Arizona's Esmery Martinez, Jada Williams recognized for big weekend sweep in Bay Area

First, there was a sweep of the Bay Area schools — No. 3 Stanford and Cal — over the weekend.

Then, on Monday, the Wildcats swept the Pac-12 honors as Esmery Martinez was named Player of the Week and Jada Williams won Freshman of the Week.

It's the first time Arizona has swept the league's weekly awards. This is UA's fifth freshman nod and 54th player award. 

It's the first league honors for both players. Martinez averaged 18.5 points (50% shooting from the field), 9.0 rebounds and 4.0 assists. In both games, she was one rebound shy of a double-double. Against Cal on Sunday in an 87-68 victory, she tied her career high in assists with seven. She also played most of the game with a cut lip after a Cal player elbowed her in the chin. Once they stopped the bleeding, she re-entered the game and continued to pull down big rebounds, score or dish to a teammate. In Arizona's big second quarter against Cal, she scored 11 of her 20 points and had four assists. 

She collected her 1,500 career point against then-No. 3 Stanford in the 68-61 comeback victory Friday night. Martinez is now one of four active players nationally who have scored that many points and pulled down more than 1,200 career rebounds. 

Williams put on her own show at the end of the Stanford game. UA was down by nine with 3:28 left, but in the game-ending 19-3 run, Williams scored 14 points. She was flattened by Talana Lepolo, jumped back up and shortly thereafter hit a jumper. Against Cal, she also had a scoring burst of 10 points with just under four minutes left in the third quarter. Just like Martinez, she got hurt after banging her knee with her opponent. She sat on the bench for a while, cheering on her teammates, before coming back on the court. 

Williams averaged 20.5 points (also shooting 50% from the field) for the week to go with 3.0 rebounds, 2.5 assists and 2.5 steals. She tied her career high in points (23) at Stanford.

In ESPN’s power rankings, Arizona got notice for Friday’s win over Stanford, earning the “win of the week.”

Peaking at the right time

When a plan comes together, it’s beautiful.

Sometimes, like Arizona, you go through a lot of trials and tribulations to get there.

The Wildcats beat a Stanford team that was ranked No. 3 — the highest-ranked road opponent they’ve ever beaten. It was also the fifth win over a Top-10 team under coach Adia Barnes, all of them coming in the past four years.

The first was the upset of No. 4 Stanford in overtime in February 2020 — right before the world shut down because of the pandemic.

The next two came during the Wildcats' run to the national championship game in 2021. The first was against No. 4 Texas A&M in the Sweet 16, 74-59. Then came, probably one of the biggest wins — if not the biggest — in program history against No. 1 UConn, 69-59, in the Final Four.

The fourth came last season, 82-72 over No. 4 Utah. The Stanford victory on Friday was No. 5.

Looking at that list, February and March have been very, very good for the Wildcats. (Just a reminder that the Wildcats have won 13 of 16 games in the last four postseasons.)

What does this really mean?

Barnes coaches her teams to peak at the right time of the year. Game by game the Wildcats start to understand the system better and start to come together as a team.

This year is no different. Although Barnes admits that while this might be one of her most rewarding seasons, it’s also been very difficult.

On Saturday, after the Stanford win had really sunk in, Barnes said that last fall she had no idea this team would be in this position with seven active players — plus now a walk-on in Brooklyn Rhodes, who joined the team officially this weekend.

“If you were told that ‘Oh, you're going to start three freshmen as in the year and you're going to get some good wins. I would have been like, ‘Really?’” Barnes said. “Then, you are going to win with seven people. In our conference or anywhere in the country, it's hard to win with seven people, three of them freshmen. It’s different if you have seven experienced people with like five fifth years. We're facing a lot of other teams that have juniors, seniors starting. I would have thought ‘Oh, that's going to be really rough.’”

Barnes went on to say that she could have never predicted all the injuries — Montaya Dew, Sali Kourouma, Erin Tack — and the comings and goings — Maya Nnaji and Kailyn Gilbert.

Dew would have started for this team. Nnaji was averaging 11 points. Kourouma was averaging around 10 points when she had her season-ending surgery on her shoulder. Gilbert was the Wildcats' leading scorer, averaging 15 points per game.

When you add the losses up, the Wildcats are missing 36 points per gram from those players.

“We're still finding a way to win,” Barnes said. “That’s what's most impressive. Not one person hasn't taken that role. Everybody's taken a little bit. I think that's why the wins are even more meaningful. If you would have told me, ‘You go down to seven players, you’re going to be without your best player.’

"Think about it we lost two starters and Sali would have started after Maya (left). ‘You’re going to lose three starters, half of your team’s points, and you’re still going to win a game.’ I’d be like, ‘Ah, we might not win another game in that situation.’ But it’s the heart, the determination and the cohesiveness and culture of this group.”

Moving on up

Heading into the last week of the regular season, the Wildcats are on a four-game winning streak. UA swept the Washington schools at home to start the streak, then added the Bay Area teams last weekend.

Arizona's NET ranking was No. 42 before the Bay Area trip, but went up to No. 36 after the upset of Stanford and then to No. 33 after the rout of Cal.

The NET is one of the pieces that go into how the NCAA selection committee decides who's in and who's out. Two more good signs for UA: It is playing well down the stretch, which the committee likes, and it boasts a strength of schedule of No. 16 in the country. And that's before No. 7 USC and No. 8 UCLA visit McKale this week.