It’s the first women’s basketball Duel in the Desert for Arizona head coach Becky Burke and ASU head coach Molly Miller. Both feature teams of mostly transfers. Both rely heavily on turning defense into offense. That’s probably where the similarities stop, though.
Arizona is coming off arguably the most successful run in its women’s basketball history. While former head coach Joan Bonvicini has the most wins and had a good run in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Wildcats were most important on the national
stage under former head coach Adia Barnes.
Arizona State is onto its second coach in four years since parting ways with its most successful coach, Charli Turner Thorne.
The two programs made their changes under much different timelines. Part of those due to different postseason statuses. Arizona was in the WBIT and ASU was not. They were also partly due to administrative choices.
ASU administration made a proactive move to part ways with former coach Natasha Adair, and had announced rising star Miller as the replacement in mere days. It appeared that Miller was the plan all along, and she happily moved across the Valley from GCU to Desert Financial Arena. She was officially in place by Mar. 22.
Arizona was anything but proactive. Administration didn’t move to extend or fire Barnes despite knowing that would mean a lame duck coach and it being clear from both sides that it was an unhappy arrangement. The powers that be waited for Barnes to move on of her own accord, which came when SMU announced her hiring on Apr. 5. What seemed like an obvious possibility in Lindy LaRocque publicly announced her commitment to stay at UNLV within days, and it took almost a week for Burke’s hiring to be announced. It didn’t give her the best start to her Power 4 career.
It made tangible differences, but both ended up with teams largely consisting of transfers and freshmen. For Arizona, it was every player except one—and she’s not on the court this year. For ASU, it was nine transfers and two true freshmen. The Sun Devils have two players who were in Tempe last season.
“She has a few more returners and had a few more weeks in the portal,” Burke said of Miller. “And I will say that makes a big difference, but I’m taking my team all day, every day, so I wouldn’t change a thing. And they did a great job recruiting. I think we did a good job recruiting. So we’re in a similar situation, but not really, I guess you could say…we both had our challenges, for sure, coming in, and they’ve had some some things go their way, and some balls bounce their way, and some calls go their way, and I’m happy for them, and all that type of stuff.”
Miller has certainly used whatever advantages she had to the fullest. The Sun Devils are 17-4 overall this season. They are 4-4 in league play with wins over Colorado, Utah, UCF, and Kansas. All four teams beat the Wildcats, who are 1-7 in league play.
“I have a ton of respect for Molly, one of my [college] coaches is on her staff,” Burke said. “Obviously, there’s just like, ‘oh, I want to beat the brakes off them,’ but there’s respect there too, and definitely a friendship and all those different types of things.”
Whatever led up to the season, both teams like defense to be their identities and have relied on turning opponents over this year. They are in the top half of the league in opponent turnovers with ASU sitting 2nd with 21.0 opponent turnovers per game and Arizona in 7th with 18.7. The Sun Devils have been more successful in limiting opponents’ points, though. ASU allows just 57.3 ppg, which is 4th in the league. Arizona is allowing 69.7, which is 14th.
“We just need to take care of the ball,” Burke said. “A lot of what they do is just based on them forcing turnovers and playing, speeding you up, making you uncomfortable, making you play their their speed based on what they do defensively. Both two very scrappy, very good defensive teams in very different ways. We’re a system defensive team and…they’re a little bit of a one-on-one defensive team, shoot the gaps, go take chances, make things happen, and we’re more of a system defensive team, but two great teams. I wouldn’t be surprised if this thing was in the 40s.”
One positive in that regard is that Burke expects Tanyuel Welch in the lineup. Welch injured herself late in the game at Iowa State. She had to be carried off the court, but she is not listed on the team’s injury report. Arizona lists Micky Perdue and Montaya Dew as out. ASU has Acacia Hayes, Makayla Moore, and Jordan Jones out.
