2022-23 Offseason Check-in with the Pac-12: Arizona, ASU, Cal, and Colorado
What have the Pac-12 teams been up to since April? The first in a three-part series.
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The start of classes is just weeks away for most Pac-12 schools. Transfers have come and gone. Freshmen have arrived on campus. Practice and games will be here before we know it. It’s time for an offseason check-in with Pac-12 women’s basketball. In the first of a three-part series, we take a look at Arizona, Arizona State, California, and Colorado. Come back for Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, and UCLA next week.
Arizona
The Wildcats are almost a completely different team this season. Only five members of last year’s team will return this year, but three of them were starters and the other two were primary reserves. Two of the fifteen-player roster exhausted their eligibility. The rest transferred. Head coach Adia Barnes was not overly concerned, saying in April that most of the attrition was of her choosing.
Arizona will go into the season with a smaller 12-player roster this season. Barnes said she had difficulty managing the 15-player roster last season. She especially regretted not being able to find time to play senior center Semaj Smith, who will play her extra year at San Jose State under former Arizona assistant coach April Phillips.
“When you have 15 players, you have 10 unhappy players,” Barnes said. “I mean, it was too many to manage, and like three or four people do not ever play. There was some times I physically was trying. I was, like, intentionally trying to put everybody in but because of positions and who people could guard, there wasn't even enough time in a game to rotate everybody. And because we had so many centers, I couldn't even find time for Semaj when I wanted to play her.”
With 10 players leaving either through transfer or graduation, that leaves starters Shaina Pellington, Cate Reese, and Lauren Ware joining primary reserves Helena Pueyo and Madi Conner still on the roster. While Reese is still recovering from the shoulder surgery she had after last season, Barnes said that she is progressing well and will be ready for the season.
The big challenge for Barnes will be integrating all of the new players this year. Seven–four freshmen and three transfers–are new to the program. Those seven players are very good, though.
Barnes welcomed in the highest-rated recruiting class in program history this summer. Forward Maya Nnaji and guards Paris Clark, Kailyn Gilbert, and Lemyah Hylton were all ranked in the top 100 by ESPN with the first three all being in the top 35.
The freshmen are joined by incoming transfers Jade Loville (ASU), Esmery Martinez (West Virginia), and Lauren Fields (Oklahoma State). All three had impressive seasons for their former schools last season, but adapting to a new system is a bigger challenge these days without the year-in-residence that transfers used to have before playing.
Barnes has also put together a class for 2023 that is ranked No. 1 by ASGR Basketball in the early going. She already had Montaya Dew and Breya Cunningham on board, both of whom are ranked in the top 10 by ESPN. At the end of July, she flipped Cunningham’s high school teammate Jada Williams from UCLA to Arizona, giving her a highly-skilled young point guard ranked in the top 20.
Barnes has not been on campus much since that time, though. She fell ill the day after Williams committed and was hospitalized with a high-grade fever caused by a kidney infection on Aug. 3. Barnes has since been released from the hospital, but it’s a bump in the road she didn’t need this offseason.
Arizona State
ASU had even more offseason changes than Arizona. Not only did the Sun Devils have the usual offseason transfers out of the program that everyone deals with these days, but they had to replace head coach Charli Turner-Thorne, who has more coaching wins than any other head coach in program history. The retirement of Turner-Thorne opened the door for former Delaware head coach Natasha Adair to move west.
Adair is making her first appearance in the west, but it’s not a totally new situation. She brought her staff with her, easing the transition.
“Anytime you take over a program there are changes,” Adair said. “Changes are uncomfortable for some. In our case, my staff and I are familiar with one another. We have taken over programs together. We also know what it takes to win championships together.”
The changes that may not be as easy to navigate were with the roster, but the Sun Devils have made good use of the portal. In addition to what has become normal attrition in college basketball, coaching changes are bound to spawn even more. Adair has added several transfers to her roster to make up for the losses of several major contributors, including Loville and Taya Hanson.
