Pac-12 Media Day: Arizona's Adia Barnes A-OK with Wildcats outplaying predictions

LAS VEGAS — Go ahead: Tell Adia Barnes her Arizona Wildcats will finish pretty low in the Pac-12. She’ll usually make you look bad.

“I think since I’ve been to Arizona we’ve never finished lower than we’ve been picked. Ever,” Barnes said Tuesday ... after the Wildcats were picked to finish seventh this season during the conference’s preseason media day.

She was almost entirely accurate.

According to the Pac-12, the Wildcats have finished higher than their preseason pick in the official coaches’ poll under Barnes six times — and the miss happened only barely last season, when the Wildcats were picked to finish third but instead wound up in a fourth-place tie (and still reached the second round of the NCAA tournament).

So seventh, this time, will stand as the prediction at least.

“I don’t think we’ll finish seventh, but that’s fine. I don’t really care,” Barnes said. “There’s no pressure. There’s not anything to prove to anyone. I know that we have a young core and great talent.

“And we will get better, I think. If you looked at us last year, we were better on paper. This year, we’re gonna have a better basketball team, just because of who we have, the chemistry and how we’re working right now.”

Part of Barnes’ optimism stems from how the Wildcats have started playing behind closed doors. While speaking at a UA Arthritis Center a week earlier, Barnes said practices didn’t look great because it was “kind of ugly” and talked about grittiness being the team’s top attribute.

Now, Barnes says, she’s seen that grittiness already starting to develop into something.

“I see we’re already better defensively this year than we were last year at this point,” Barnes said. “So I think I have a really good coachable group. It is excited to learn and excited to play, so I’m having fun. They’re a fun group. We’ll be less talented on paper but I think we’re gonna surprise some people. I really do.”

For help on the court at meshing it all together, Barnes has been leaning on the two fifth-year seniors who accompanied her to Pac-12 media day, fifth-year seniors Esmery Martinez and Helena Pueyo.

They don’t have an easy task.

“We have a lot of a freshmen so it just takes time, but I think we’re doing a good job at working together to build that chemistry,” Pueyo said. “I think we have a good balance between talent and teamwork. I think that there will be a key to be able to win games.

Already, Martinez has found the freshman group opening her eyes.

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“We’re so aggressive. We have this group of freshmen, they are just tough,” Martinez said. “I can’t define how they play but they are just tough. They love the game. I love how aggressive they are. I love how competitive they are. I like everything from them.”

Even so, how far does aggressiveness get in a league where 10 all-confernece players return to a league that put seven teams in the NCAA Tournament last season?

The Pac-12, in its final iteration as presently constructed, or maybe ever, is a league so loaded and balanced that six teams made ESPN’s early Top 25, while Utah, UCLA and Stanford all picked up first-place votes in both the conference’s coaches and media preseason polls.

Utah was voted the favorite to win by coaches and media alike, with UCLA second and Stanford in a tight band near the top, while both polls had a second band with Colorado, USC and Washington State all predicted to finish just ahead of the Wildcats.

It’s a group so strong that Utah coach Lynne Roberts appeared in near-denial when it was suggested to her that the Utes would now be the hunted ones after sharing last season’s regular-season title with Stanford.

“We still have so much to prove,” Roberts said.

It’s also a league that may also be pretty tough even in the lower half, a league where Barnes sees no floor, even if somebody has to finish there.

“This is the strongest it’s ever been, if not the strongest,” Barnes said. “I think top to bottom, you look at Stanford, UCLA, USC, Colorado, Utah, there’s a lot of talent. Everybody’s gotten better.

“What is going to be so challenging is that we don’t have a 12th-place team. From fifth to 12th is probably going to be the difference of one game. It’s just a really hard league this year.”