Arizona women’s basketball head coach Becky Burke has talked about how it feels like her team takes a step forward then several steps back. That was the case again when Kansas came to town on Tuesday evening and walked out with an 80-69 victory.
“I’m frustrated,” Burke said. “I don’t like losing. I hate, I hate losing. I can’t stomach it, and we’re continuing to do that right now, not being able to find a way to pull these wins out that I feel like are within our grasp and within our fingertips. And
I’m just done with the ‘you fought hard and congrats’…I’m a winning results person, so it’s frustrating, despite all the circumstances. I don’t care about any of that. We’re in position to win some games. We need to be able to do that, pull that out, and that’s my expectation daily.”
The Wildcats had a strong showing in a loss at No. 9 TCU on Saturday. Against Kansas—a team that was actually behind them in the Big 12 standings—they didn’t show the same kind of fight and execution for the first half of the game.
The Jayhawks controlled the boards and dominated in bench points for 20 minutes. They shot the lights out from both inside and beyond the arc. Then came the third quarter.
The Wildcats found their way. After being outrebounded 20-9 in the first half, they knotted KU up at 8 rebounds apiece. Kamryn Kitchen came in and hit two straight 3-point buckets. Lani Cornfield tied the game on fastbreak jumper with just under two minutes to go in the third.
They couldn’t maintain it through the fourth as one Wildcat after another fouled out and Kansas pulled away by double digits once again.
“I just thought we played with a lot of poise and composure,” said KU head coach Brandon Schneider.
First to foul out was Nora Francois with 37 seconds to go in the third quarter. Next was leading scorer Sumayah Sugapong. Finally came Achol Magot.
The fouls were just one point of frustration for Burke—both the fouls her team committed and the ones she felt they were whistled for but did not commit.
“We have one player that’s having a moving screen issue right now, and we’ve coached her through it,” Burke said. “We’ll continue to coach her through it. That’s a discipline problem. And again, it’s on us coaches to continue to. Those are some of my frustrations.”
Sugapong started the game on a hot streak. She had nine points, two rebounds, and a steal in the first quarter. By halftime, she was up to 12 points, two rebounds, two assists, and two steals. Most importantly, she had no fouls and no turnovers in the opening 20 minutes.
The foul trouble didn’t start for Sugapong until the fourth. She went into the final 10 minutes with just one foul. She picked up four in just six minutes and finally fouled out. At least two of them looked questionable. One came on an offensive foul. The other was on a blocked shot that appeared to be clean on replay.
“We’ll send the clips in,” Burke said. “We’ll watch the film ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, we were at fault for some of it as well…It’s hard when somebody’s standing in there for a charge and she’s planted for like, 30 seconds before the kid runs into her. Like, how do I correct that? It was a great play. It was called incorrectly, you know what I mean?”
Kansas shot 25 free throws with 16 coming in the fourth quarter. The Jayhawks went 18 of 25 from the line. S’Mya Nichols shot 12 of them, hitting 10.
In addition to Kitchen and Sugapong, Arizona got double-digit scoring from Cornfield. Her 12 points and 10 assists gave her a double-double. She added seven rebounds and two steals.
Arizona’s comeback in the third quarter was spurred by strong defense and Kitchen’s shooting. The reserve guard ended with 16 points on 6-for-11 shooting, one rebound, and two steals. The biggest reason she stayed on the floor wasn’t her offense, though.
“Kam can go for 20 every night,” Burkes said. “That is not a question. What I challenged her on is the defensive end of the floor and sitting down and competing. And she literally asked me that at shoot around. She’s like, What do I have to do to play more? And I said, compete and go hard at all times, because she has a very like savvy, lackadaisical way about her, and that hurts her defensively sometimes. So she stayed in the game. You all might think it’s because she’s making shots, but she was guarding. I’d have her on the floor for 40 minutes if she’ll guard that way.”
Kitchen knows what she needs to do.
“It’s all about angles and timing,” she said. “I mean, close out to the top foot. That’s our principles. But also, like, not going on every shot, fake jab, like it’s really just timing. When your defender moves, you move. No fouls. Keep your hands off.”
The whole team needs to get the defensive part of it before heading to Ames, Iowa for Saturday’s game. While Iowa State has struggled since the injury to Addy Brown, they still have a formidable homecourt advantage of almost 10,000 fans per game.
“We’ll have great game plan at Iowa State,” Burke said. “I’m not going away from the fact that I believe there’s some wins left in our Big 12 season for this group. When we get them, it’ll feel like a million bucks, but it’s gonna take everything we got to get those few. So, you know, never know. It could be on Saturday if we do what we’re supposed to.”
