For Arizona, it always comes down to defense.
When the Wildcats’ defense picks a steal or forces a shot clock violation or bad pass, the team gets fired up. Good defense leads to transition offense and, when they played at home, a roaring crowd.
Saturday night’s NCAA Tournament opener against UNLV was no different. With the game on the line in the fourth quarter, Arizona made an adjustment on defense and forced UNLV turnovers on possession after possession.
While it was a collective effort on defense, the one Wildcat who really turned up the heat was Sam Thomas. The senior finished with four steals, two blocks and even more deflections.
Thomas has consistently done the little things that don’t get into the box score. She’s pretty good with the stuff that shows up, too: Thomas is the Pac-12’s active career leader in steals (262) and blocks (198).
“She’s consistent. She’s always in the right place. She usually guards one of the best offensive players from the other team,” UA coach Adia Barnes said. “She does so many little things a lot of times she may not get the steal but her pressure and her placement leads to other steals so the stuff she does even when she’s not scoring … it’s very difficult to take Sam off the floor.
“Then she comes up with these hard blocks. Not too many guards in the country can block shots on the jump shooter or block the shots he way that she does, and, in my opinion, she should have been defensive player of the year and my opinion she’s very, very underrated defensively and she has been for her whole career here. She is a great defensive player but she’s not a flashy defensive player besides the blocked shots, but she is valuable and she’s a defensive stopper and she cancels a lot of people. Her defense is extremely underrated and does not show up in every category on the stat sheet.”
Gutting it out
North Carolina had a long road to Tucson. Playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference, one of the country’s toughest conferences, has prepared the Tar Heels for nearly everything that they have endured.
UNC’s trek to Tucson began with a flight delay. The team didn’t arrive in Tucson 1 a.m. Thursday — 4 a.m. North Carolina time.
“It probably helped us adjust to the time change a little faster because we were exhausted when we got here,” guard Carlie Littlefield said. “It helped me fall asleep. And I mean nothing wakes you up quite like the Arizona sun.”
UNC faced a tough No. 12-seeded Stephen F. Austin team that just wouldn’t go away. The Tar Heels outscored the Ladyjacks 25-10 in the fourth quarter en route to a 79-66 victory.
“We know how hard it is to win, and to think about how this group when you’re staring at the finality of your season and things aren’t going your way and that can make you tight, these guys just show such toughness,” coach Courtney Banghart said. “They show such toughness. They trust me, they listen, and they give great energy. We’ve got a bunch of fighters.”
One final salute
UNLV’s Khayla Rooks said she was excited to play an NCAA Tournament game in McKale Center. Her late father, Sean Rooks, was an Arizona star from 1988-92.
While at Washington — Khayla Rooks transferred to UNLV before this season — Khayla Rooks played in Tucson twice, both on Valentine’s Day. Both times, she left balloons and flowers on her dad’s photo in UA’s men’s basketball team’s hallway of legends in McKale Center.
After she scored her first points in Saturday’s game on a reverse layup, Rooks blew a kiss and pointed skyward.
The 6-foot-1-inch forward, who was the Mountain West’s Sixth Woman of the Year, finished with five points and seven rebounds in more than 35 minutes.
“If I had to end my career, it would be here. It’s a special place,” Rooks said.
Showing up
Arizona drew 9,573 fans to Saturday’s session, the second-most of any site in the country.
Second-seeded Iowa, which lost on Sunday to No. 10-seeded Creighton, drew the largest number of fans with 14,382.
Top-seeded South Carolina drew 8,478. Louisville drew 8,407 and LSU drew 7,890.
UConn was further down the list with 5,073; Stanford had 3,648.
For the first round, the total number of fans in attendance across all sites was 103,193 — an average of 6,449 people per sessions.
Barnes is hoping for a larger crowd Monday, when the Wildcats take on UNC.
