Something old, something new
While UConn plays in its 21st Final Four tonight, Arizona makes its debut
San Antonio — For UConn there are streaks. This is the Huskies' 13th straight trip to the NCAA women's basketball tournament Final Four, the 21st overall, coach Geno Auriemma's team attempting to win its 12th national championship.
And for Arizona there are firsts. The first Final Four in program history. The first team to reach the Final Four after having missed the previous 10-or-more NCAA tournaments. Arizona senior Aari McDonald is the first player since Armintie (Price) Herrington of Mississippi in 2007 to score 30-or-more points in both the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight.
UConn (28-1) and Arizona (20-5) will meet in the national semifinals at 9:30 tonight (ESPN), pitting the East Coast and the West Coast; Final Four frequenters vs. newcomers; Auriemma, who built a program in the late 1980s, vs. Arizona coach Adia Barnes, who is doing it as we speak.
"I'm just so happy to be here, so proud of my team," Barnes said in a
video conference late Thursday afternoon. "All the hard work we've put in all year and just I feel like we've played some good basketball, better at the end of the season, I think gaining momentum at the right time.
"Proud for the University of Arizona, just to put Arizona on the map where that's my school, it's where I graduated from, so I think it's special. Tucson's excited, my team's excited. I don't think we've had a whole lot of time to digest everything, but you know it's one day at a time. We've already been on the road this long, so we're like, 'Why not stay a few more days?'"
Barnes is a 1998 Arizona graduate who went on to play in the WNBA, winning the 2004 league championship alongside former UConn great Sue Bird for the Seattle Storm. She is in her fifth season at Arizona.
The words which form her answers spill out in paragraphs, the way Auriemma's do, and yet Auriemma sees Barnes' influence as keeping her team level even as it steps into its first Final Four along with some of the giants of the game in UConn, Stanford and South Carolina.
"I don't think they're going to be afraid of the moment," Auriemma said. "I don't think they're going to be whacked out by the moment. I think they've got a lot going for them . ... I can think of a lot of other teams I'd rather be playing Friday night. Trust me on that."
Arizona, ranked 11th in the nation, starts with McDonald, a 5-foot-6 guard and a WBCA All-American last season who is both the 2021 Pac-12 Player of the Year and the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year.
Auriemma said UConn's coaching staff feels McDonald is the most dominant guard the Huskies have faced and McDonald proved it in the regional tournament, scoring 31 points in a 74-59 Sweet 16 upset of Texas A&M and 33 in Monday's 66-53 win over Indiana in the Elite Eight.
"She's fearless as an offensive player. She's a first team All-American defensive player," Auriemma said. "(Assistant coach) Jamelle Elliott, who's handling the scout for us, I said, 'J, what are we doing here?' She said, 'I don't know, coach, we're playing against (NBA great) Allen Iverson.'
"So I said, 'OK.' I might have to call some of my old coaching buddies in the old Big East and say, 'How do you prepare for Allen Iverson?' There have been numerous times, more than you can count, where she just carries her team and wills them to win."
McDonald said she's not focused on offense as much as preparing to stop UConn, the top-ranked team in the nation, which is averaging 82.7 points per game and outscoring its opponents throughout the season by an average of 30.7.
"UConn is a balanced team," McDonald said. "I think their starting five is probably in double figures. They have dynamic guards on the court, their post players are very tenacious, they grab boards like no other . ... We can't trade buckets. That's going to be dangerous. We can't do that at all. It starts with defense. Defense wins games. UConn is a high-scoring team and they're very efficient and they can do it from all over the court."
UConn is led by freshman All-America guard Paige Bueckers with 20.1 points and 5.9 assists per game. Bueckers, who was named Associated Press National Player of the Year earlier this week — the first freshman ever to earn that honor — scored 28 points in the Huskies' hard-fought 69-67 victory Monday night over Baylor.
UConn, despite its number of consecutive Final Four appearances, has seven freshmen on the team, who combined with sophomores Aubrey Griffin and Anna Makurat, plus transfer Evina Westbrook, make 10 members of the roster who have never been to a Final Four.
That means, to Auriemma, that this trip to the Alamodome is the most important, not any of the other 12 in the current line of Final Fours. And Auriemma sees Arizona as a demanding opponent, new to the stage or not.
"They're a really, really, really, really ... really solid basketball team, the kind you're going to have to grind it out," Auriemma said. "If you want to beat them, you're going to have to grind it out for 40 minutes. That's evident in every film that I've watched of them play."