The first top-10 upset of the women's basketball season came on Friday, but it wasn't necessarily a big surprise.
No. 22 Arizona, which made its first women's Final Four appearance last season, beat No. 6 Louisville 61-59 in overtime at the Mammoth Sports Construction Invitational in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
"I've always been optimistic," Arizona coach Adia Barnes said. "Everybody always doubts Arizona and the Pac-12. They always doubt what we do, and I think we're pretty good. I think that we earned some respect today, which is good. I like that. But I don't mind being the underdogs; it's kind of fun."
The Wildcats lost the NCAA championship game to fellow Pac-12 school Stanford 54-53 in April and then 11 days later saw star guard Aari McDonald get taken No. 3 in the WNBA draft by Atlanta. McDonald led the Wildcats in scoring (20.6 PPG) and assists (4.0 APG).
But fellow starters Cate Reese, Sam Thomas and Bendu Yeaney all returned to Arizona. Reese led the Wildcats with 21 points Friday. Fellow forward Ariyah Copeland, who was No. 22 in ESPN.com's recent transfer rankings after coming to Arizona from Alabama, had eight points and nine rebounds.
McDonald was also a key part of Arizona's defense, but Barnes thinks the Wildcats actually are improved in that regard this season. On Friday, the Wildcats held Louisville to 28.6% shooting (16-of-56) overall and 18.2% (2-of-11) from behind the arc.
"There were a lot of positive things," said Barnes, whose team opened Tuesday with an 87-44 victory over CSUN. "I look back [at last season]: Defensively, we are better now. We rotate better, and we're just a little more consistent. We have more players, and we're a lot bigger. We have more depth, so we can press and keep players fresh.
"We didn't play our best game, but we played a really good team and we were tested early and there's a lot of promise."
Louisville fell in the Elite Eight last season to Stanford, and also lost its star guard to the WNBA. Dana Evans was drafted by Dallas but traded to Chicago and won the WNBA title with the Sky last month. Louisville missed her Friday, but got 19 points from sophomore guard Hailey Van Lith.
Cardinals coach Jeff Walz said overall he thought it was a good game by both teams.
"Just a battle back and forth; it was a lot of fun," Walz said. "Unfortunately it didn't work out for us in the end. I thought we competed. It was a great learning experience for all those kids.
"We've always tried to have a good schedule. If we truly say we want to grow the game, you've got to be willing to do things like this. And it was our first game of the year. I told the kids in the locker room I'm looking forward to watching the film."