Point Guard U has been restored, but it’s not what you think.
It’s Aari McDonald, a cross between Damon Stoudamire and T.J. McConnell. The UA’s 5-foot 7-inch, game-changing spitfire of a point guard is the most exciting thing to buzz across Lute and Bobbi Olson Court in years.
Word must’ve leaked out about McDonald, because 5,006 people arrived at McKale Center on a Sunday night to watch an Arizona women’s basketball program that last played in a big game in 2005.
McDonald is the Pac-12’s best point guard — take it to the bank — and if you think that’s an exaggeration, ask Arizona State coach Charli Turner Thorne, whose 17th-ranked team had won 27 of its last 31 games against the Wildcats.
Why, in the last four years ASU so dominated Arizona that it won by scores of 60-36, 76-47, 69-45 and 75-50.
But in the first quarter of Sunday’s game, McDonald made a statement that times have changed. She scored 13 of Arizona’s 17 points and 24 overall, setting the tone for the UA’s most significant victory since the Joan Bonvicini days.
It wasn’t a case of someone getting hot from 3-point range; all 13 of McDonald’s first-quarter points came as a result of drives to the bucket against much taller players.
Bring it. McDonald is fearless times two. She has already scored 39 points in a game this season.
“I know that my team would look to me to make things happen,” McDonald said in a Pac-12 Networks interview.
“I know that my team feeds off me; I know I’m the leader.”
Talk about an understatement.
Arizona’s women’s basketball program has been so ineffective for so long that in the 2015-16 season it drew “crowds” of 728, 741, 765, 778, 827 and 845 to McKale Center. That was when Aari McDonald was a senior at Fresno’s Brookside Christian High School, where she was so good that in back-to-back games against Linden High School and Livingston High School she had quadruple-doubles.
Against Linden, McDonald scored 33 points with 11 rebounds, 10 assists and 15 steals.
Against Livingston, McDonald scored 35 points with 10 rebounds, 10 assists and 13 steals.
Arizona couldn’t have possibly dreamed of acquiring a talent like Aari McDonald.
Washington, which was then of Final Four timber, won the strongly contested recruiting battle for McDonald, a time when much of the recruiting work done by then-UW assistant coach Adia Barnes.
But the UW program splintered as head coach Mike Neighbors relocated to Arkansas and former UA athletic director Greg Byrne hired Barnes with the hope that, in time, she could restore Arizona’s women’s basketball team to Bonvicini-levels of 1996-2005.
McDonald followed Barnes to Tucson. It was a recruiting coup for a long coup-less program.
Now that we’ve had 12 games — Arizona is 11-1 — to absorb McDonald’s impact, two things come to mind: 1, once Barnes implements her highly regarded recruiting class of 2019, the Wildcats should be serious NCAA Tournament contenders; 2, the current UA team, while probably not NCAA-bound, will make a ridiculously difficult Pac-12 even more demanding.
To have a presence in Pac-12 women’s basketball, it’s a must to have someone like McDonald. As UA women’s hoops all but disappeared for a decade, here’s how good the league has become:
No. 5 Oregon, 11-1, drew 8,951 for a game against Mississippi State.
No. 6 Stanford, 10-1, beat then-No. 3 Baylor.
No. 11 Oregon State, 10-2, drew 7,060 for a game against Duke.
Utah is 12-0 and drew as many as 6,106 for a game against BYU.
No. 18 Cal is 9-2, and packed 10,818 into Haas Pavilion for a game against UConn.
No. 22 ASU, 9-3, returns all five starters in a program that has played in five consecutive NCAA tournaments.
And yet Arizona’s McDonald-inspired toughness and Barnes’ insistence on defense-first basketball limited the Sun Devils to 39 points. It’s difficult to find anything to compare to a defensive effort of that level, but here’s one: In 1973, when Arizona and ASU began playing women’s basketball against one another, the Wildcats beat the Sun Devils 50-39.
That was 46 years ago. This could be the new age of UA women’s basketball.
While rebranding women’s basketball it’s realistic to think the UA can continue to put more people into McKale Center than once thought possible. If you draw 5,006 on a Sunday night between Christmas and New Year’s — with school on winter break — it suggests that there is an audience for women’s basketball like never before.
During Bonvicini’s seven NCAA tournament seasons from 1996-2005, Arizona drew as many as 5,003 for a 2004 game against Oregon, and 4,710 for a 2005 showdown against ASU.
As Arizona leaves this weekend for an unforgiving Pac-12 trip to Utah and Colorado, McDonald leads the Pac-12 in scoring, 24.8 per game.
The only other Wildcat to lead the league and score more than 20 per game is Barnes, who did so in 1998.
That’s the year Arizona reached its only Sweet 16. Could more sweetness lie ahead?
