TUCSON, Arizona — Arizona senior Helena Pueyo logged 37 minutes in Sunday's win over ASU, as the Wildcats are now down to just seven available players.
"I'm hoping that we can get two more bodies," said head coach Adia Barnes, referring to the team's upcoming student tryouts.
Barnes' roster depth issues began in preseason when freshman Montaya Dew, ESPN's 8th rated player in her class, tore her ACL. The, former McDonalds All-American Maya Nnjai left the team for what the program said was the concentrate on her medical studies. There are additional injuries to Erin Tack and Salimatou Kourouma. Now, leading scorer Kailyn Gilbert is out for an undisclosed reason.
"She's not medically out," said Barnes, referring to Gilbert. "She's just not available."
Therefore, when the team comes out for warmups, there is plenty of room for senior forward Esmery Martinez to stretch.
"We need more players," said Martinez. "It is what it is and so we're going to do what we got to do."
What Barnes is doing is holding student tryouts. If Arizona has one more injury or unavailable player, it would have to forfeit games.
"My intention is to find one or two more players," said Barnes. "Will they play a lot? Probably not. But, maybe they come in and bring some energy to practice where they are decent enough to be on the court, and help us on the road because it's hard to function with just seven bodies."
But just recently, Nnaji, the player who left the team in mid-season recently deleted some comments on social media referring to what she called the program's toxic culture. Barnes pushed back after her seven players, including three freshman that start, defeated the Rival Sun Devils 63-52 at McKale Center on Sunday.
"If we weren't cohesive, or have great culture, we wouldn't fight like we did, and that's obvious."
