Arizona Wildcats (5-0) at NAU Lumberjacks (3-1): Scouting report, Jah's upside, back to the basics

Arizona Wildcats (5-0) at NAU Lumberjacks (3-1) | J. Lawrence Walkup Skydome | 6 p.m. Wednesday | ESPN+ | 1400-AM

She said it

Arizona coach Adia Barnes on NAU: “NAU is a really good team. They are coached really well. It’s very hard to play there. There are really difficult matchups — matchups on the perimeter. They do a really good job of driving downhill. They all can shoot it. Our fours (post players) will have their hands full because they got a guard on the perimeter. They have to guard a guard basically. It's going to be interesting to see if, are we going to adjust to them? Are they going to adjust to us? Are we going to play smaller — which we aren’t. … Are they going to play bigger? But I think we're both probably going to do what we do.

“I'm anticipating Isis (Beh) playing a really good game because she should have a mismatch. It reminds me of how the Washington game was last year and she played really well against mismatches. We need that, and also our bigs will be challenged. Guarding on the perimeter, guarding rub actions, receiving staggered screens. They don't usually do that, so we've been drilling a lot of that stuff this week.”

On the sidelines

Huge upside: Like most young payers, Sahnya Jah is a work in progress. The sophomore post has moments where she can totally dominate, then others not so much.

Barnes said some of it comes down to fundamentals and Jah “understanding” situational moments of the game. And back to some of the same pieces like not “jumping in the air on passes” or jump stopping that they work on every day in practice.

“She's such a great athlete,” Barnes said. “They like to fly. I've never had that problem, but I had all these power moves and muscle it up, but learning how to jump stop and finish off, too, which is a higher percentage shot. Those are repetitions, too, and those are habits. It takes 10,000 hours to make a habit or 20 – whatever, how many thousands of hours to make a habit. You’ve got to do it every day and I think you’ll start to see in January it pays off.”

Barnes added that “Jah can be so good. … She’s special. She’s gifted. I think she just has to understand that, she has to learn that and know that.”

Film doesn’t lie: The fouls have been piling up for the Wildcats. There were 18 at Chicago State, 25 against UC San Diego and 24 in the home opener against UT Arlington.

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Some of this is that everyone has been playing to get experience in live games. Barnes has been going deep into the bench. As the season wears on, the rotations will tighten up as the Wildcats will probably go with nine players — 10 at the most — in games. Some of the reserves will only be used in specific situations — to sub in for a starter or for a certain matchup.

These fouls aren’t too concerning for Barnes at the moment.

“I was concerned at our bad positioning in our press that led to layups or that’s leading to fouls,” Barnes said. “That stuff is where you want the minutes. Because when you get the minutes and you're able to show, 'Hey, these 10 minutes, this is what you did.’ The game is a good teacher. I think that that's one of the things that's great about playing a lot of players, as you have that game film versus practice. Film to showcase ‘In this situation, this is what you're doing wrong.’ I think that's a really good teacher. Film never lies.”

Against Chicago State, the Wildcats gave up nine fast break points and at UC San Diego they gave up 15 fast break points.

Last time out: Arizona hosted NAU last season, coming away with an 87-64 victory. Leading the Wildcats was then-freshman Breya Cunningham with 18 points (9 of 10) in 22 minutes of action.

The last time NAU hosted Arizona was in December 2021 when it was the visitors winning 82-55. This was intended to be a warmup for a game against Texas just two days later as part of the Coast-to-Coast Challenge played in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, numerous Wildcats came down with COVID-19 and that Texas game was canceled.

Making noise: Former UA standout Aari McDonald made a splash in her debut in China. She scored 17 points, dished five assists and had four steals.

Another former UA player, Jade Loville is playing in Greece for Athinaikos and was the MVP for a recent game, scoring 35 points (13 of 15), hitting 5 of 8 from the 3-point line, going perfect from the line (4 of 4) and grabbing seven rebounds.

By the numbers

57: Arizona pulled down 57 rebounds against Chicago State. These rebounds were tied for the most nationally for all games played on Saturday.

34: The Wildcats are holding their opponents to a 34% field goal percentage through the first five games of the season.

78: NAU is hitting 78% of its’ free throws.