Before the Arizona Wildcats played Monday’s NCAA Tournament opener, they learned who their next opponent could be.
Eleventh-seeded BYU upset sixth-seeded Rutgers, 69-66, in Monday morning’s opener. It was the first upset of the young tournament after all the higher seeds won on Sunday.
Adia Barnes didn’t watch.
Arizona’s coach says she never pays attention to potential next-round opponents — not when there’s a game to play.
“I’m the type that I don’t like to jinx myself,” Barnes said. “I think that I’m not good at that. I have to just focus — I didn’t even really want to know the score. I can’t. I’m better at focusing on what we have to do, not getting distracted, not looking ahead because I think if you look ahead your get your butts kicked.
“We’ve learned that this year a couple times.
“So no, I was not concerned about that. I did think that Rutgers was going to win in the end because of their pressure. But BYU is coached really well, and they’re a dangerous team.”
Pregame excitement
Before Monday’s tipoff, Arizona senior Aari McDonald was named a finalist for the Naismith Defensive Player of the Year award. McDonald already collected the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year award for the second consecutive year.
McDonald had 57 steals in the shortened 2020-21 season. After Monday’s NCAA Tournament win, she has 60.
The other Naismith finalists are South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston, Northwestern’s Veronica Burton and Oklahoma State’s Natasha Mack.
McDonald’s inclusion wasn’t the only pregame excitement for the Wildcats.
Early Monday, Arizona’s football coaches posted a video wishing the Wildcats good luck. First-year coach Jedd Fisch started by congratulating Barnes on her contract extension and said, “Arizona got better today.”
The excitement grew from there as assistant football coaches jumped on to get the Wildcats ready for the game.
Ricky Hunley shook a maraca told them, “Nothing but a National Championship; winning is the only option.”
Chuck Cecil screamed, “Go Cats. Fill it up!” and then dunked a Nerf basketball. New defensive coordinator Don Brown drew up a basketball play, then scored — with another assistant providing a screen as he took it to the Nerf hoop in the Lowell-Stevens Football Facility’s hallway.
UA forward Sam Thomas said she was ready to run through the wall for Fisch and his crew.
‘Nervous is good’
Monday marked Arizona’s first NCAA Tournament game since 2005. It was only natural that the nerves would be there.
“Nervous is good for basketball; scared is bad,” Barnes said earlier in the week.
“We don’t have any players on our team that are scared. We have a lot of players that are nervous, and they get nervous. I think our trainer sometimes calls them the Pepto team or something, because a lot get nervous stomachs — which I guess is a normal thing.”
All stocked
The Wildcats took advantage of the newly — and fully — stocked weight rooms Saturday and Sunday. Even Arizona’s support staffers — performance coach Jaime Fernandez, trainer Jessie Johnson, operations director Jessika Carrington and sports information director Adam Gonzales — got in a late-night session Sunday.
As promised, the NCAA improved the weight rooms in San Antonio on Saturday morning following complaints that the equipment was inadequate compared to the men’s gear at the NCAA Tournament in Indianapolis.
Rim shots
- All 16 higher seeds won on Sunday, marking the first time it’s happened since the first day of the 2010 tournament. Tuesday brought a few upsets: No. 11 BYU, No. 12 Belmont and No. 13 Wright State all advanced.
- Fellow Pac-12 teams Stanford and Oregon State both won, moving on to the second round. Oregon and UCLA both played late their first-round games Monday night; scores were unavailable when the Star went to print.
- Stony Brook’s 20 first-half points were the fewest ever allowed by Arizona in the first half of an NCAA Tournament game. The Seawolves’ 24 second-half points were the second-fewest allowed by the UA in the second half of an NCAA Tournament game; Western Kentucky scored 23 points against the Wildcats in the second half of their 1997 game.
- Arizona’s 17 steals were also a record for an NCAA tourney game.
