Offseason questions for the Adia Barnes' Wildcats: Who leads with captain Pueyo turning pro?

The 2023-24 season for Adia Barnes’ and her Arizona Wildcats came to an end March 23 with an NCAA Tournament loss to Syracuse.

Just nine days later, Arizona was back at it in skill development.

Not much rest for a small, but mighty, rotation of only seven players for the back half of the season — a group that played long minutes night in and night out, including four overtime games.

True of most programs in the new NIL and transfer-portal eras, there are plenty of questions surrounding not just the UA program, but the sport as a whole going into next season.

Gone from the UA: veteran players Helena Pueyo and Esmery Martinez, who are out of eligibility. Both will play professionally.

UA coach Adia Barnes said that she has been getting calls from WNBA teams about Pueyo. The do-it-all forward is the last player who was part of the Wildcats’ magical run to the 2021 national championship game. She turned down a three-year professional contract overseas to return for her fifth season as a Wildcat and. Pueyo turned it on over the last six weeks of the season, including taking over late against Auburn in a first four matchup to help Arizona win an NCAA tourney game for the fourth straight season.Also gone is Kailyn Gilbert, who was not on the UA roster for the last month of the season and is now in the transfer portal; Salimatou Kourouma, a key contributor until a shoulder injury ended her season, is in the portal and not expected back.

This will be the first time in Barnes’ tenure as coach at Arizona that there is not a veteran starter with more than a single year of college experience returning (Courtney Blakely will be a senior, but she is a reserve; it’s not known yet if Isis Beh, also a reserve, will be returning).

Back is the freshman core of Skylar Jones, Jada Williams, Breya Cunningham and Montaya Dew — plus Blakely and mid-season bench additions Erin Tack and Brooklyn Rhodes.

The Wildcats will supplement that group with a 2024 freshman class of three players: combo guard Lauryn Swann (Long Island Lutheran), Serbian forward Katarina Knezevic and German point guard Mailien Rolf. UA is also in the mix — the Wildcats are considered in the top five — for four-star Emely Rodriguez (Miami Central Pointe Christian Academy).

The next signing period starts on April 17.

Barnes has already added one transfer last week: Paulina Paris, a combo guard who played at North Carolina the last two seasons.

Other questions surrounding the Wildcats during the offseason:

Who is the new leader?

With Pueyo, the two-time captain, leaving, it’s time for the next Wildcat to step up.

Or has she already stepped up?

The most natural next in line is Williams. She showed she’s a spark on the court and can also settle everyone down. Williams stepped up and scored 14 points in the last 3:28 in the win over then-ranked No. 3 Stanford in Maples Pavilion. She showed that she can take a charge and guards players nearly a foot taller than her.

She started, played a lot of minutes as a freshman and grew as the season rolled on. With an offseason of development with Barnes and her staff and understanding the UA system better and expanding her defense, she is the next true point guard and leader that the team needs.

Off the court, Williams also set the tone over the last stretch of the season.

When the Wildcats faced yet another challenge and Barnes was talking to them in the locker room, it was Williams, the freshman guard, who spoke up and said, “We’re 10 toes down. We’re just going to play. We don’t care if it’s five, six, seven, we got it.”

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Barnes said. “It was really a powerful moment.”

The “10 toes down” became the Wildcats’ mantra from that moment.

How big will the roster be?

Heading into last season, Barnes thought she had settled on her perfect number: 12. Then, the perfect storm hit (not in chronological order): three players (Dew, Tack and Kourouma) ended up out for the year with injuries; three players (Fanta Gassama, Maya Nnaji and Gilbert) left the program at different points for various reasons.

The roster flux brought the Wildcats down to as few as seven players when they chose to add Rhodes in February.

In February, Barnes said that if she had known all of this was going to happen, she would have had more players on the squad.

The trend for most coaches is to only have 12 or 13 players on their roster, instead of using the full 15 scholarship allotment. In addition, as teams get into postseason, they usually go with a seven- or eight-player rotation. Notre Dame won a recent championship with eight players. Barnes went with seven for most of the 2021 run to the title game. And in this year’s Elite Eight matchup between UConn and USC, the Huskies went with seven players and the Trojans eight.

Most likely Arizona will go with 14 players next season — that includes Tack and Rhodes, the midseason additions who were put on scholarship this season.

Barnes would have three more additions from the transfer portal, along with Paris, to get to that number.

What is Barnes looking for in the transfer portal?

First and foremost, fitting the culture. Whoever comes into the UA program has to mesh with the foundational pieces in Jones, Williams, Dew and Cunningham.

And, of course, they have to want to play defense.

Arizona clearly needs more bodies and depth in every position. With the intense defense that UA runs, Barnes has said they could go 9 or 10 deep just to give players a breather.

But without that depth, Pueyo ended up playing nearly every minute of every game, including all four overtime games (even triple and double overtime games, playing more than 40 minutes four different times, and more 50 or more minutes twice).

As the season wore on, especially in the loss to Syracuse in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, it all seemed to take its toll.

The Wildcats also need versatile bigs. Without depth down low, it’s been hard to fill those positions when the Wildcats are in foul trouble or have injuries. Someone like Pueyo had to slide over into the four — or even five — at times. Having extra bodies and ones that crash the boards, can play a little high-low action with Cunningham and maybe even knock down a 3 once in a while, would give the Wildcats more options.