Arizona faced its toughest opponent thus far in the regular season in the Southern University Lady Jaguars.
While the Wildcats showed stretches of competing with the Jaguars, they were unable to overcome the length and physicality of Southern, dropping their first game in the Becky Burke era, 63-57, on Wednesday night at McKale Center.
Arizona is now 6-1.
“Just frustrated,” Burke said, “and, yeah, I think that’s the best way to put it right now is frustrated. This is the first team we’ve seen a team with size, athleticism, along with some pretty good skill. A team that’s picked to win their conference and was an NCAA tournament team last year, and so really good test for us. Really good opponent to kind of see where we were at. I just don’t think we handled the physicality well. I don’t think we handled their pressure well. We turned it over 24 times. I thought we got bullied.”
On trying to adjust to Southern’s style of play, Arizona forward Nora Francois said, “I think we were anticipating them being handsy, anticipating like them clogging the paint, helping from anywhere but we weren’t able to settle ourselves and we were very much rattled by that.”
Burke added, “We weren’t strong with the ball, we weren’t in triple threat, we were on our heals, we were weak with our dribble. I mean you name it like they brought it and we did not respond by any stretch of the imagination.”
Prior to the game, Burke commented on the Jaguars’ body of work and that their record didn’t show the full picture of who Southern was as a team.
Southern came into the matchup with Arizona holding a 1-5 record.
That record included losses to four top 25 teams, No. 21 Iowa, No. 14 Iowa State, No. 12 Mississippi and No. 3 UCLA, giving them the No.1 strength-of-schedule in the country. The Jaguars may have lost all four of those games by big deficits but going up against top 25 talent gave Southern invaluable experience.
That experience showed up Wednesday night in McKale Center.
Arizona scored the first two points of the game but that would be their only lead in the first half.
Southern led by as much as 16 with a little over four minutes to go in the second quarter before Arizona went on a 9-0 run, closing the gap to seven headed into the locker room at the half.
The Jaguars outscored the Wildcats 16-11 in the first quarter and 11-9 in the second quarter.
Whatever Burke said to her team at the half worked as the Wildcats came out of the break on fire going on an 8-0 run, putting them up 28-27 with 7:17 left in the third quarter.
The two teams were tied at the 4:59 mark in the third quarter before Southern took control and led for the remainder of the game.
A ramped up defense and scoring from Micky Perdue and Francois chipped away at the Jaguars’ lead, pulling Arizona to within four points with a minute left in the game.
Perdue led all scorers with 17 points on 7-of-16 shooting and played for a full 40 minutes.
Francois came one basket shy of a double-double grabbing 11 rebounds, eight points, four assists and one block.
Southern grabbed the rebound off of an intentional miss on a free throw by Cornfield dribbling out the final seconds of the game to win by six.
Southern forward DeMya Porter notched 16 points for the Jaguars and was a thorn in Arizona’s side most of the game.
Porter got into foul trouble late in the game and was forced to sit out or the damage could have been worse since the Wildcats couldn’t figure out a way to stop her.
“I feel like we didn’t meet her above the free throw line,” Francois commented on trying to stop Porter.
“I wouldn’t say it was necessarily tough. We weren’t jamming her. We’re just kind of allowing her to impose her will on us. She had good patience. She was very patient with her shot, with her takes. Just a lack of having hands up on her little turnaround jumpers, as well.”
“I think it’s just basketball IQ,” Perdue added about guarding on 3-point shots.
“Somebody hits one, they hit two, you probably don’t need a big gap. You need to stay there, and we got to contain the ball so we don’t need the big gaps, you know? And that’s what (Burke’s) talking about. We talk about that every day in practice, and we don’t bring it to the floor, so until we do that, we’re going to get the same outcome that we did today.”
Turnovers were a large part of Arizona’s loss. Southern’s tenacious defense had Arizona rattled leading to 24 turnovers. Southern was able to grab 25 points off of those turnovers.
For the first time as a Wildcat, Lani Cornfield had more turnovers than assists.
Cornfield turned the ball over nine times to six assists.
“That team is the closest thing that we have seen to even a bad Big 12 team,” said Burke. “I say that respectfully to them, and I’m sure they would do a great job in the Big 12 and compete, but I’m just saying that’s the closest thing that we have seen to the teams that we are going to see in less than a month.”
Arizona’s next opponent, the New Mexico Lobos, play a very similar game as Southern and Burke was clear about the changes needed prior to Sunday’s game.
“Carry over from practice and what we work on in practice and coming into the game and doing it.. Leadership on the floor. We have to be so good at everything we do.”
Burke continued, “We need to be great in our actions, we need to be great with our communication. We cannot be loosey goosey in our actions.”
Arizona hosts New Mexico (5-3) at 2 p.m.
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