In their last game, the Arizona Wildcats’ starters played 186 of 200 possible minutes. All five played hard and showed what they can do when they go all-out. If they could reproduce that regularly, they had a chance to surprise some teams.
The loss of leading scorer Micky Perdue for an indefinite period throws that into question. On Saturday, it was the visiting UCF Knights who had a surprise or two in a 58-55 victory over Arizona.
“Really disappointed with that,” Arizona head coach Becky Burke said.
“Like, very, very, very disappointed. Probably as disappointed as I’ve been sitting here in front of you guys. I don’t know that I’ve been part of a game where we forced a team into 23 turnovers and took 19 more shots than they did and not been able to win a basketball game. And there’s a lot of different reasons for that. We need to look in the mirror. We need to own it. Credit to UCF. Obviously they beat us, and we got some soul searching to do.”
The Knights focused on the front court game. They outrebounded the Wildcats 39-30 and won second chance points 14-11 despite Arizona winning the offensive rebounding battle 12-8. They scored 38 of their 58 points in the paint. They also went to the line 22 times, although they only hit 14 of their free throws. They only took three shots from 3-point distance, missing them all.
“We focused on the rebounding and the size prior in our practicing,” UCF head coach Sytia Messer said. “We told our players we felt like for us to have a chance to win this game, we had to go inside. So that was a point of emphasis, on the boards and offensively. Going inside.”
Burke felt that Arizona could have responded better to that challenge.
“They weren’t that much bigger than us inside,” she said. “We have to get tougher. I’ve been saying that. They might have had a couple inches. It’s not Audi Crooks down there. We have to look in the mirror and figure out, you know, there’s some trends with some of us and us as a group. What is another team seeing on film and doing against you? And you need to take that personal. We need to be tougher in the post. We need to be tougher on the 0-boards. It’s stuff that we can control, which is the most frustrating part. I’m not asking anybody on our team to grow and be 6-5, 6-6. I’m not asking them to do that. I’m asking them to hold opponents to one shot, because we box out. To not allow somebody to go high-low six straight times on us. It’s some stuff that we need to fix and clean up from a toughness standpoint, and I’ve not had that issue before.”
Perdue injured her wrist in practice. There is hope that she will return before the end of the season, but the prognosis is currently up in the air. She leads the Wildcats and is eighth in the Big 12 with 17.1 points per game, but Burke felt like the shortcomings have been problems all season.
“We shot more threes tonight than we do when Micky plays,” Burke said. “We went 1 for 17. Under no circumstances, by any means, is that acceptable to go 1 for 17 as a Division I basketball team from the 3-point line. It’s just not. So, yeah, is Mickey gonna make a couple more of those for us? Yes, absolutely. Is it absolutely a factor and a big, big, big, big, big deal that we lost our leading scorer? Yes, but when I look at some fundamental things that are issues for us, and were even issues when Mickey was playing, like I’m not an excuses type head coach and I never will be. So, we need to look in a mirror. We need to know that this is our reality moving forward until further notice, and we need to to hold up our end of the bargain as coaches and players.”
The offensive hole left by Perdue’s absence was evident from the start. Arizona shot just 26.5 percent and went 1 for 13 from beyond the arc in the first half. After scoring 22 in the first quarter against BYU, the Wildcats scored 22 in the half against UCF.
Burke tried different personnel. She put Kamryn Kitchen in to start the second quarter. When Kitchen went 0 for 2 and had some lapses on defense, she was subbed out in favor of Molly Ladwig. Ladwig also started 0 for 2.
With the offensive issues they were experiencing, it was imperative that Arizona stayed locked in on defense. It had varying success with that.
The Wildcats forced 14 turnovers in the first half and scored 11 points off those turnovers. UCF came in averaging 17.9 per game, so the Knights were well on their way to exceeding their average. Ultimately, they did just that with 23 turnovers. Fifteen of those turnovers came on Arizona steals. The Wildcats turned the giveaways into 21 points.
The Wildcats struggled with fouls. Sumayah Sugapong has had difficulty for most of the season, averaging 3.1 fouls per game and 5.7 per 40 minutes. She picked up her fourth in the third quarter, but Burke opted to leave her on the court. There was little choice considering she was Arizona primary scorer in the period.
