Greg Hansen's look back at the Arizona Wildcats' 2019-20 women's basketball season

Time has rewritten almost every line of Arizona women’s basketball history in such a brief period that it is difficult to keep track of all the firsts.

Since mid-March 2019, the Wildcats have drawn more than 120,000 fans to McKale Center. They toppled Top 10 opponents Stanford, UCLA and Oregon State. Dynamic point guard Aari McDonald scored a school-record 44 points against the No. 22 Texas Longhorns.

It has been like a blur. Here’s some perspective:

Biggest improvements, year-to-year in Pac-12:

18 games: Arizona, 6-24 to 24-13 last year and 24-7 this season.

14 games: OSU, 10-21 to 24-11 in 2013-14.

14 games: Washington, 8-22 to 22-10 in 2000-01.

13 games: Stanford, 19-16 to 32-03 in 2001-02.

12 games: Oregon, 4-27 to 16-16 in 2013-14.

Comment: All four of those other teams ultimately reached the Final Four.

Success in the NCAA Tournament has mostly eluded Arizona. Here’s how Pac-12 teams have fared in March Madness:

Stanford: 89-31 in 33 NCAA tournaments.

USC: 29-14 in 16 NCAA tournaments.

ASU: 21-17 in 17 NCAA tournaments.

UCLA: 20-16 in 16 NCAA tournaments.

Washington: 21-19 in 19 NCAA tournaments.

Colorado: 17-13 in 13 NCAA tournaments.

Oregon State: 15-11 in 11 NCAA tournaments.

Oregon: 15-15 in 15 NCAA tournaments.

Cal: 13-14 in 14 NCAA tournaments.

Utah: 9-17 in 17 NCAA tournaments.

Arizona: 6-7 in seven NCAA tournaments.

Washington State: 0-1 in one NCAA tournament.

Comment: Although the Oregon schools have become nationally prominent, Stanford’s gap over the rest of the league’s March Madness participants is overwhelming.

Barnes knows how to win in the Madness

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The UA head coach played in five NCAA Tournament games in 1997 and 1998, and scored 102 points, a 20.1 average, tops in school history. Here are five things that shouldn’t be forgotten about Arizona’s long-ago run as an NCAA Tournament program:

1. In a 1998 Round of 32 game against No. 17 Virginia at McKale Center, Barnes showed up with a big smile. Why? Her braces had been removed by an orthodontist earlier in the week. She put a smile on the faces of a then-record crowd of 4,693 at McKale. Barnes scored 21 points in the first half and 30 in the game.

2. In Arizona’s first season in the NCAA tournament, it opened with a victory over Western Kentucky at Athens, Ga. But in a Round of 32 game against the Georgia Bulldogs, Arizona committed a school-record 30 turnovers and lost 80-74.

3. Lisa Griffith, a four-year starter at point guard, is Arizona’s career scoring leader in NCAA games. She scored 117 points in nine games, 1997-2000, and that includes a first-round game against Florida in 1999, when she was held scoreless.

4. Until last year’s Women’s National Invitation Tournament championship game victory over Northwestern, when 14,644 attended at McKale, the Wildcats played before a then-record 13,188 fans in 2005 at Tennessee’s Boling Arena in a Round of 32 loss to LSU. It was the last time Arizona has played in the NCAA Tournament. What went wrong in the 76-43 loss to the second-seeded Tigers? Arizona fell behind 11-0, star center Shawntinice Polk injured her knee and missed half the game, and the Wildcats shot a poor 1 for 11 from 3-point range.

5. Perhaps the most notable comeback in school history came in a 1999 first-round victory over Florida, played in Piscataway, N.J. The Gators led Arizona 63-46 with five minutes remaining, but Angela Lackey (29 points) and Reshea Bristol (20) led a spirited rally and Arizona won 87-84 in overtime.

McDonald has made an impact in the record books

If you combine the basketball record books for men’s and women’s teams at Arizona, McDonald’s name is in all the right places.

1. She has scored more points in two seasons, 1,486, than anyone in school history. Sean Elliott is next with 1,475. Barnes held the women’s two-year scoring record, 1,251, before she recruited McDonald and put her in the lineup.

2. McDonald averaged 20.6 points this season and a school-record 24.1 last year. The only other Wildcat to average 20 points in two seasons was Coniel Norman, part of the Kiddie Korps of 1972-74. Norman averaged 24.0 as a freshman in 1972-73 and 23.8 a year later before jumping to the NBA.

3. McDonald has 158 steals in two Arizona seasons. That’s No. 2 overall for women. You might be surprised to learn that Barnes — who played power forward much of the time — is first with 162 steals in two years. Arizona’s men’s record for steals in back-to-back years is 151 by Hassan Adams in 2005 and 2006.

How Arizona projects for the 2020-21 Pac-12 season

Six Pac-12 teams spent almost all of the 2019-20 season in the Top 25. Subtracting points of the seniors and those who have announced they’ll enter the WNBA draft, here’s how many points from those in this season’s rotation return for each school:

Stanford, 1,534 points

UCLA, 1,406 points

Arizona, 1,314 points

Oregon State, 1,296 points

Oregon, 979 points

Arizona State, 597 points

Comment: Expect Stanford and UCLA to open next season in the Top 10, with Oregon State and Oregon close. Arizona could join Stanford and UCLA in the Top 10 if McDonald returns.

ESPN ranks Oregon No. 1 in the Class of 2020 recruiting poll, with Stanford No. 6 and Cal No. 7.

Arizona has two elite players who will be eligible in 2020-21: 6-foot, 4-inch North Dakota volleyball/basketball standout Lauren Ware and redshirt shooting guard Shaina Pellington, who was the 2018 Big 12 freshman of the year while at Oklahoma and averaged 13.1 points for the Sooners. Pellington is playing on Canada’s women’s Olympic basketball team.