Heading into 2nd season, Arizona women's hoops coach eyes NCAA Tournament

Inheriting just one returning UA women's basketball player, redshirt junior Montaya Dew, who played one game the previous season before getting injured, Burke brought a few players with her from her previous program at Buffalo, and turned to the transfer portal to piece together the rest after joining the program last year.

“There were a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainty,” she said. “It was a lot of new for everybody. We came in and our entire staff was new. Our entire roster was new. And I just think nobody knew what to expect in any capacity.”

The team started the season with a string of nonconference wins and two losses at McKale Center, entering Big 12 Conference play in December with a 9-2 record. Then reality set in; the team eked out just three conference wins, ending the season 12-18.

“I know that we completely overachieved for what we had, and I am proud of them for that,” Burke said in an interview last week. “We were in games and competing in position-to-win games in the 12 that we had no business on paper being in. And that’s because of how they are played, how great our game plans were and how prepared they were.”

Burke sat down with Arizona Sonoran News on Tuesday to reflect on her first season and talk about her hopes for the program’s future. Here are excerpts from that interview.

Starting from scratch

“When you have a brand new team, your entire staff is new, it just takes a little bit of the time. But we were in a much, much different situation last year at this time than we are right now. The portal opened this year on April 6 and the portal opened last year on March 12, so I was like a month late to the portal last year. It makes all the world of a difference … (in) our ability to get high-level Big-12 talent. There just wasn’t much left at all. But the kids that we got, they were excited to be at Arizona. That showed in the first days, weeks and months of practice going into our season.”

Cheers to the fans

“Everybody talks about (Arizona) and how special our fan base is, and obviously I knew that. I felt that when I got the job, but to experience it for myself and be in a situation where I could coach a game in McKale in a game atmosphere. I think it was well beyond anything I could have ever imagined. Our players felt the exact same way. It was absolutely incredible. There are very few programs in the country that have the elite level of fan support that we do. I couldn’t have asked for more from a fan support standpoint last season — how patient they were with us, how they wrapped their arms around our players, not just the first game, but every game through our season at McKale. I think they saw how much improvement there was.”

Then came the losses

“We played a fairly weak non-conference schedule and some of that was strategic, and some of that was kind of already in place before I got the job here. But, we needed to just figure out what our team was made of and not go play high-level opponents right away. So we really wanted to build some confidence in the non-conference and then, by doing that, we really didn’t challenge ourselves to the level that (Big 12 teams) probably were going to challenge us. I would say definitely when we started Big 12 play, there was a little bit of a shock in terms of, wow, this is the level of play that we’re going to have throughout our entire conference season and having to accept that and live up to what those standards were going to be to try to win those games.”

Big 12 reality sets in

“It was a really big reality check for most of our players. From a size, speed, physicality and just talent standpoint, we were a little bit behind when we got into the Big 12. For us, I feel like we squeezed every drop out of the group that we had. And as a head coach, if I can say, man, I feel like I maximized that team’s potential based on the talent that we had, then I can sleep well at night.”

“Everything starts at the top. The attitude, the positivity or negativity. The willingness to continue to come in every single day and approve and keep your team, keep their spirits high,” she said. “And I just really believe that how I handle it up the top is exactly how my team’s going to handle it. So at the end of the day, maybe they didn’t end up in as many wins as we wanted, but the fact that we were putting ourselves in position to win when there probably wasn’t a lot of chance that we should have done that, I think it says a lot about our coaching staff and it says a lot about our players’ effort.”

Looking ahead to 2026-27

UA will return guards Sumayah Sugapong and Molly Ladwig to the roster, along with Callie Hinder, a 6-6 center from Phoenix who signed her UA letter of intent late last year.

“Those … are the ones that I wanted back in this program to make sure that we had a solid foundation to build this thing off of. As of last night … we have already completed our roster, which is incredible. We signed five early and it was in the freshman class. We have the best freshman class in the Big 12 by a mile, without a doubt. We have four, four-star (recruits) coming in. As of right now, our impact players, we’re pretty much done. We are so excited about the caliber of players we were able to go out and get in the portal … and what we’re gonna be able to put on the floor next year is very, very exciting.”

What’s next?

“We want to be an NCAA Tournament team next year. Like, make no mistake about it. That is our goal is to be in the NCAA Tournament. So, we’re really excited to hopefully have put together a roster that we feel like can give us the best chance to do that.”