The Arizona women’s basketball team won its season opener against California State University Bakersfield on Friday night in Bakersfield, Calif., with a score of 71-50.

“Any time you can come away with a win, it always feels good,” head coach Niya Butts said. “Even though we made mistakes in that game, the outcome is inevitably the most important.”

Turnovers still proved to be a problem for the Wildcats as they committed a total of 25, five more in their exhibition game. At the same time, Arizona’s strong defense forced 26 CSUB turnovers.

“We have to take our time when we are in transition,” Butts said. “We are over passing the ball a little more than we need to. We just aren’t taking our time.”

The Wildcats maintained a double digit lead in the second half, leading by as many as 27 points after only leading by seven points going into the half with a score of 34-27.

Arizona came out aggressive in the opening four minutes of the second half with a 15-1 run, which set the stage for the rest of the game both offensively and defensively.

After struggling with rebounding in its exhibition game, Arizona dominated the boards against the Roadrunners out rebounding CSU Bakersfield 62-41.

Junior forward Erica Barnes fell one point shy of a double-double, as she had 12 rebounds and nine points.

Four Wildcats scored in double digits, with senior guard Davellyn Whyte leading the way with 16 points and thus surpassing 2,000 career points.

Senior guard Cheshi Poston added 14 points and junior transfer forward Alli Gloyd and freshman guard Keyahndra Cannon added 11 and 10 points, respectively.

“Any time you can get anyone to score the basketball, it’s a good thing,” Butts said. “We are a very unselfish team, which is good. We are playing hard and people are making plays and that’s always a positive sign as a coach.”

On the defensive end, junior transfer guard and forward Kama Griffitts led the team with six steals for the game.

Tyonna Outland led the Roadrunners with 13 points and brought down seven rebounds.

“We have to take better care of the ball,” Butts said. “We want to continue to control the boards. We also want to make sure that we get deflections by getting our hands on passes because it is definitely critical.”

– Iman Hamdan can be reached via Twitter @imanhamdanDW