Wildcat Wrap: Beach volleyball starts, men’s swimming, women’s basketball end

Time for a spring sport roundup!

March is that time of year where everyone focuses on men’s basketball, but there are tons of other sports going on right now.

The Arizona Wildcats are ranked in a variety of non-rev sports right now, so let’s check in on how they did this past week in the first Wildcat Wrap.

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Beach Volleyball gets going

The new-look Bear Down Beach had its first official action of the year this past weekend, but the Wildcats struggled a little more than usual.

Ranked 6th in the country, Arizona is out to a 1-2 start, including a 3-matches-to-2 loss to ASU on Saturday afternoon.

Arizona’s 3rd (Olivia Macdonald/Olivia Hallaran) and 4th (Hailey Devlin/Sam Manley) groups were able to come away with two-set sweeps, but ASU picked up their own sweeps with pairs two and five.

The top matchup of the day (Madison/McKenna Witt vs. Bianca Arellano/Whitney Follette) went the distance, but ASU took the deciding third set 15-10.

On Friday, Arizona swept Jacksonville, but got swept by No. 5 Hawaii.

The Cats are back in action on Saturday when they get a rematch with ASU up in Tempe as part of the ASU Tournament.

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Men’s Pac-12 Swimming and Diving wraps up

Stanford won the league’s title, edging out Cal 784-767 for the honor.

Arizona got left in the dust a little bit, finishing a distant fifth, only beating out Utah.

With ASU hiring Bob Bowman (of Michael Phelps fame) as their swim coach, and the Hillenbrand Aquatic Center becoming slightly outdated, it’ll be interesting to see where this program goes under the new athletic director.

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Gymnastics tumbles vs. ASU

Beach Volleyball wasn’t the only team to lose to the Sun Devils this weekend. Gymnastics lost 195.375 to 195.700 on Senior Day, and their head coach didn’t seem thrilled with the performance.

"Overall today was a very disappointing performance," Tabitha Yim said afterwards. "What you saw today was very uncharacteristic of this team. We had hoped to send our seniors out on a better note, but we will certainly be getting back in to the gym to ensure that we learn from this experience. We intend to approach the end of this season with the right mentality to make sure we reach our full potential as a team."

They are back at it on Friday night against BYU.

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Tennis teams each stuck on eight wins

Women’s tennis is 8-3 and men’s tennis is 8-5 after some losses this week. The women’s team lost two matches in Texas to North Texas and SMU.

"Today was definitely a heartbreaking loss," women’s head coach Vicky Maes said after a 4-3 loss to SMU. "We did such a great job winning that doubles point, but we could not keep up the momentum in singles. It's times like these where our inexperience shows. We need to be able to do a better job when ahead and a more flexible job when behind. I will say that the effort and focus was much better than yesterday and for that I was really happy with the team. A win would have made a lot of things better, but as it stands we came up a little short. Now we have to shift our focus to conference play and hopefully do that having learned a thing or two from this weekend's experience."

On the men’s side, they lost 4-0 to No. 28 South Alabama.

"We lost a tough match today," said head coach Clancy Shields. "Congratulations to South Alabama, they are having a great season and added to that today. The score wasn't indicative of how close the match was. I thought that our guys competed well and every match we were a few points away from it going our way. We are in the process of building winning habits, and we will look back at this weekend in the future as a giant step in the right direction for our program."

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Golf gears up for tournaments

Women’s golf returns to action this Friday for the first time since Haley Moore won the individual title at the Sugar Bowl Intercollegiate. They will play at Saddlebrook Ranch Golf Club in Oracle in the Mountain View Invite from the 10th-12th.

Men’s golf will be in San Diego next Monday for the Lamkin Grips San Diego Classic.

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Adia Barnes’ first year ends

Women’s basketball went one-and-done in the Pac-12 Tournament, falling to Oregon 70-63 in the first round. The Cats did lead after three quarters, but the Ducks rallied to avoid the upset.

Arizona finished with a 5-13 conference record, and were 14-16 overall.

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Soccer Spring Season Starts

Ryan was actually at GCU for this one, so be sure to get everything you wanted to know about Arizona spring soccer and more in here.

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