TUCSON – Arizona Women’s Basketball looked to bounce back on Sunday following its first loss of the season midway through the week against Southern. While the Wildcats showed improved effort on both ends of the floor, it wasn’t enough, as Arizona fell to New Mexico 72-69.
After the game, head coach Becky Burke said while she is not a moral victory person, the Wildcats responded well and showed fight amidst the two-game skid.
“At the end of the day, I’m well aware that we lost the game, but I think with this team, we need to appreciate and stay positive about growth and improvement. And generally, when we’ve grown and improved in games, they’ve come out as wins. But today it didn’t, but we absolutely got better today. We handled ourselves better, we fought through adversity, we made some runs. There was multiple times down 10, we could have shut it down and called it a day and just given up on plays and just let it go to 15 to 20. And we didn’t do that. So I was proud of our fight. I was proud of our improvement.”
Lani Cornfield had an impressive outing in navy and cardinal. The veteran scored a game-high 20 points, shooting 6-12 from the field and 8-11 from the charity stripe. Cornfield also contributed six rebounds, seven assists, five steals, a block, and just one turnover after giving the ball away eight times against Southern. Tanyuel Welch and Daniah Trammell also finished in double-figures. Welch had her best game as a Wildcat, scoring a season-high 16 points on 6-12 from the field, including 1-2 from 3-point range, while Trammell finished with 13 points.
The Wildcats shot 24-59 (40.7%) from the field, while allowing the Lobos to shoot 26-61 (42.6%). The UA was out-matched on the glass, losing the rebounding battle 44-32. The Wildcats also shot just 17-27 (63.0%) from the free throw line, but did turn the Lobos over 20 times, leading to 20 points.
Arizona once again struggled to find a balance of offensive rhythm and defensive toughness early. The Wildcats were more efficient offensively in the first quarter, scoring 19 points, but allowed New Mexico to finish with 26 points. The UA used a 6-0 run midway through the first quarter to take a three-point lead, its largest of the game, before trailing for a majority of the remainder of the game.
Arizona did have a positive second quarter, out-scoring New Mexico 20-16, before heading to the locker room trailing 42-39.
Arizona came out hot to start the third quarter, scoring the first five points to take a two-point lead, before allowing an 11-2 run by New Mexico. The Wildcats tried to close it out strong, out-scoring the Lobos 11-3 over the final 4:46 of the game, but could not get the ball inbounds behind the three point line, before ultimately turning it over on the final possession.
Arizona now shifts its focus to Eastern Kentucky, with a tone of desperation setting in for the locker room, as Becky Burke and Co. look to avoid a third straight loss.
“There’s desperation after losses that you should be practicing with and talking about with your teammates,” said Becky Burke postgame. “They should be living on the free throw line these next three days. And so that’s player led a lot of times. That’s conversations they’re having while they’re tying their shoes getting ready to head out to the practice floor. I mean, if I got to motivate them to win a game after losing two straight, then I didn’t recruit players with the correct mindset.”
The Wildcats host the Colonels on Wednesday, December 10, at 11:00 AM MST.