Before she led Arizona to a WNIT championship and two-straight 20-win seasons as head coach, and before she led Arizona to their first WNIT championship and 20-win season as a player in 1996, Adia Barnes was just an undersized and underrecruited forward out of San Diego.
 
But it only took seeing Barnes play one time for former head coach Joan Bonvicini to offer her a scholarship.
 
"We had heard about Adia in the fall of her senior year," Bonvicini said. "I sent an assistant out in February and they called back after the game and told me I have to get out here. At the beginning of the CIF playoffs I and went and saw her dominate. After the game, I told her right there that I was offering her a scholarship. That was the first time I ever did that.
 
"The thing I liked about Adia was her internal motor and how hard she worked. That resonated with me. She wasn't tall, but she played so much bigger and I thought she would be a great fit for Arizona."
 
Once Barnes got to Arizona for the 1994-95 season, she stormed onto the scene her freshman year and was named Pac-10 Freshman of the Year, averaging 15.5 points and 7.8 rebounds per game. She would go on to help Arizona win the 1996 WNIT and led Arizona to their first NCAA Tournament appearances in 1997 and 1998.


 
She finished her career as Arizona's all-time leading scorer with 2,237 points and still holds the record to this day.
 
18 years after Barnes finished her decorated college career where she became Arizona's first two-time All-American and Pac-10 Player of the Year, she chose Arizona for the second time and accepted the head coaching position on April 4, 2016.
 
Still, she leaned on 'Coach B' for advice constantly.
 
"She has won so much and she has been through all the adversity," Barnes said. "When I first took the job it was about how to rebuild and how that looks like. She always gave me honest feedback and would push me to be the best coach I could. This job is not easy, so to be able to talk to someone who has been through it all has helped me tremendously."
 
Fast forward four seasons to today, and Barnes has been through some tremendous ups and downs as a coach. In year two, Arizona won just six games, but Barnes kept pushing to take the program back to where it was when she played in the 90s.
 
Just one season later, and after signing a top-5 recruiting class in the country, the Wildcats were crowned WNIT champions and won 24 games, the second-most in school history.
 
 
She took it a step further and won 24 games yet again and was poised to play in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2005 and likely host, but the tournament was canceled due to COVID-19.
 
The pace at which Barnes helped bring Arizona back to the national spotlight has impressed Bonvicini, who has had a front-row seat for it all as she still lives in Tucson and regularly calls Arizona games for the Pac-12 Network.
 
 "I have been amazed at how quickly the culture has changed, and I think that is because Adia has modeled the behavior she wants to see from the players," Bonvicini said. "The best thing about Adia is that she is competitive, self-confident, and she will never back down from a challenge."
 
Could Barnes become Arizona's all-time leading scorer and the winningest head coach in school history? She has 220 wins to go to surpass Bonvicini's win total at Arizona, but at this rate, would it surprise you?