Adia Barnes met the media Wednesday ahead of Arizona’s first exhibition game scheduled against Eastern New Mexico on Thursday night at McKale Center, and she looked as spry as ever, anxious to get the season started with fans finally occupying the seats for the first time since the 2019-20 season.
The Wildcats advanced last seasno to their first NCAA tournament in 16 years and experienced an unprecedented magical run to the national championship game, but they made this rise without the euphoria of their fans along the way at McKale Center.
Senior Night for WNBA first-rounder Aari McDonald and departing power forward Trinity Baptiste consisted of only family members in attendance at McKale Center. A significant void existed for what was developing for Barnes’ program.
Barnes’ thrill to see McKale rocking for the first time since losing to Cal on March 1, 2020 — before COVID-19 impacted the end of that season and all of last year — was apparent in her voice Wednesday on the eve of playing Eastern New Mexico.
Here are the top three things said by Barnes about her team heading into Thursday night’s 6 p.m. tipoff:
“Everybody’s going to really love our team”
McKale will not be sold out for the exhibition but many of the approximate 6,000 season-ticket holders and the walk-up crowd may push attendance past 7,000 — for an exhibition game.
Barnes:
“I can’t believe the season’s already here. I’m so excited because last year it didn’t really feel like a season until the very end so I can’t wait to fill McKale (Thursday). I know it’s not going to be like a regular game, but just the fans there, like for our players, (it is) kind of like getting back to some normality. I’m just excited for Tucson. I mean we’re almost 6,000 season tickets sold so I can’t wait to see McKale with 10,000 to 15,000 people. It’s going to be so much fun and i think everybody’s going to really love our team.”
“No one sucks on the team”
Vanderbilt transfer Koi Love had a very insightful observation of the 2021-22 team that she conveyed to Barnes.
“We are so deep — I’ve never had a team where no one’s bad. Koi said to me, ‘You know, no one sucks on the team.’ Yeah. No. … I thought about that because most teams you have it’s, ‘Okay, these two or three people, it’s going to take a few years for them to play.’ We don’t have anybody like that. As a coach, it’s like, ‘Wow, there’s so many different combinations. I was even thinking about starters. I can go different ways. There’s the experience way. There’s an athletic way. There’s more of a shooting way. I think it’s going to take a few weeks (to work out a rotation). Right now, we’re trying to work different combinations in practice. That’s why I like the two exhibition games.”
“We’ve never had so much much depth and talent like on this team.”
Barnes has a full roster of 15 players and that does not include any walk-ons.
“Setting the rotation and kind of seeing how people perform together on the court in an actual game is good. We have lineups to play really solid defense and press. We have lineups that can really spread the floor. We can put four shooters on the floor. We have lineups so we can play really big and pound the ball inside. We never had that before. We’ve never had so much depth and talent. Like on this team this year there’s going to be three or four players coming off the bench that could start. It’s going to be interesting to see how everybody adjusts to a different role because every single person is going to adjust to a different role that may not be starting when they’re used to starting.”
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ALLSPORTSTUCSON.com publisher, writer and editor Javier Morales is a former Arizona Press Club award winner. He is a former Arizona Daily Star beat reporter for the Arizona basketball team, including when the Wildcats won the 1996-97 NCAA title. He has also written articles for CollegeAD.com, Bleacher Report, Lindy’s Sports, TucsonCitizen.com, The Arizona Republic, Sporting News and Baseball America, among many other publications. He has also authored the book “The Highest Form of Living”, which is available at Amazon. He became an educator five years ago and is presently a special education teacher at Gallego Fine Arts Intermediate in the Sunnyside Unified School District
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