Jade Loville exhaled.
For the first time in months, she’s been able to focus only on basketball.
It’s this odd tweener week for Arizona.
The Pac-12 Tournament is over. The Wildcats are waiting until Selection Sunday (March 12) to find out whom and where they will play in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
It’s spring break, so there is no school or homework.
For someone like Loville, who studies and constantly works on her game, this week of wall-to-wall analyzing and tinkering on her game is, well, exciting. You can hear it in her voice when she explains what this week is all about and what’s next for the Wildcats.
“Starting Monday, practice looks a lot more energized,” the fifth-year senior said. “We look rejuvenated, and I think that was my focus. I made a comment like, ‘Look guys, you know what’s done is done, but now we have a great opportunity.’ (UA) Coach Adia (Barnes) also emphasized, ‘This is a great opportunity that a lot of teams don’t get, and we can’t take it for granted.’
“I think moving forward, we have to all dial in, and our energy, my energy has been completely different. Having that leadership on the court, trying to just keep my team together even when things aren’t going well … I think you see the energy. You can sense it because it’s that excitement of moving forward, having a new chapter. We get to write it. There is no one else that gets to write it. It’s up to us to really make the most of this opportunity.”
That opportunity is to forget about the three-game losing streak to finish the season. Postseason is a new day. It’s the win-and-move-on or lose-and-go-home time of year.
March is a time for UA veterans such as Cate Reese (25), Esmery Martinez (12), Jade Loville (30) and Shaina Pellington (1) to step up and put their experience to good use.
Past as precedent
No. 24 Arizona (21-9) has seen a similar situation play out before. February hasn’t been very kind to the Wildcats. Yes, they’ve had their moments — defeating No. 4 Stanford in overtime in the 2019-20 season and beating No. 4 Utah and No. 21 Colorado just a few weeks ago.
But, for the most part, this is the week where the magic happens. This is the week that the Wildcats come together as a team. It happened in 2019, when UA went on its first wild run all the way to the WNIT title under the helm of Barnes. The next one that is stamped in everyone’s memories is the 2020-21 NCAA run where Arizona left Texas A&M, Indiana and UConn in the dust while coming up just short of taking home the title.
So far, this week looks like it’s right on trend. Loville and her other fifth-year teammates, Shaina Pellington and Cate Reese, are doing their parts in helping to set that postseason mentality. Reese has been one of the loudest in practice — making sure her teammates are in the right position, doing the right things on the court.
Pellington and Loville are leading in other ways, including pulling aside their teammates.
“Shaina and I have those conversations,” Loville said. “We need to be vocal about the things that we see because it starts with us. We need to set the tone.
“That comes from Cate, that comes from Shaina — all the upperclassmen. All of us have our job — really focusing on this team, setting the tone every day in practice to really get after it so that we can continue to get better before these games.”
‘Playing free’
Pellington and Reese were on the team that played in the national championship game. Loville also has experience playing in the NCAA Tournament from her sophomore year. Her role on that Boise State team, which lost to Oregon State in the first round, was much different than it is today.
Utah forward Jenna Johnson, right, gets a hold of Arizona guard Jade Loville, foiling her short-range shot in their Pac-12 game at McKale Center on Feb. 17, 2023.
Althought it’s been a while since Loville has been “dancing,” she knows the drill and knows that it’s the little things that matter.
This is the time for the Wildcats to work on themselves and get better every day. Barnes said they are working on shot selection, spacing and continuing to be more aggressive on defense. They are also working on being more intentional and disciplined — knowing when to feed the hot hand and when to slow up and not take that quick shot.
It’s a time to get back to Arizona basketball.
Specifically, for Loville, she is continuing to work on counter moves when her defender isn’t giving her space to get her shot off. In those instances, she knows it could be as simple as a “pump fake and go by them because they’re so close.”
Loville wants to make her opponents guess more and be a little more unpredictable. She also has been working on defense. In the UCLA game in the Pac-12 Tournament, she took a jump. This week, she’s looking to be even more disruptive on that side of the court. She knows putting those things together will help her teammates.
“I told my teammates, ‘I’m not playing basketball this week. I’m hooping,’ ” Loville said. “I think that’s when you get to be creative and just play freely. Another part of my game that I was lacking in these last five, six, whatever it is, games, I think I was playing too structured. I was trying to put myself in this box instead of just playing the game that I’ve played my whole life.
“I play best when I’m playing free. I was thinking a little bit too much. Being able to take a step back and analyze that and look at the film, I was able to realize that. Now, I’m just trying to play free. I think we’re all playing free within, of course, our team and our structure. But that’s the blessing of having this whole week to just experiment and continue to feed off each other.”
Rim shots
Barnes said the when the Wildcats work the ball inside-out on offense, it’s proved to work. The analytics show that when they take one pass and shoot, they make 20%. When they do a reversal, they make 30%. But when the ball goes inside — a paint touch — the Wildcats make 50%.
UA assistant Ashley Davis was named to the Advancement of Blacks in Sports assistant/associate coach watchlist for top assistant.
Breya Cunningham and Jada Williams — both members of UA’s Class of 2023 — were named Naismith All-Americans.
Arizona led all Pac-12 schools in attendance for the second consecutive season averaging 7,679 fans for a total of 115,183. The Wildcats also finished in the top 10 in the nation for a second consecutive year, coming it at No. 9. These eight teams were ahead of UA: South Carolina, Iowa, UConn, Tennessee, Iowa State, LSU, Louisville and Indiana.
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Who will be the last four teams standing at the end of March Madness?
