Since Micky Perdue went down early in the Big 12 season, Arizona junior Sumayah Sugapong has taken a lot on her shoulders. The guard did it once again at Utah with a career high 31 points. It just wasn’t enough in the 81-67 loss to end the conference regular season.
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Consistency was once again a problem for the Wildcats. They struggled for the first five minutes of the game and had another low-scoring quarter in the third.
“Not the way that we can start a basketball game and have any type of success this year,” said Arizona head coach Becky Burke “But despite that, proud of our players for not quitting.They always finish the game the way that they’re supposed to. They never give a lack of effort, despite what the scoreboard says. So I was proud of the way they finished. I was proud of the competed all the way through the fourth quarter, but we got to play a 40 minute basketball game to win. We know that, and we didn’t.”
Utah opened on a 15-2 run over the first five minutes of the game. Arizona finally found its footing, but the 29-16 deficit after 10 minutes was almost the entire losing margin.
Perhaps not so coincidentally, Sugapong hit her first shot at 5:05 in the opening frame. It was the first 3-pointer of what would balloon into a 6-for-10 night from distance. She ended the game 12 of 19 from the field. She added two rebounds, three assists, and three steals.
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Fellow guard Lani Cornfield also had a big outing. The diminutive point guard had 20 points, five rebounds, nine assists, and three steals while committing just one foul in 40 minutes on the court.
The two guards accounted for 76 percent of Arizona’s scoring. No one else scored more than four points.
“My shot was falling today, but my teammates found me,” Sugapong said. “Like Lani, I don’t know, nine assists. She does a really good job finding me.”
Arizona’s bigs struggled to differing degrees. Two of three fouled out and the trio combined for just seven points.
Nora Francois scored two points, but she tied Cornfield for the team high with five rebounds. She also had one assist and one steal while only turning the ball over once. She fouled out in 23 minutes of play.
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Blessing ‘Adde’ Adebanjo made her presence known on the defensive end. The freshman forward scored just three points on 1-for-5 shooting, but she added two rebounds, three blocks, and two steals in 14 minutes on the court. She committed two fouls and two turnovers.
Daniah Trammell scored four points on 1-for-6 shooting. She added four rebounds and two steals, but she also had six turnovers and fouled out in 29 minutes of play.
The third quarter was probably an even bigger struggle than the first. Once Sugapong got going in the opening period, the Wildcats went 7 for 15 from the floor. In the third, that fell to 4 for 13.
While the beginning of both halves showed what happens when Arizona struggles, the second showed what it can do when everything is clicking on all cylinders. The Wildcats cut the Utah lead to five points at the 5:27 mark off another Sugapong 3.
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“We were guarding,” Burke said. “We were getting stops. When we string stops, you know, 2,3, 4 stops together in a row, we’re usually pretty good. Gets us out in transition, lets us play a little bit faster with some more pace…And then that was like when Sumayah was just on her like, kind of out-of-body run. So that was a really good thing. She’s making shots. Everything she throws up is going in while we’re getting stops, which allows us to erase that deficit pretty quickly.”
That’s when the Utes regained their footing, stretching the lead back out to double digits and going into halftime with a 47-34 lead. The advantage stretched out to 21 points at the 7:13 mark in the third quarter. It got to a game-high 26 points with just over 90 seconds to go in the penultimate period.
Arizona chipped away in the final quarter when Cornfield scored eight of her 20 points. The Wildcats got the lead down to 13 with 3:27 to go, but that’s as close as they could get.
“I’ll feel good about for about 25, 30 minutes of this one, but I don’t feel good about the overall outcome by any means,” Burke said.
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The team will return home to prepare for the Big 12 Women’s Basketball Tournament. They open the conference tourney on Wednesday, Mar. 4.
“We’re a team that I would say most coaches in this league that have played us know that with what we have, what we’re doing is pretty impressive, and how we’re competing night in and night out with some deficiencies that we may have on paper,” Burke said. “I don’t think in Kansas City, we’re a team anyone’s excited to play, by any means, because when we put together a 40 minute game, I think we’re capable of beating most teams…in this league, but it’s been few and far between for us this year. But when we do it, and it’s the perfect storm, we’re a really good basketball team.”
It’s still not clear who they will play or what seed they will get. UCF finishes the season against Houston on Sunday. If the Knights win, they will get the 14 seed and Arizona will get the 15 seed. UCF holds the tiebreaker over the Wildcats due to a head-to-head victory in Tucson.
