Cats Face Western New Mexico in Final Exhibition on Monday

Monday, November 6

Tucson, Ariz.

7:00 PM

University of Arizona

Western New Mexico (Exhibition)

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Cats Face Western New Mexico in Final Exhibition on Monday

11/05/2017 | Women's Basketball

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By: Arizona Athletics

TUCSON, Ariz. – The Arizona women's basketball team is set for their final tune up for the 2017-18 season as they will host Western New Mexico in their second and final exhibition game of the preseason on Nov. 6. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. MST in McKale Center.

Arizona vs. Western New Mexico (Exhibition)
Monday, Nov. 6 at 7:00 p.m. MT
Radio: 1400 AM (Derrick Palmer)
Twitter: @ArizonaWBB
#MadeForIt

The theme of year two of the Adia Barnes era will certainly be the amount of new faces on the team. After losing nine letterwinners due to graduation and transfer, Barnes and the rest of her staff went out and brought in 10 newcomers. Four freshmen, four transfers and two walk-ons.

With the addition of all the newcomers, the Wildcats will lean heavily on the three returners (Lucia Alonso, JaLea Bennett and Destiny Graham. Kat Wright, a grad transfer, will also be looked upon as she has three years of experience at the DI level while playing at FAU. Bennett led the way last Monday with 35 points off the bench.

Barnes won the second-most games in school history for a first-year head coach (14) last season. The record for a second-year head coach is also 14 games. Additionally, Wendy Larry holds the record for most wins by a head coach in the first two seasons with 30, so Arizona will need to win at 17 games to break that record.

The Wildcats will have three transfers sitting out this season (Dominique McBryde, Aarion McDonald and Tee Tee Starks). All three come from power five conferences and will look to make a huge impact in seasons to come. McDonald transferred from Washington, where she played for current Arizona assistant coach Morgan Valley. She was also recruited by Barnes when she was an assistant coach at Washington.

JaLea Bennett is one of the two seniors on the team (Kat Wright) and will be looked upon as a leader for the young group of Wildcats this year. Not only do they look to her for leadership, but Bennett has been a good source of energy during the preseason. Bennett, the leading returning scorer, scored 6.9 points per game last season is certainly looking to up that number this year as she has the athletic ability to get to the rim with the best of them. Along with Destiny Graham, they are the two remaining student-athletes that played for former head coach Niya Butts. Bennett went nuts last week as she came off the bench to score 35 points, grab 10 rebounds and had four steals.

It's hard to believe, but Lucia Alonso is already the third-longest tenured Wildcat on the 2017-18 roster as a sophomore. The Leon, Spain native scored 5.3 points, dished out 2.4 assists and shot 43% (25-58) from downtown (top mark on the team) during her freshman campaign. Her 29.6 minutes per game were also second on the team as she started 27 of Arizona's 30 games, which is the fifth-most any UA freshman as started.

After visiting campus this past April, Kat Wright decided to finish out her college career at the University of Arizona. A transfer from Florida Atlantic University, Wright comes in with 145 career made three-pointers, which would be sixth all-time in Arizona history. Wright was forced to sit out the 2016-17 season due to injury, but during her junior year in 2015-16, Wright lit it up as she made 87 trey balls on 40% shooting while scoring 11.7 points per game. To put that into perspective, only one Wildcat has made more than 82 three-pointers in one season, and that was Lisa Griffith wo made 92 in the 1996-97 season. The highlight of her career came on Jan. 30, 2016 when she drained 11 three-pointers against Charlotte, which is the second-most made three-pointers in NCAA history in a single game. Wright is 381 points away from 1,000 career points, meaning she would need to average about 13 points per game through 30 games to reach that mark.

Of Arizona's 13 players on the roster, 10 of them are newcomers. Those newcomers include Kat Wright, Sam Thomas, Sammy Fatkin, Markee Kyles, Kiana Barkhoff, Ali Reese, Lindsey Malecha, Aarion McDonald, Dominique McBryde and Tee Tee Starks. Thomas, Fatkin, Kyles, Barkhoff and Reese are incoming freshmen, Wright, McDonald, McBryde and Starks are transfer students and Malecha was added as a walk-on, but is an incoming junior. Ten newcomers is also the most in the Pac-12 this season. The last time Arizona had five freshmen was the 2008-09 season.

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