The Arizona women’s basketball team defeated BYU 52-46 on Wednesday, March 24 in the second round of the women’s NCAA tournament. Our full recap can be found here. 

Here are a few key stats in the Wildcats’ nail-biting win over the Cougars. 

7

With Arizona trailing by four points with just over four minutes left, Aari McDonald became the hero for Arizona and scored seven points down the stretch to help Arizona escape with the 52-46 win. All year, McDonald was the go-to player for Arizona, and today was no different. She put the team on her back after struggling for most of the game and ended the day with 17 points and 11 rebounds. 

It also showcased McDonald’s play to a larger audience and showed that even when she is having a bad night, she can turn it on in a second and become the hero for the Wildcats. The Wildcats can be a very balanced team, and that’s why they can be so good, but today showed that the team will go as far as McDonald can take them as well.

38

The number of rebounds between the two teams was deadlocked at 38. This was a major indicator of just how close the game was. BYU had one player with 11 rebounds and the Wildcats had two. When broken down even further, BYU had nine offensive rebounds as compared to 14 offensive rebounds for the Wildcats. 

BYU also had 29 defensive rebounds as compared to Arizona’s 24. Arizona has been a very decent rebounding team all year with their front line, but today even McDonald got in on the action by tying for the team lead in rebounds.

11

Arizona’s defense was, again, back to being ferocious. They had 11 steals and also forced BYU into 15 turnovers total. They also forced BYU into 27.8% shooting from the three-point range and 35.3% shooting overall. Today’s game was a great showcase of this defense because as ugly as things were most of the game, the Arizona defense kept them in it and allowed the offense to catch fire down the stretch to eventually seal the win. 

The Wildcats also had four blocks as a team. A game after it seemed like nothing went wrong for Arizona, they faced some adversity from an 11-seed that wanted the game just as much as them. The difference was the Wildcat defense, and if their defense keeps playing the way they have been, they will be very dangerous as we move forward in the tournament.

The Wildcats are now set to play No. 2 seed Texas A&M on Saturday, March 27 at 5 p.m. MST. The game is being televised on ESPN2. 

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