of 12 field goals, made all eight free throws she took, dished nine assists and grabbed four steals.

Eight of her points came in the first quarter, after which UA already had a 22-13 lead while holding the Roadrunners to 31.3% shooting.

But Bakersfield played the Wildcats evenly over the next two quarters, cutting UA’s lead to just six points when Tena Ikidi converted a three-point play with 9:34 left.

“We didn't handle that first 10 minutes very well from a maturity standpoint," Burke said. "We probably let it get us lackadaisical a little bit here and there. Instead of stretching that lead, I think we rested on it a little bit. So lesson learned.”

Still, with Cornfield pushing the Wildcats, UA led by double digits in most of the third quarter and then went on an 8-0 run late in the fourth to take a 76-60 lead.

That’s when Cornfield picked up her own blocked shot and put it back with 1:37 left.

She was still there, playing all 40 minutes Saturday after having sat out only the final three against Northern Colorado when that game was in UA's hands.

So, through words and actions alike, Burke has shown she really doesn't want Cornfield off the floor. At all.

“Lani was so mature about it and handled it extremely well,” Burke said of Cornfield during the Northern Colorado game. “Nothing serious, but there was a moment where I had to hold her accountable. She took it and was mature about it, and we moved on from it.

"But it's the message that you send to your program, that it doesn't matter who you are, we are building a culture here and we're going to stick to our standards and our values.”