The Arizona women’s basketball took another step toward officially beginning its Big 12 era Thursday morning when the conference announced home and away schedule pairings for the 2024-25 season.
Coach Adia Barnes’ Wildcats will play an 18-game conference slate. While the number of games is the same as when the UA was part of the Pac-12, the makeup of games is, of course, much different.
There are only three teams the Wildcats will see both home and away in conference play this season: rival Arizona State, former Pac-12 opponent Utah and BYU.
The Wildcats will play six teams at McKale Center, without seeing any on the road: Baylor, Cincinnati, Iowa State, TCU, Texas Tech and West Virginia.
And the UA will play road games against UCF, former Pac-12 opponent Colorado, Houston, Kansas, Kansas State and Oklahoma State; Arizona won’t face of those teams in Tucson.
Arizona forward Breya Cunningham (25) is defended by Utah Utes forward Alissa Pili (35) and Utah Utes guard Kennady McQueen (24) in the first half of the Wildcats' 71-70 overtime upset of the No. 15 Utes on Jan. 7 at McKale Center.
Dates are still to be announced, but this is the first time in recent years that the Arizona women’s basketball team’s conference pairings were announced this early in the summer.
The Big 12 hasn’t announced yet whether the road games will the coupled together — like Kansas and Kansas State — in the same week or if they will be all one-off trips.
In the Pac-12 each team had a “travel partner”; in Arizona’s case, the Wildcats and Sun Devils were regularly lumped together. That meant that a given weekend that UA traveled to play at, say, the Bay Area schools, ASU also went there. When they were home, they also played the same two teams over the weekend.
With the move to the Big 12, “travel partners” weren’t originally considered viable, however it is interesting to note that ASU has the exact same schedule pairings as Arizona. That makes it logical to think that UA and ASU might still end up travel partners to some capacity or another.
It also isn’t too much of a jump to think that a team coming to play in Tucson and Tempe — say, West Virginia — stays in the state for the week to play both teams.
Then-Arizona forward Esmery Martinez, right, goes to the basket against West Virginia guard Kyah Watson in the first half of March 17, 2023 NCAA Tournament first round matchup in College Park, Maryland.
The Big 12 is moving from 14 to 16 teams next week as Arizona, ASU, Colorado and Utah join while Texas and Oklahoma leave for the SEC.
There will be plenty of Tucson connections to the Big 12 next season, too. UA assistant Bett Shelby coached at West Virginia, while Wildcat post Isis Beh was a Mountaineer for two seasons. The Wildcats also played West Virginia in the first round of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, winning 75-62.
Former Wildcats are sprinkled around the Big 12 including Gisela Sanchez (Kansas State), Madison Conner (TCU), Anna Gret Asi (Oklahoma State) and Aaronette Vonleh (Baylor).
Two former UA assistants are also at Big 12 schools: Erin Grant (WVU) and Ashley Davis (OSU).
In addition, Baylor coach Nicki Cullen selected former UA great, Aari McDonald, to the Atlanta Dream as the third overall pick in the 2021 WNBA draft. She left the Dream a few weeks later to join Baylor.
In the past, Arizona coach Adia Barnes, along with a number of Pac-12 coaches including former Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer and Oregon’s Kelly Graves, wanted a 20-game conference schedule as it was difficult to set up non-conference games. However, with the Pac-12 being one of the toughest conferences in the country, other coaches wanted to collect more wins during the non-conference.
Arizona head coach Adia Barnes yells out from the sidelines during the second half of the Wildcats' 91-52 win over rival ASU at Desert Financial Arena in Tempe on Dec. 17, 2023.
The Wildcats haven’t released their non-conference slate for the upcoming season. However, they will be playing in a Thanksgiving Tournament — the Acrisure Classic on Nov. 26-27. It will be held in the Palm Desert, California, with Cal, Vanderbilt and Michigan State the other teams competing.
