A look at the ranking numbers headed into the Wildcats’ final week of play outside the Big 12
The Arizona Wildcats wind up their first year of nonconference play under head coach Becky Burke with games against Chicago State and Bellarmine. What will the team get out of its nine-game nonconference season?
Arizona will face teams ranked No. 331 and No. 337 in the NET this week. That certainly won’t help the ranking of the Wildcats’ average opponent, which sits at 309 heading into the game against Chicago State.
With 363 NCAA Division I teams, facing opponents outside the top 300 leaves a lot of questions open about Arizona. It certainly does nothing for the team’s own NET, which sits at No. 166 right now largely because of its strength of schedule. Its SOS is currently No. 353, the worst of any Power 4 team. One has to go all the way to No. 337 and fellow Big 12 member UCF to find another Power 4 team’s nonconference strength of schedule.
To make matters worse, several of Arizona’s wins come over teams with similarly poor strengths of schedule outside of conference play.
UC Irvine has the highest NET of any team Arizona has played. The Anteaters went 7-2 in nonconference play and have opened 2-0 in the Big West, putting then at No. 82. The 9-2 record comes against a schedule that’s a couple of spots behind the Wildcats at No. 356, but playing over half their games on the road or at neutral sites helped. The Anteaters had four games away from home during nonconference play then opened league play with two road games.
Northern Colorado is even further back in nonconference SOS. The Bears are 360 out of 363 teams. Eastern Kentucky? Slightly ahead of Arizona at 346. CSU Bakersfield is at 343.
Burke has acknowledged the weakness of this year’s schedule, saying that although some of it was done before she came to Arizona, she did have input into it. It’s one of the things she and her staff will look at for next year.
“This year, I think, is a very, very very unique year from a lot of perspectives for us,” Burke said. “Like I said, we’re not going to be able to change that in this very moment, but what can we do in the future to make sure that we have the best plan in place and are strategic about being an NCAA tournament team? To be honest with you, I don’t think our players even know what NET is, right? They know we win or we lose, you know? So nothing to dive too deep into with these guys this year. Again, we’re doing our best every single game to make sure we have the best opportunity to win basketball games this year and be competitive, and then we have more control over a lot of different things next year, we make sure that we correct some things that need to be corrected.”
That process of deciding how things will look on the scheduling front going forward is already underway with help from Burke’s staff. General manager Michelle Marciniak, assistant coach Julie Hairgrove, and a graduate assistant are also part of that process.
It’s not just about who the team will play, though. They when and where questions are big, as well. There are several goals, but one is above all others. Getting to the NCAA Tournament is the ultimate objective.
“I think you have to find a balance of equal parts of challenging yourself, gaining confidence and making sure you have the best plan in place to be an NCAA tournament team,” Burkes said. “We’ve got a staff, a group of three people on our staff, including myself—or excluding myself—so four of us that are working nonstop to make sure that that exact plan is executed next year. So building confidence, challenging yourself, road games, home games, NET, our strength [of schedule], all these things that you have to think about and that will be put in place and executed to the best of our ability next year to make sure, at the end of the day, you need to make sure we’re an NCAA tournament team, and that’s the plan, and that’s the goal, and that’s what we’ll be doing next year.”
This year, they will be heading into a league that has eight of its 16 teams in the top 50 of the NET. Four more are in the top 100. Only UCF, Cincinnati, Arizona, and Houston are outside the top 100; the Wildcats and Cougars are the only ones outside the top 150. To its credit, at least UA is not last in its league. Arizona stands at No. 166, nine spots above Houston’s 175.
While Arizona may not expect to be in the NCAA Tournament or the WBIT this season, there are still possibilities of playing postseason basketball. Since the introduction of the WBIT, the WNIT has taken teams that have fallen from the top two tournaments.
Last year, that included Rutgers out of the Big Ten. It went into the WNIT with an 11-19 record. The Knights won two games before Burke’s Buffalo team beat them, leaving the team out of New Jersey with a 13-20 overall record for the 2024-25 season.
The Wildcats have two more opportunities to work on confidence and playing together. After that, all games count for Big 12 standings and postseason possibilities.
It all gets started against Chicago State at 6 p.m. MST on Monday evening.

This is the title for the native ad
The Arizona Wildcats end a two-game losing skid
This is the title for the native ad
© 2025 Vox Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved
Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537). Hope is here. GamblingHelpLineMA.org or call (800) 327-5050 for 24/7 support (MA). Visit www.mdgamblinghelp.org (MD). Call 877-8HOPE-NY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). 21+ (18+ D.C.) and present in select states (for KS, in affiliation with Kansas Star Casino). Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT) or visit FanDuel.com/RG.

source