Tee Tee Starks has always played an important role for the Arizona Wildcats.
In 2017, she became the first transfer to sign with Adia Barnes’ rebuilding UA program. Dominique McBryde and Aari McDonald soon followed.
Last season, she played with unmatched grit — the heart of a Wildcats team that won the WNIT.
Starks kept her teammates in line regardless of her role. Starks has been a starter, the first player off the bench and — this year — a spectator after undergoing season-ending surgery on her left shoulder. The only thing that’s changed is her vantage point.
“She’s extremely valuable in every way,” Barnes said. “She still continues to impact us, she’s positive and she’s a great role model.”
The senior forward will be on the bench, helping guide the Wildcats, when No. 16 UA (16-3, 5-3) hosts No. 8 UCLA (18-1, 7-1) Friday night. Arizona, winners of three straight games, will try to avenge its 70-58 loss to the Bruins earlier this season. The UA will be closer to full strength: McBryde and Helena Pueyo are both healthy.
Starks had been dealing with shoulder issues for months before agreeing to undergo surgery, which took place Jan. 2. The news rocked her teammates.
“I was devastated,” McDonald said. “Definitely, I shed a couple tears knowing I couldn’t play with ‘T’ for her last year.”
Starks has been wearing a sling that immobilizes her shoulder while she recovers.
While she can’t yet high-five her teammates, she still shares her support — and offers her insights. Starks has weekly check-ins with her teammates, makes sure they don’t have bad body language — a pet peeve of Barnes’ — and makes sure their energy level is up for practices.
“I feel like you can tell what kind of day it’s going to be by like the first drill and if it’s not going how it should be. I’ll usually get up, I’ll usually say something, call a timeout — do something because I don’t like running,” Starks said.
“If the energy is in the right place I feel like everybody feeds off of it. I feel like those are the days that we have our best practices when everybody’s feeling good looking good.”
Starks still talks to McDonald all the time during games, sharing what she sees from the bench. The two often talk at halftime to see if McDonald is rushing things.
Starks is also impacting the youngest Wildcats. She drills freshman Tara Manumaleuga about what she needs to know in tight, end-of-game situations — like who gets the ball in case of a tie-up situation, how many timeouts UA has remaining and how much time is on the shot clock.
Teammates and coaches say Starks, a defensive specialist, has been an influence on a UA defense ranked among the best in the nation.
“She talks to us on the sideline or in timeout like, ‘You need to rip; she can’t dribble, she can’t handle the pressure at all,’” McDonald said.
The coaching will prepare Starks for her next step.
She will participate in the WBCA’s “So You Want To Be A Coach” program, held at this year’s Final Four.
As for missing her senior season? Before undergoing surgery, Starks posted to Instagram: “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
“Cause I’m still here,” she said. “I’m still on the team. I got breath in my body, I got breath in my lungs. I’m still in a place where these are my friends — these are my sisters. I get to be with them every day.”
Rim shots
Arizona has received a verbal commitment for the 2020 class from
- Marta Garcia, a 6-foot-3-inch power forward from Seville, Spain. Garcia averaged 6.7 points and 3.3 rebounds per game in the 2019 FIBA U18 European Championships last summer. She was a teammate of Pueyo’s.
Two years ago, BlueStar Media listed Garcia on a watchlist along with Pueyo and UA commit Derin Erdogan.
With the Pac-12 season nearly at the halfway point, longtime women’s basketball writer
- Michelle Smith
- Sabrina Ionescu
- Michaela
- Onyenwere
- Kelly Graves
- Tara VanDerveer.
- Friday’s UCLA-Arizona matchup is the only game this week featuring two top-16 teams.
