Greg Hansen: Arizona's Aari McDonald is majoring in mayhem during Wildcats' tourney run

According to the record books, the most disruptive, troublesome defensive player in Pac-12 basketball history wasn’t Kenny Lofton, Jason Kidd or Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.

It wasn’t “The Glove,” Gary Payton, “The Jet,” Jason Terry or “The Bull,” Matisse Thybulle.

It was Jade Hyett, who averaged a ginormous 4.6 steals per game for Washington State’s women’s team in 1996-97.

That’s insane. I’m not suggesting that statistics lie, but sometimes they don’t tell the whole truth. Hyett’s Cougars went 10-17 that year, including a pair of losses to Arizona — one by 30 points.

I bring this to your attention because Arizona’s combination of the Glove, the Jet and the Bull — senior point guard Aari McDonald — will not conclude her college basketball career widely acknowledged as most dominant defensive player in men’s or women’s Pac-12 history or even UA history.

That’s because basketball’s simple steals statistic doesn’t include (1) recoveries, (2) deflections and (3) forcing an opponent to make a bad pass.

If baseball’s all-encompassing statistical junkies changed sports and applied full-court metrics to basketball, Aari McDonald, the Jet/Glove/Bull, would surely be the queen of a new statistic: Mayhem.

When Arizona and Indiana meet Monday in the Elite Eight, McDonald will be matched against Hoosiers guard Nicole Cardano-Hillary in what should be billed as Mayhem vs. Mayhem.

McDonald has 270 steals in her four college seasons. Cardano-Hillary has 246. Those numbers are equivalent to a tailback rushing for 2,000 yards.

After the Hoosiers upset No, 1 seed North Carolina State on Saturday, a game in which Cardano-Hillary had four steals, Hoosiers.com wrote this: “Cardano-Hillary was a defensive force of nature who harassed ruthlessly, inspired relentlessly.”

Sound familiar? That’s the definition of McDonald’s performance in Arizona’s Sweet 16 victory over No. 2 seed Texas A&M.

Given 12 hours to study Arizona’s game videos, Indiana coach Teri Moren had similar words for McDonald. “Aari McDonald is fantastic,” Moren said Sunday. “She’s probably the fastest, quickest kid we’ll play all year. She’s too good not to score, but we’ll have a sound game plan for her.”

May the team that creates the most mayhem win.

I confess it’s been difficult to get a historical perspective on McDonald because I didn’t pay enough attention to women’s college basketball until she arrived in Tucson. Now, like many Tucsonans, I’m playing catch-up.

To put McDonald’s mayhem-making abilities in context, I found the following:

She has led the Pac-12 in steals for three consecutive seasons. In the women’s game, only former UCLA guard Lisa Willis, 2004-06, can match it. On the men’s side, only Oregon State’s Payton, 1988-90, and Washington’s Thybulle, 2017-19, did so three years in succession.

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How did that work out for them?

Payton was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013. Willis was the WNBA’s No. 5 overall draft pick in 2006. Thybulle, who can’t shoot a lick, averaging just 9.2 points as a Washington Husky, was nevertheless chosen 20th in the first-round of the 2019 NBA draft.

McDonald? As Indiana’s Moren said Sunday, “she’s a pro, she’s a pro.”

McDonald will soon be a pro; one WNBA mock draft lists her as the No. 2 pick. But first she will play the most meaningful game of her basketball career.

Even if Arizona beats Indiana and plays two games at the Final Four, McDonald will not be able to stretch her career steals total, now at 270, past that of former Arizona point guard Dee-Dee Wheeler, who finished with 304. Wheeler, Class of 2005, who is now the athletic director for the Tucson Unified School District, has suitably been honored by the UA. Her name hangs in the Ring of Honor at McKale Center, as will McDonald’s sometime next fall.

Those who are also catching up on women’s basketball history may find that getting a perspective on McDonald’s career may be more easily done comparing her steals totals with those of Arizona’s men’s leaders.

Here are the yearly steals leaders:

• 2.8 per game: Jason Terry, 1998-99.
• 2.7 per game: Aari McDonald, 2020-21.
• 2.7 per game: Hassan Adams, 2005-06.
• 2.6 per game: Aari McDonald, 2018-19.
• 2.5 per game: Jason Terry, 1996-97.

Over my 40 years of watching Pac-12 basketball, I didn’t think I’d ever see a more dominant defensive player than Oregon State’s Lester Conner in the early 1980s, followed by Payton, Kidd and Thybulle.

I wasn’t sure I would be fortunate to see another T.J. McConnell, the ex-Wildcats point guard who currently leads the NBA in steals. McConnell, like McDonald, always seemed to come up with a loose ball — or force a turnover — at the game’s win-or-lose moment.

Late in Arizona’s 2014 Sweet 16 victory over San Diego State, leading 53-51, McConnell hit the floor chasing a loose ball he had tipped away from the Aztecs’ Xavier Thames. Instinctively, McConnell batted the ball to Gabe York, who drove in for what would be the clinching basket.

It might’ve been the single most important play of the Sean Miller years.

Now comes Aari McDonald, ready to hit the floor.