Arizona women’s basketball suffers 1st loss of Becky Burke era

Arizona Wildcats head coach Becky Burke went into the week saying to throw out the Southern Lady Jaguars’ record because they had regularly faced Top 25 teams. She pointed to their length which definitely bothered the Wildcats on Wednesday night in a 63-57 SU victory in McKale Center.

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“That team is the closest thing that we have seen to even a bad Big 12 team,” Burke said. “I say that respectfully to them, and I’m sure they would do a great job in the Big 12 and compete, but I’m just saying that’s the closest thing that we have seen to the teams that we are going to see in less than a month, and so that’s very alarming to know that that’s how we handle that.”

Despite knowing it was the biggest test of the season, the loss didn’t go down easy for the first-year head coach.

“I’m really disappointed in the outcome of the game,” Burke said. “Just frustrated. And, yeah, I think that’s the best way to put it right now is frustrated. This is the first team we’ve seen with size, athleticism, along with some pretty good skill. A team that’s picked to win their conference and was an NCAA tournament team last year, and so really good test for us. Really good opponent to kind of see where we were at. I just don’t think we handled the physicality well. I don’t think we handled their pressure well. We turned it over 24 times. I thought we got bullied…just did not think we matched their physicality and competed at a high level, and just we had no edge to us and competitiveness, in my opinion.”

Arizona especially had trouble with Southern forward DeMya Porter, who scored 16 points in just over 20 minutes on the floor. Despite being saddled with foul trouble, Porter was able to score in the paint against both of Arizona’s primary bigs, Daniah Trammell and Nora Francois.

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“I feel like we didn’t meet her above the free throw line,” Francois said. “We weren’t jamming her. We’re just kind of allowing her to impose…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/arizona-women-basketball-suffers-1st-052257959.html

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Publish date : 2025-12-04 05:22:00

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