Lani Cornfield leads Arizona women’s basketball to perfect November

Arizona has relied on Lani Cornfield’s ability to set up her teammates this year. The point guard held up that responsibility against Cal State Bakersfield, but she was also the hot hand from the floor as she led the Wildcats to a 78-63 victory on Saturday evening. The win helped Arizona improve to 6-0.

Cornfield had a career high 22 points but she also dished out nine assists, grabbed six rebounds, and had four steals in 40 minutes on the court. It was a big comeback for the sixth-year guard after she was benched for the first quarter of Tuesday’s game against Northern Colorado due to a disagreement during the previous game.

“Just Lani being competitive,” head coach Becky Burke said. “Me holding people to a standard. There was no bad intentions on anything, but I hold a standard in this program, and how I hold one player accountable is how I hold anybody. Do I want Lani on the bench for a quarter? Absolutely not.”

First quarters haven’t been kind to the Wildcats this season. They had not led by more than three points in any game and trailed after the first 10 minutes in three of their previous five games. They shook that off against the Roadrunners by hitting 56.3 percent of their shots in the first quarter on the way to a nine-point lead.

“It was great, but I don’t think we handled it very well,” Burke said. “I mean, we thought the game was over after the first quarter because we played so well. We were flowing. We came out aggressive, and that’s a lesson learned. You know, we didn’t handle that first 10 minutes very well from a maturity standpoint, and we probably let it get us lackadaisical a little bit here and there. So like I said, instead of stretching that lead, I think we rested on it a little bit. So lesson learned, but we now we know we’re capable of a 22 point first quarter. Now we know we’re capable of starting a game the right way. So I think lessons learned both ways from that.”

While Arizona never truly seemed in danger of losing the game, it did let a CSU Bakersfield team that’s ranked No. 347 in the NET and 316 in RPI based on Warren Nolan’s approximations hang around a bit too closely for comfort.

After handily winning the first quarter, Arizona lost the second by a point, then allowed the Roadrunners to score 25 in the third. CSUB closed the lead to eight points with just over five minutes to go in the game before the Wildcats regrouped and stretched the lead again.

“The only way they were really scoring buckets was us fouling,” Cornfield said. “And so every huddle, we just kept talking about, we need stops, three stops in a row. Three stops in a row. We gotta stop fouling. No more, no more. I mean, my close outs were bad today. Like Coach says, sticking to the game plan…We got to stay solid, and that’s not what we were doing. We were just fouling everywhere, helping from everywhere, like it was just undisciplined.”

Hometown player Achol Magot played the most minutes of her Arizona career. She helped Arizona win the battle of the paint 50-16 by chipping in a career high eight points on 4-of-5 shooting in just over eight minutes.

“My mom’s back in town, my whole family’s here watching me, so it feels good,” Magot said. “I mean, just doing the stuff we practice every single day, like finishing in the paint. That’s what I do.”

Despite dominating paint scoring, Arizona was outrebounded by the Roadrunners 37-34. The gap was even bigger on the offensive boards, where CSUB had an 11-6 edge. While part of that was due to Arizona hitting 50 percent of its shots, the rebounding was one area that Burke thought could be cleaned up.

“I thought it was a little bit the effort piece, just a little bit of like lackadaisical moments that I was talking about where I just didn’t feel great about some moments in the game,” Burke said. “There was a lot to clean up, and we’re going to watch it and we’re going to clean it up. And they know. They knew before I walked in that locker room. And we weren’t great defensively today. We had some loose balls. We weren’t first to the floor, and to Lani’s point, where we’re not that gritty dog…you might squeak by Cal State Bakersfield, but we’re not going to do what we ultimately want to do, which is compete in Big 12.”