Tag: Adia Barnes

Oregon’s Sedona Prince accepts invite for Team USA tryout

Oregon’s 6-foot-7 center will travel to Columbia, SC to compete for the 12-person squad looking to qualify for the 2022 World Cup.

Oregon Ducks women’s basketball is already on the map, and Sedona Prince is attempting to go global.

The 6-foot-7 center accepted an invitation to the upcoming 2021 USA Basketball Women’s AmeriCup Team trials. Prince is one of 20 collegiate athletes to accept invitations to the trials, which are set for April 18-21 at the University of South Carolina.

“The AmeriCup is a national level competition with some of the best players in the Americas,” said Jennifer Rizzotti, chair of the USA Basketball Women’s Junior National Team Committee in a press release. “We need to bring the best players available and that’s who our committee has worked to identify. Because we are unable to bring WNBA players, we will rely on the best-returning college players.”

This isn’t the first time Prince has worn the Red, White, and Blue. She won a gold medal with Team USA at the 2018 FIBA Americas U18 Championship, and she was a bronze medalist at the 2015 FIBA Americas U16 Championship and the 2016 FIBA U17 World Cup.

In her first season at Oregon, Prince averaged 10.4 points and 3.9 rebounds per game while shooting 54.5 percent from the floor. It was her first active season as a college player after missing 2018-19 due to injury and sitting out 2019-20 because of NCAA transfer rules.

Prince had hoped to compete with the Ducks earlier, but the NCAA rejected her case to participate in 2019-20. So she had to wait yet another season to see the floor in Eugene. Once Prince was able to actually play for Oregon, her presence was felt. After some earlier leg injuries, Prince dominated the last half of the year.

Her efforts culminated with a career-high 22 points in a second-round upset win over 3-seed Georgia in the NCAA tournament.

Prince was also an internet sensation when she went to her Instagram to point out the disparities over the “weight room” that consisted of a few dumbbells in comparison to what the men were afforded. Her post went viral and prompted the NCAA to act appropriately.

USA National Team head coach Dawn Staley, who is also the coach at South Carolina, will serve as head coach of the USA AmeriCup Team and will be assisted by University of Arizona head coach Adia Barnes and Rizzotti, 2021 USA National Team assistant coach.

Ten nations from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean will take part in the 2021 AmeriCup, held June 11-19 in Puerto Rico. The top four finishing teams will advance to compete in one of four 2022 FIBA World Cup Qualifying Tournaments in hopes of earning one of the 12 spots in the 2022 FIBA World Cup field.

Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes isn’t apologizing for impassioned postgame speech

Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes isn’t apologizing for her postgame speech, which included a middle finger and an expletive.

The Arizona women’s basketball team stunned top-seeded UConn 69-59 in the Final Four on Friday night to advance to the national championship. But it’s not the victory itself that has people talking, it’s a moment during the Wildcats’ postgame huddle that has drawn plenty of attention.

Arizona’s Final Four victory was the kind of moment that you live for as a player and as a coach. So you can’t fault Arizona head coach Adia Barnes for being extremely enthusiastic after her Wildcats took down arguably the best women’s basketball team in the country to advance to the championship game.

In the moments following the victory, ESPN cameras captured Barnes’ impassioned speech to her team in a huddle, which happened to include a middle finger and an expletive, and it didn’t take long for the moment to go viral.

Barnes addressed the viral moment during a Saturday morning press conference, where she explained that she believed she was sharing a private moment with her team after pulling off the upset. But she also made it clear that she’s not going to apologize for what she said and did.

“I honestly had a moment with my team, and I thought it was a more intimate huddle,” Barnes said. “I said to my team something that I truly felt and I know they felt, and it just appeared different on TV, but I’m not apologizing for it because I don’t feel like I need to apologize. It’s what I felt with my team at the moment. I wouldn’t take it back. We’ve gone to war together. We believe in each other. So I’m in those moments, and that’s how I am, so I don’t apologize for doing that. I’m just me, and I have to just be me.”

Plenty of people love that Barnes was just being herself, and the Wildcards have earned some new fans that will be pulling for Arizona to once again upset a top seed — this time in Stanford — in the national championship game on Sunday at 6 p.m. ET.

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