One of those transfers knows Adair well. Tyi Skinner followed her coach from Delaware to ASU. The guard had a very good year for the Blue Hens last season, averaging 12.6 points, 2.7 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game on the way to winning the CAA Tournament and returning the program to its first NCAA Tournament since 2013.
Joining Skinner is former five-star recruit Treasure Hunt, who moved on from Kentucky after last season.
“My staff did a phenomenal job in recruiting seven elite players to the depleted…roster,” Adair said. “There are some names that people are more familiar with than others, Treasure Hunt being one of them. She was top five in her position in the country coming out of high school and is a great addition to our roster. Her ability to score inside and out will make her hard to guard. She’s a gamer, a winner, and a champion. She’s played at the highest level and on the biggest stages.”
As for whether ASU’s defense-first identity will go by the wayside, Adair is not looking to make that kind of change. She wants to build on it.
“I love the fact ASU has been known for its defense,” she said. “That fits right into my philosophy as a coach. We’re going to defend, we’re going to rebound, we’re going push the ball in transition and we’re going to score. That’s our formula and it works! Our fans will love the energy and intensity every time we step on the court.”
California
Head coach Charmin Smith is still working on getting Cal out of the Pac-12 basement. Smith is heading into her fourth season as a head coach and has just six total wins in conference play. One of those was a forfeit by ASU last season.
In Smith’s favor is the return of Jayda Curry, last year’s media selection for the Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and a five-time Freshman of the Week selection. Curry was the league’s scoring leader last season, the first freshman to ever accomplish the feat.
Smith does need the team to be more well-rounded if they are going to get more wins, though. Curry was a high scorer as a rookie but it came due to volume shooting and was often accompanied by very low shooting percentages. She was in the 98th percentile in field goal attempts but just the 44th percentile in overall shooting percentage. She did fare better against her peers from beyond the arc, though, landing in the 68th percentile from three-point distance.
To that end, Smith has some quality players returning. Atop that list sit Michelle Onyiah, Evelien Lutje Shipholt, Leilani McIntosh, and Jazlen Green. The Golden Bears also welcomed in Colorado transfer Peanut Tuitele who shot 51.1 percent from the field and 31.4 percent from 3 for the Buffaloes last season while starting every game.
Like everyone, the team did lose some important pieces to transfers out of the program. Dalayah Daniels, who played 21.0 minutes per game off the bench as a sophomore last season, returned home to play for Washington. The Seattle native was a starter in her freshman season and will have three years to play for the Huskies.
Cailyn Crocker, who played over 20 minutes per game in both seasons she participated in, is now a Colorado State Ram. The former team captain was primarily a reserve, but she was a key reserve for the Bears in both 2019-20 and 2021-22. She opted out of the 2020-21 season.
Colorado
A lot of Pac-12 teams lost important players to either graduation or transfer after last season, but none may have been as important to her team as Mya Hollingshed was to Colorado. Now, they must move on without her and fellow starter Tuitele.
Head coach JR Payne is getting a jump start on that with her team. The Buffs are currently on a trip to Spain where they are playing local teams in the offseason.
CU is trying to make the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back seasons. They returned last year for the first time since 2013. While they bowed out in the first round, it was an important step for the Buffs under Payne. It was the 14th appearance in program history but the first under their fourth-year head coach.
Despite the departure of Hollingshed and Tuitele, CU has some strong returners still on the roster. Jaylyn Sherrod had her best game of the season in the tourney loss to Creighton. She scored a season-high 27 points that day to go along with five rebounds, five assists, and two steals.
The Buffs also get back Kindyll Wetta, who made both the All-Freshman and All-Defensive teams last season. Her 66 steals were second in the league. The return of Quay Miller should be big for CU. Miller was huge off the bench for the Buffaloes last season, averaging 10.6 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 1.3 steals per game.
For the second straight season, CU added a promising young player from another Pac-12 team. Former Arizona center Aaronette Vonleh looked like she might develop into an important part of the future last year in Tucson, but she didn’t play much once the Pac-12 season started and ultimately decided to leave. She could now be that important part of the future for the Buffs.
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