Sam Thomas relies on lessons learned from her UA mentors during 1st season in Italy

Sam Thomas always trusts Wildcats assistant coach Salvo Coppa. He helped her develop into one of the best defensive players in the country while at Arizona.

Before she went up the road for a tryout to become a professional on a training-camp contract with the Phoenix Mercury, Thomas spent extra time in the gym with Coppa to prepare for the next level.

And when she was selecting a team to play for overseas after the WNBA season ended, he gave some important guidance: Sardinia has the most beautiful beaches in Italy.

“Salvo was definitely right about the beaches. You can trust Salvo on his word about that,” Thomas said with a laugh.

“Salvo taught me so much with the skill work. He taught me footwork, especially getting me prepared for overseas with all the different traveling and all their violations. He’s been helping me a lot. I probably should have learned some Italian from him while I was (in Tucson).”

Thomas said it wasn’t only Coppa, it was Arizona coach Adia Barnes, whose team team is awaiting its placement in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday. Barnes prepared Thomas for everything that’s come after graduating last May with her masters and playing five seasons as a Wildcat. That includes being a professional basketball player for the Mercury and Dinamo Sassari in Sardinia, as well as navigating through life.

“Adia taught us how to be women off the floor,” Thomas said. “It’s hard overseas to make that connection with fans because I don’t speak their language and I’m going to be gone in seven months. It’s not like they can really feel that connection.

“Adia taught me to be a good human being. I say ‘hi’ to people. I say ‘Ciao,’ and it just melts their hearts and they look so happy.

“That aspect of who you are off the court really matters and will help you on the court with your fanbase, your love and just being a confident and happy player.”

Stat-sheet stuffer

In her first season overseas, Thomas is averaging 9.3 points per game, shooting 50% from the field and 36% from the 3-point line. She is averaging 2.5 assists and has 41 steals and 18 blocks in 22 games.

Thomas is doing her usual, in other words — stuffing the stat sheet. In a Euro Cup game, she collected a season-high eight steals, scored 20 points (6 of 9 from the field) and blocked two shots in a 68-65 win over Kortrijk Spurs. In a regular-season game in December, Thomas helped her team to victory with 4-of-5 shooting from beyond the arc for 12 points, three blocks, two assists and two steals.

“My confidence has grown,” Thomas said. “I’m a more competent 3-point shooter, and I’m more of an attacker, I would say, because they need you overseas to score the points as the American. Having that be my job and knowing now I’m actually getting paid to score, it puts that extra pressure on you, but it’s kind of a good pressure.”

On the roster of a Mercury team that is full of All-Stars like Diana Taurasi and Skylar Diggins-Smith, Thomas’ role in her first season was to defer. She saw limited action in 24 games as a rookie, averaging 4.9 minutes. She made the AP WNBA All-Rookie Team.

Thomas has a few more regular-season games left, will play in the Italian Cup event, then the playoffs. She returns to Phoenix at the end of April to start training camp for the Mercury.

USA ... and ‘D’

Despite being asked score more, Thomas is still a defensive player at heart. She said that it’s a focus for teams overseas. They apply full-court pressure, and everyone is pressuring, not just the guards.

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However, the perception in Italy is that Americans don’t like to play defense. They were a bit surprised to see Thomas’ tenaciousness on that side of the court.

“The very first game I ever played there, I got interviewed and one of the reporters asked, ‘It’s very weird that you play defense as an American because most Americans come overseas and don’t want to play defense.’ I got a laugh out of that one, but I think they’re just shocked by it,” Thomas said. “I still want to value my defense. It’s a good challenge for me too. Especially as it’s different schemes. I’ve been trapping ball screens my entire life at Arizona, and we don’t do that overseas. It’s learning a different route to get over screens, get through them.”

While her game generally has translated overseas, there have been other adjustments to make.

“They call a lot of fouls, and I don’t think they are used to bigger-build women,” Thomas said. “For example, Joyner (Holmes) is my teammate. If she blocked someone, they call a foul whether it was a foul or not just because she’s so much bigger. But she can drive and two girls will jump on her back and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, no foul call,’ just because I feel like they feel bad for the girls.

“I get called for travels all the time. On a post move, you have to dribble the ball before you even move your pivot foot.

“Overseas they play more into the shot clock, kind of like Washington does this year. They take the entire 24 seconds — run their offense and get the best shot out of that more so than just kind of playing one-on-one basketball.”

Thomas said she’s learned a lot about herself as a person. Exploring a different country on her own and being far away from her family has been hard. At times she wanted to go home, but she stuck with it. It helped that when she got a break in the schedule, she went to Greece to visit Mercury teammate Megan Gustafson. They visited two islands, Syros and Paros, along with Athens. And in February she was back in Tucson — her second home — for the Stanford and Cal games.

“It’s such a nice feeling just to know that I’m not playing basketball here, but people still care about me as a human being and what I’m doing. They’re all asking me how my experience is,” Thomas said. “Just knowing that I’ve made an impact on this community and these fans just by playing basketball and doing what I love. Putting a smile on my face, saying ‘hi’ to everybody and knowing how long of a way that goes. I feel that.

“It truly does feel like a second family.”

Rim shots

Thomas is not adventurous when it comes to food. She passed on the octopus and pigs feet covered in mozzarella, but she’s enjoying the pasta and pizza in Italy. Still, she looked a little skinny and not as jacked as she usually is on a recent trip back to Tucson.

“We need to get on the new system of knowing kilograms and all that because I don’t know what I’m lifting over there,” Thomas said. “Honestly, I think it’s the food. I eat pasta and pizza every day, and I’m like, ‘I’m going to gain so much weight; like, I need to stop eating.’ And then I’m not even gaining any weight because they don’t have any preservatives or anything like that.

“Even Adia was saying she eats so much (in Europe) and she doesn’t even gain a pound. It’s so hard to gain weight over there because the food is so healthy. It’s a good problem to have, but I think I just need to take some protein or something to get my get my weight back up.”

Arizona dropped three more spots in the AP poll — to No. 24 — that was released Monday morning. The Wildcats have lost three consecutive games to Oregon, Oregon State and UCLA in the quarterfinals of the Pac-12 Tournament. The latest ESPN Bracketology has UA as a 6-seed playing in South Bend, Indiana.

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