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Mechelle VoepelESPN.com
When Adia Barnes became the head coach of women’s basketball in Arizona in 2016, everyone she knew seemed to think it was a mistake, even though it was her alma mater.
“When I took the job, it was a bad job,” said Barnes. “Everyone said, ‘Don’t take it’. All my mentors, friends who are legends of the game … said it was a terrible job, you can’t win, it’s difficult to recruit there. “
Still, number 3 of the Barnes Wildcats is going to the NCAA women’s Elite Eight, and on Monday they will face another team that is in a regional final for the first time in the program’s history: fourth place in Indiana.
The Regional Market saw its two main seeds, NC State and Texas A&M, fall on Saturday to Indiana and Arizona, two schools with men’s basketball stories as national champions. And now they are making their own story alongside women.
“Indiana is basketball,” said Hoosiers coach Teri Moren, an Indiana native who played collegially in Purdue. “Tradition has always been on the side of men. We wanted to build our own.”
Indiana (2018) and Arizona (2019) have taken steps in this direction by winning WNIT titles in the past two years. These championships gave the two programs some post-season success necessary to learn.
This is the first time since 1997, when Notre Dame faced George Washington, that two Elite Eight rookies faced each other in a regional final. The Irish won the match and then lost in the national semifinals. But Notre Dame has since won NCAA titles in 2001 and 2018 and has become a national power.
Hoosiers’ owner Ali Patberg, a native of Indiana, began her university career at Notre Dame in 2015. But she suffered an injury at the ACL that ended what would have been her first season before it started. After playing the next season at Notre Dame, Patberg said his confidence had fallen and she was transferred.
“It was broken when it arrived in Indiana,” said Moren. “But as long as she had someone who was willing to work and be at the gym with her and love and laugh with her, we kind of saw her blossom in front of us for the boy I watched in high school who played so fearlessly.”
Patberg led the Hoosiers with 17 points on Saturday in their 73-70 victory over NC State.
“My journey was very different,” said Patberg. “But, you know, it’s been perfect. I had a lot of tough battles at the beginning. But I came to Indiana, where they believed me.”
Arizona made a previous Sweet 16: in Barnes’ final year, 1998, when he lost in the regional semifinals to UConn. She was the Pac-10 player of the year and played in the WNBA from 1998 to 2004, winning a championship with Seattle in her last season in the league. She also played abroad before joining as a coach. She was an assistant in Washington in 2016, when the Huskies ran for their first Women’s Final Four, and shortly after Barnes left for Arizona.
His first season, 2016-17, was difficult, as the Wildcats were 14-16. It was more difficult in 2017-18, when they reached 6-24. But that season the guard Aari McDonald, who came from Washington – where he was a freshman of the year for Pac-12 2017 – was on the bench and was out of the transfer season.
With McDonald in the line-up for the past three years, the Wildcats went 24-13 (winning a WNIT title), 24-7 and now 19-5 and a Final Four win.
On Saturday, Pac-12 player of the year, McDonald made one of the best games of his career at the perfect time for the Wildcats: 31 points and five rebounds in the 71-59 win over Texas A&M. Defensively, she helped hold Aggies guard Jordan Nixon to three points after Nixon scored 35 in the second round.
“I knew what a transfer to Arizona would be like,” said McDonald. “I had to face everything with a grain of salt, I have to make sure I was seated. I knew I had to improve, to make my teammates better.
“What a feeling. I’m speechless. It’s crazy. It’s exciting. It’s been amazing. It was a wonderful trip. It’s not over yet.”