Arizona sponsored its first women’s basketball team 50 years ago, 1972, hired PE instructor Lois Sheldahl as its coach and won the “state intercollegiate championship,” knocking off NAU and ASU in a tournament at Mesa Community College.
Not exactly the big leagues, right?
This was all a few months after Title IX legislation was enacted to provide female athletes equal opportunity in college sports, mandating that women’s sports receive similar travel expenses, medical treatment, scholarship numbers and facilities as each institution’s men’s teams.
By law, it guaranteed women’s athletes everything but a place in the hearts of community sports fans.
That took a while. In some respects, it took 50 years.
If Lois Sheldahl and her star Wildcats basketball players of 1972 — Betty Barber, Bess Maxwell and Gail Tault — had been able to step into a time machine and observe Monday’s NCAA Tournament basketball game between Arizona and North Carolina, I’m guessing their first reaction would’ve been:
The Cats have got to get better players.
That would’ve been a normal reaction, but the ease with which North Carolina beat Arizona, 63-45, wasn’t indicative of the growth of UA women’s basketball. It was probably the Wildcats’ worst game of this season, and maybe last season, too. It felt like 2016 again, the pre-Adia Barnes period.
In an 11-minute, 31-second stretch of the first half, the Wildcats missed 12 consecutive shots and fell hopelessly behind. Season over. It almost made you ask how Barnes’ team won 21 games and spent three months ranked in the Top 10.
But there is much more to Arizona’s early exit from the NCAA Tournament than just the end of the season. As the time-machine travelers from 1972 would’ve seen, the final piece of the Title IX movement is now in place.
The Wildcats have won a place in the hearts of the Tucson community.
A crowd of 8,333 paid to watch Monday’s game at McKale Center and they didn’t give up and go home after the Tar Heels surged to such leads as 23-9 and 46-27.
“They didn’t have a lot to cheer for,” said Barnes. “Sorry.”
With 3:54 remaining — North Carolina leading 54-39 — almost no one had left their seat. The noise was unabated, non-stop loud. It had been that way for the first 36 minutes, with fans standing, pleading for the Wildcats to rally.
They began to chant “UofA! UofA!’’ when it was 58-41 with 1:50 remaining. If that doesn’t shine a light on the 50th anniversary of Title IX, what does?
“You want the NCAA games to feel special, and this one was special,” said North Carolina coach Courtney Banghart. “Women’s basketball’s in the best place it’s ever been in.”
Cate Reese shoots the ball between North Carolina forward Anya Poole and guard Carlie Littlefield during Monday’s NCAA Tournament game.
This was a ‘tweener year for Arizona women’s basketball. Although the standard line was often that the Wildcats were somehow better than last season’s Final Four runner-up, it was never believable. All-American point guard Aari McDonald was too good to replace; that became painfully clear down the stretch. Arizona lost five of its last nine games and became the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Four times, they scored 51 points or fewer.
But the story of this season is that the Tucson community upped its support of women’s basketball, drawing 17,906 for two NCAA Tournament games, which was doubly impressive because in some cases, prices of tickets almost doubled from the regular season.
The Tar Heels’ Banghart spoke about her team’s surge to the Sweet 16 by saying it was mostly a product of “roster reconstruction.” That’s what Barnes will do between now and November.
It won’t be the conventional way of remaking a roster because Arizona returns 10 of its 12 leading scorers — 83% of its points — including starters Shaina Pellington, Bendu Yeaney, Cate Reese and Lauren Ware. When fall practice begins in October, Barnes will blend four elite recruits into the system, a group easily ranked the No. 1 recruiting class in school history and among the top 10 nationally.
If Minnesota forward Maya Nnaji, New York City guard Paris Clark, Florida guard Kailyn Gilbert and Canadian guard Lemyah Hylton are as good as their top-50 recruiting rankings, it would be the most loaded roster in the UA’s 50 years of women’s basketball.
And that doesn’t include potential additions from the NCAA transfer portal, of which Barnes has been prolific. The seven or eight players who make Barnes’ rotation next year are likely to be as talented — as a core — as any rotation in UA women’s basketball history.
“We’ll make some changes in our roster,” said Barnes.
The first chore is to find a go-to scorer. Unless you have an Aari McDonald, you need at least two reliable scorers to even think about getting to the Sweet 16. Arizona has none.
When Barnes asked about her club’s late-season fade, she made a downward motion with her hand. She said that losing three games felt like 10.
“That’s not going to happen again,” she said. “We’re not going to have a team where that can happen.”
There was no sweet finish to Arizona’s 2022 season. But next year the Sweet 16 might be a modest goal.