Sugapong scored six in the third after being held scoreless in the first half. She ended the game with 10 points, 4 rebounds, and 1 assist but fouled out with 3:32 left.
“I try to just take what comes, but I definitely think I need to work on getting an earlier start and just being consistent throughout the entirety of the game, and not just have like spurts, especially with Micky gone,” Sugapong said. “Not just me, like a couple of us are gonna have to step up and make up for that.”
With Sugapong no longer available, Ladwig got her moment down the stretch. The freshman returned to the court with just over 3.5 minutes to go and wiped the 0-for-2 start from her mind. She scored eight straight points for Arizona, eventually cutting the lead to three with 36.6 seconds to go. The Wildcats got no closer.
“Molly is a coach’s dream,” Burke said. “Molly is locked in every single day. She is going to do exactly what you asked her to do, how you asked her to do it. She is going to play her absolute butt off, be on the floor, throw her body at people, sacrifice her body. She’s an elite teammate. Molly is somebody that you want in your locker room building a program, and that’s why she’s here. And she just earned herself many, many, many more opportunities in the coming games because of how she performed when her number was called. But that’s on character and on brand for who she is. Unfortunately, Molly’s foot speed isn’t where it needs to be right now, her athleticism isn’t where it’s going to be if she continues to work on it. So she knows some of her shortcomings, which is why she hasn’t gotten more of an opportunity.”
Prior to getting the lead down to the final margin, Ladwig put Arizona within four several times. Each time she hit a short jumper or layup, the Wildcats tried to press. More often than not, the Knights broke it and found Khyala Ngodu open under the basket for a layup.
Burke was not completely disappointed in the press, though. Lack of depth had its effects, especially on the players the team depends on to force turnovers.
“Unfortunately, those people had played probably about 35 minutes up to that point, so you can’t really have them up there flying around,” she said. “They’re a little bit low on gas.”
In the absence of Perdue, Arizona was led in scoring by Sugapong and Nora Francois, who each scored 10 points. Francois had her first double-double as a Wildcat by pulling down 10 boards. She added one assist and one steal.
Ladwig and Lani Cornfield got close to double figures with eight points each. All of Ladwig’s points came in the final 3:33 of the game. Cornfield added seven assists, seven steals, and two rebounds while only turning the ball over twice. Ladwig had one rebound, two assists, and one steal to go with her scoring.
The victory was a huge lift for UCF, which not only won the only matchup between the two teams but also picked up a road win after dropping a game at ASU earlier in the week.
“We tell our players, we have an opportunity to try to go one and one,” Messer said. “It’s a great environment. The state of Arizona does a great job of supporting their teams, and so both games have been very great environments to play in the Big 12…And we wanted to try to steal one and go home, and we did that. I’m proud of my team. I thought collectively, they bought into the scouting report and did what we needed to do.”
For Arizona, it was a bitter disappointment to drop a game they were favored in according to projections, albeit with a shortened roster. Now, they turn their sights to a string of ranked opponents in the coming weeks, starting with TCU next Saturday.
“They’re all tough,” Burke. “UCF is tough. We’re not a team that there’s going to be any games that are not tough for us. So we can look at it as a David-Goliath, or we can come to practice on Monday and try to get better, try to change some of our stripes, and try to just completely sell out to the fact that we need to do what’s given us success and continue doing it at high level. It’s frustrating to go two steps forward, five steps back, couple steps forward, couple steps back. That’s where we’ve been with this team. I think we’re improving in areas, and I think other areas, we’ve been really, really stubborn and just kind of not changed as much as we need to by this point. We’re not going to TCU to lose. We’re going to go battle, and we’re going to go bring our best, and we’re gonna have a great game plan and you know, we’re going to take ownership over the results of these games and for the rest of the way, but this one definitely hurts. This is one we thought we could have and should have had.”
Note
Incoming freshman Callie Hinder was on the bench for Saturday’s game. The center is an early enrollee for Arizona. She will practice with the Wildcats, but Burke has no plans to play her this season.
