Michael Lev: Adia Barnes’ Coach of the Year-caliber performance for UA has been Belichickian

In one sense — fashion sense — they are nothing alike.

In fact, they are Polo opposites.

Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes is a style queen. Her gameday getups are bold and confident. When new UA athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois was introduced last week, and staffers were required to suit up for the occasion, Barnes was one of the few people in the room who, relatively speaking, dressed down.

Former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick roamed NFL sidelines in team-issued sweatshirts with cutoff sleeves. His hair was often unkempt. I have no proof of this, but I swear that every time he appeared as a studio analyst he wore the same suit. He was all business, all the time.

Despite their differences in dapperness, one could argue that Barnes’ coaching performance this season has been Belichickian in every sense.

On the court, Barnes’ maneuvers have been masterful. Despite often having as few as seven available players, Barnes has guided Arizona to a .500 record in the Pac-12 entering the final week of the regular season, which starts Thursday vs. No. 7 USC. The Trojans are one of seven conference clubs in the Top 25 of the official NET Rankings. The Wildcats are No. 33. They’ve inched up into the “First Four Out” in ESPN’s latest Bracketology — an inconceivable accomplishment just a couple of weeks ago.

Off the court, as her program’s de facto general manager, Barnes has been hit-or-miss. Her eye for talent cannot be questioned; freshmen Jada Williams, Breya Cunningham and Skylar Jones, for instance, look like program cornerstones. But the dearth of depth cannot solely be blamed on bad luck and injuries. Enough players have left of their own volition, or have been nudged out the door, to suggest a disconnect between Barnes and at least some of them.

Belichick’s bona fides as a head coach are unassailable. His nine Super Bowl appearances and six wins are the most of all time. He’s the greatest ever at preparing his team for the 60 minutes inside the white lines.

He did that almost in spite of himself at times. Belichick’s record as a drafter — he was more involved in that aspect than most NFL head coaches — was spotty at best, especially in recent years.

In all college sports besides football, where every competitive program now has an NFL-style “front office,” the head coach is also the GM. Assistants aid in the recruiting process, but it’s mostly the head coach’s responsibility. So when judging a college coach’s performance, both elements — game management and roster management — must be taken into consideration.

Barnes deserves an “A” when it comes to the X’s and O’s, maybe even an A-plus. Oregon State’s Scott Rueck is probably the favorite to win Pac-12 Coach of the Year, but you could make a strong case for Barnes based on the roster situation alone.

Arizona’s stunning upset of then-No. 3 Stanford last week came on a day when Cardinal star Cameron Brink was unavailable because of illness. Brink could be the Pac-12 Player of the Year, and she dominated the Wildcats in the previous meeting (25 points and 20 rebounds in 26 minutes).

Well, you know who was unavailable for Arizona? Almost half the team. That’s been the case for a while as injuries and other issues created what Barnes on Wednesday labeled a “mass exodus.”

Despite a short bench making it difficult to practice and leaving a minimal margin for error in games — you’re constantly one injury or foul-out away from having serious personnel problems — the Wildcats have been a tough out more often than not.

Even before the current four-game winning streak that has put Arizona on the NCAA bubble, the Wildcats took better, deeper teams down to the wire. From Jan. 5-19, they went 1-4. The four losses came by a combined eight points, including one in double overtime at OSU. The win came in overtime by one point over a ranked Utah squad.

Barnes has been starting three freshmen, so Arizona doesn’t have much experience. The Wildcats don’t have a ton of size. But the seven mainstays — Esmery Martinez, Helena Pueyo, Isis Beh, Courtney Blakeley, Williams, Cunningham and Jones — have tremendous chemistry. They play with heart and unrelenting effort. They play hard for each other and for Barnes.

A common refrain among the players, according to Beh, is “That’s all we got.” It has become the 2023-24 Wildcats’ rallying cry.

How did they get what they’ve got?

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

The troubles began in the summer when freshman Montaya Dew, a Top 10 prospect, suffered a season-ending torn ACL. Then a transfer, Fanta Gassama, was removed from the roster.

Another transfer, Salimatou Kourouma, dislocated her shoulder at the end of an exhibition game in which she had played every minute because Arizona had only five healthy players. She later elected to have season-ending surgery.

Maya Nnaji left the program in December to focus on academics. (She’s pre-med.) Not long after, she wrote on social media that the UA program had a “toxic environment” — comments she seemed to regret but never completely walked back, either.

Finally, Barnes parted ways with leading scorer Kailyn Gilbert, who’d been in and out of the lineup for mostly undisclosed reasons.

Just like that, Arizona’s gameday roster shrunk from 12 to seven.

Obviously, Barnes had nothing to do with Dew’s injury. Kourouma’s could have been avoided if Barnes had elected not to play that exhibition game. It would have been complicated to cancel. But it was probably the right thing to do.

The Nnaji and Gilbert situations have even more layers of complexity, but the bottom line is this: They represented half of the highly rated class of 2022 — and all of them are now gone.

Barnes said Wednesday that she wished she had constructed the 2022-23 roster differently so that those freshmen — also including Paris Clark and Lemyah Hylton — could have played more. “Looking back,” Barnes said, “I probably would have balanced that a little bit better.”

Clark did end up playing quite a bit down the stretch. Nnaji was a rotation regular until she left. And Gilbert averaged 28 minutes this season. So there’s more to it than just playing time.

Something was missed in terms of fit and character. And the exodus wasn’t limited to the class of ’22. Barnes misidentified the makeup of several players she brought in in recent years — which has led Barnes the GM to recalibrate how she builds a team for Barnes the coach.

She has two roles, so she must answer two questions: “How are you going to build? And what do I do well?”

“I'm better,” she has concluded, “with a team that has continuity and stays together longer.”

That comes with a short-term sacrifice: Winning. Barnes believes she could have signed higher-profile transfers and won more this year. But if she had done that, she said, “It was gonna be the same thing — I would have lost all these kids.”

“So now,” she added, “the balancing act is bringing them back, developing them and then bringing in some transfers that complement them.”

No one ever said being the coach and GM is easy. It’s a constant struggle.

“No days off,” someone who had both roles once proclaimed.

That someone? Bill Belichick.

Photos: Jada Williams, Arizona upsets No. 3 Stanford 68-61, Pac-12 women's college basketball